 When Pecos Grant (Tim McCoy) arrives in Stampede, Arizona, he is greeted as Jim Rawlins, a former inhabitant, believed dead for five years. Utah Becker (Wheeler Oakman), town boss and traditional enemy of Rawlins, starts a fight but Pecos quickly ends it. On the advice of Sheriff Lew Collins (Walter Brennan), Pecos, a rancher from Texas, decides to keep up the pretense. He finds that Helena (Shirley Grey), Rawlins  wife, is having her cattle rustled by her own cowhands, and he fires three of them and accuses Becker of being behind the conspiracy against Helena. Pecos sends for his Texas riders, including Steve Pickett (John Wayne), and succeeds in running the Becker gang out of Stampede. This brings on a gun battle between Becker and Pecos in which Becker is killed and Pecos receives a head wound that serves to restore his memory...he really is Jim Rawlins whom Becker had attempted to kill five years previously.