Returning home after disappearing three years ago, former gunslinger Lorn Warfield (Glenn Ford) finds that an Apache raiding party has kidnapped his wife and children. Though he has renounced violence, he now takes up his gun and joins forces with his neighbor, Owen Forbes (Arthur Kennedy). Complicating matters, Forbes is engaged to Warfield's wife, who believed her husband was dead. As they pursue the Apaches, the two men are joined by an Indian trader, Jimmy Noble (Dean Jagger).