Eddie Dean and Soapy Jones foil an attempted stagecoach holdup designed to murder Circuit Judge Hilton, bound for Rawhide to restore law and order. The Judge and the other passenger, Parson Trimble, decide to put up at the ranch owned by Sherry Lynn, Eddie's sweetheart, and her mother Ma Lynn. They are waylaid again, but the outlaws are driven off, and Nevada, an undercover man for the Judge, allows one of captured men to escape so he can follow him to the gang hideout. The Judge also deputizes Eddie. Nevada gets in with the gang, led by Duke and Dad Dillon, and is given the assignment to kill the Judge, whose first act in Rawhide was to close Duke's saloon and fire the city manager, Colonel Blake, a hireling of the Dillons. Eddie, Nevada and Soapy find evidence at the Dillon mine that they have been stealing government gold shipments. Colonel Blake is preparing to skip town and reveals to Sherry and saloon-girl Lola, Duke's girlfriend, that Duke is really the son of Judge Hilton, kidnapped in infancy by Dillon as an act of revenge. The Dillons and Eddie and his men are in a gunfight outside of the Palace Saloon when the Judge, having learned that Duke is is son, goes out to look for him. Duke, not believing the story, is looking to kill the Judge.