In the little town of Dorado, widely known as a town with no crime and no bank to rob, young Polish-born Steve Kovacs is fighting a two-edged sword of prejudice; his foreign birth and also the fact that his brother, Nick Kovacs, is the leader of an outlaw gang known as The Missourians. Marshal Bill Blades and lawyer John X. Finn are on the boy's side but are fighting a losing battle, especially when Nick brings his gang to Dorado away from the robbery and murder charges behind them in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Nick uses threats against Mrs. Novaks, their mother, to force Steve to help him hold up and destroy a wagon train of supplies intended for the building of a new church. Masked, and wearing Steve's easily-recognized plaid shirt, Nick and his henchman Stash robs postmaster Walt of the $10,000 deposited there to pay for the church-building supplies, and the murder of Mayor McDowell by Lucius Valentine are both blamed on Steve.