Hunting the desert for his daughter, Jonas Warren finds the man who took her away, who then produces a marriage certificate to pacify Warren's anger. After the husband finds a gold mine and uses the certificate to mark it, they die in a sand storm. Later, Dick Gale, an Easterner in search of adventure, rescues his friend Captain George Thorne and the captain's sweetheart, Mercedes Castenada, from the Mexican bandit Rojas. Dick takes Mercedes to the ranch of Jim Belding, where Dick falls in love with Belding's adopted daughter Nell. When Rojas arrives with a band of outlaws, Dick, with the ranch cowboys, escorts Mercedes to the mountains, led by Dick's friend, a Yaqui Indian. After the Yaqui throws Rojas off a cliff and locates a water source for the ranch, he shows Nell the gold mine. The marriage certificate of her parents proves that the mine is hers. Since she now knows she is not illegitimate, she can marry Dick.