With the Civil War about to begin, Southern saboteurs attack frontier railroad construction.
While the wagon train forges ahead, a few people stay behind to repair a disabled rifle-filled wagon but they have to contend with one another's ego and with aggressive Comanches who demand the rifles as payment for safe passage.
In Tomahawk, the crooked Jackman brothers control the town, Sheriff Dunham is up for re-election, the sheep growers are banned in town and a stagecoach line undercover investigator arrives.
When a notorious tough 'town tamer' is hired by the citizenry to rid of the gunmen driving them off their land, he finds the local saloon madam to be an old friend.
