Clay Burgess (Tom Mix), a drifter, returns to the small town of Palo to find the president of the bank -- his father -- murdered and the unscrupulous "Big" Dave Dawley (George Nichols) in charge.
The story begins as Tom Mills (Tom Mix) rides off to fight in WWI. Leaving his ranch in the care of his sister Ellen (Carmelita Geraghty) and her husband Ed (Carl Miller) Mills returns from the battlefield two years later to find that his brother-in-law has deserted, and the ranch is in a state of ruin and disrepair.
While in Europe, Chaddie Green, a society girl, discovers that she has been left penniless. She returns to the United States and meets Duncan MacKail, who is equally broke though he owns grainland in the West.
Tom Mix plays Tim, a goodhearted cowpuncher who, while riding down a trail, gets robbed of the money he was carrying for the Belgian Babies' Milk Fund.
Pinto Peters and his pal Chuckwalla Bill ride into town just as the editor of the local newspaper is being urged to leave by a gang of thugs led by Joe Reedly.
Vania is a political refugee who travels from Russia to the United States. But even in America, she is pursued by assassins known as "the Ring of Death" because she carries certain papers given to her back home by her father.