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.
Becky Warder constantly indulges in the telling of little white lies. In an innocent effort to ease the troubled marriage of her quarreling friends Eve and Fred Lindon, Becky meets secretly with Fred, thereby constructing a web of deceit that leads Eve to suspect Becky of trifling with her husband's affections.
Tex Benton, riding across the country, sees a turtle, catches a jack rabbit and tests out the old fable of the tortoise and the hare; when the rabbit wins, Tex vows to model his behavior on that style.
She was a very modern young woman, was Miss Hobbs. Her ideas were about fifty years ahead of time. For one thing she hated men, thought them all brutes.
Even though the Gommesens have been married for 25 years, they are still in love. They wake up happy on their silver wedding anniversary, but the peaceful atmosphere does not last.