The cattle on the Langton Ranch are mysteriously dying and cowhands are disappearing or being shot. Two Langton riders bring a wounded rider they found wounded and hung up in a barbed-wire fence to Sally Langton and report that her father is missing. A lone rider, Jess Ryder, tops a rise and sees a band of men working on some calves in a secluded corral, and he frowns as he sees what Bat Murchinson is doing.