San Francisco is hot. Too hot for troubleshooter Joshua Dillard after a vice lord draws a gun on him in a ritzy Russian Hill parlour house and he's obliged to blast him down with his Peacemaker. So Joshua brings forward a railroad trip to the wilds of Colorado where he has an assignment lined up by a mysterious Leigh Jordan, of New York City.

But Joshua is soon embroiled in more bloody mayhem, this time with devious Fort Harper attorney Walt Sloane and his roughneck fist-fighters. Enter a femme fatale needing his unorthodox services, take a ride into the rugged foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and Joshua is pitched into a maelstrom of deception, treachery and murderous gunfire.