On her deathbed in the spring of 1875, Laura Peters shocks her son Paul by belatedly revealing that his uncle did not die alongside his father in the bloody confrontation at Gettysburg twelve years before. She urges Paul to ride west in a quest to find this relative who holds a guilty secret from those dreadful Civil War days. With mixed emotions he takes up the challenge, eventually arriving in the Texas town of Ongar Ridge - only to find himself accused of murdering the man he has been seeking.