David "Rusty" Shannon, proud member of a "ranging company" attempting to protect Texas settlers from Indian depredations, finds that the rangers are being disbanded. He makes his way home to his land on the Red River, hoping to take up the life of a farmer and the hand of the beloved girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan.

But Geneva has married in Rusty's long absence and the country filled with hostiles -- not just Indians, but hate-filled Confederates, overbearing Union soldiers, and army renegades. Rusty's youth as a prisoner of the Comanches returns to haunt him when, in pursuit of Indian raiders, he captures Badger Boy, a white child taken from his murdered parents by a Comanche warrior.

Badger Boy yearns to return to his adoptive people, and Rusty agrees to escort him into Indian country, putting his own life, and that of the boy, in danger.