At the turn of the twentieth century in the US, Tom Atkins, a woodsman and a trapper, leaves the city to return to the isolation of life in a mountain valley. He encounters a group of Native Americans who have run away from a reservation and have also sought refuge there.

Though at first mistrustful, the Native Americans gradually befriend Atkins and ask him to procure arms for them. On his journey he meets Morris, a geologist who tries to use Atkins to lead him to lucrative mineral deposits in the mountains. When Morris murders one of the Native Americans, the peace in the valley is destroyed