In the winter of 1888, a gang led by notorious desperado Taw Johnson arrives at a small ranch near the town of Chinook. Cathy Clemens is recently married, but temporarily alone on the ranch, and Johnson makes the fateful decision to carry her off. When her husband John returns, he swears vengeance and sets off in pursuit, coldly picking the men off one by one. Against all the odds, the impressionable Cathy finds herself attracted to Johnson - and ever more alienated by her husband's unrelentingly cruel behaviour...
