Irishman Doug Monahan runs a fencing crew outside the south Texas town of Twin Wells, digging post-holes and stringing red painted barbed wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land hungry thugs.

Monahan's fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range baron of the huge R Cross spread.

With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann, assigned to the violent work, Rinehart wages a barbed wire war against Doug Monahan. And neither side takes prisoners