When state marshal Tom Riggins discovers the body of a young American Indian girl in a remote high-country cabin at Glacier Lake, the clues are few, but sufficient. Tom is led to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and a white man who describes himself as a "wannabe" Indian. One of the issues there is that of a prior record, the use of alcohol, drugs and even prostitution. Further investigation produces a ring of 'trouble-makers' that appear to have some degree of involvement with the death of the American Indian girl, Christine Running Deer.

When Tom runs into a 'wall', he uses his final plan, the enlistment of one of the assumed guilty men to work with him to entrap and eventually convict the ringleader, in turn for a lighter sentence. There are a number of turns and twists, but in the end, Tom Riggins secures the deserved justice for Christine Running Deer.