In the lush Chinook Valley, a self-contained cattle paradise accessible only through Poncho Pass, rancher Cross L Marshall rules as an informal patriarch. His daughter Jess was once engaged to Peace River Parker, a cowboy convicted five years earlier of cattle misbranding based largely on testimony from Jefferson Crane, a rival rancher who coveted both Jess and control of the valley. Parker served his sentence and was subsequently expelled. Now, with Jess tentatively engaged to the polished and untrustworthy Clell Danert, and Crane having been forced out of Chinook Valley by the cattlemen, a conspiracy is being set in motion. Crane, consumed by bitterness and a Napoleonic desire for revenge, has secretly purchased twenty thousand sheep from the exhausted Sun Prairie range. His scheme is to flood Chinook Valley with wool, driving out the cattle and seizing control through legal means once the sheep are established. Danert, his inside man, cultivates his relationship with the Marshall family to monitor and neutralize any resistance. Crane uses a third-party agent, Holman, to recruit an unwitting herder to drive a small advance flock through the pass at night, creating a breach for the main herd to follow. Parker, penniless after his release, happens to be the man Holman recruits, unaware of Parker's identity or history with the region. Accepting the job and one month's advance pay, Parker boards the stage to Tarp City. On the way he throws the abusive driver off the coach and delivers it himself, arriving in town where he is quickly identified by Crane's men. Crane, alarmed, nonetheless decides Parker can still serve as the sacrificial advance herder, likely to be killed by the cattlemen before collecting any wages. In Tarp City, Parker confronts Crane openly, choosing humiliation over murder by destroying Crane's notorious decrepit derby hat. He reunites briefly with Jess and, crucially, learns from a frightened waitress that Crane's men will kill him if he openly fraternizes with the Marshalls. Understanding the trap and recognizing Crane's hand behind the sheep scheme, Parker acts decisively. He intercepts Jess on the street and, while physically grappling with Danert to buy time, urges her to ride for home and warn her father about the incoming sheep. Perez and Wylie pursue Jess and capture her on the pass road, killing Sheriff Langley who had followed in pursuit. Parker is thrown from a horse into a canyon during an ambush but survives through sheer physical toughness. He is taken to the doctor's house, where Danert frames him for the sheriff's murder and instructs Sinks to ensure he does not survive. Parker escapes by feigning delirium and strangling Sinks into unconsciousness, stealing a horse and riding to the sheep corrals. There, he captures Crane at gunpoint and forces confessions: that Crane himself committed the cattle misbranding for which Parker was imprisoned, motivated by desire for Jess, and that Crane orchestrated the sheep invasion out of spite. Parker also extorts a bill of sale transferring ownership of all the sheep to himself as restitution for five years of wrongful imprisonment. He then discovers Jess bound and gagged under a crate in the tent, rescues her, kills Perez in the ensuing gunfight, and sends Jess to safety at the base of the pass. Parker returns to town and confronts the mob inside the Poncho saloon, where Crane is falsely accusing him of kidnapping Jess. In a tense four-against-one showdown, Parker kills or disables Crane, Danert, Wylie and subdues Sinks, with Marshall and Farley arriving in support. Sinks, spared, corroborates everything. Parker publicly presents his case, produces Crane's signed confession, and clears his name before the assembled townsmen and cattlemen of Chinook Valley. Rather than demanding Sinks be hanged, Parker announces that he now owns the sheep by legal bill of sale and intends to hire Sinks as their herder, saving Sinks's life through practical humor and deflating the lynch mob's fury. Marshall, overwhelmed, offers anything Parker wants. Parker asks only for a horse to ride to the foot of Poncho Pass, where Jess is waiting.
By W. C. Tuttle · First published 1923 · Genre: Western, Adventure, Fiction