There is trouble in Cimarron when Jing McQueen, the drunken son of wealthy cattleman Mike McQueen, shoots a local preacher and burns down a livery stable. When the preacher recovers, he refuses to press charges, and McQueen is released from jail, leaving Marshal Crown to control an angry lynch mob.

Sergeant Clay Tice a free-wheeling cavalry veteran, clashes with his Sergeant-Major Chambers, a by-the-book disciplinarian. When the Sergeant-Major catches Tyce courting Dulcey at the Wayfarers Inn instead of searching for rustlers with his cavalry patrol, the junior non-com is given a choice of resigning or facing court-martial. Tyce resigns, then rounds up several malcontents from his old troop and stages a kangaroo-court in the Wayfarers Inn with Chambers as the defendant.