After visiting his late mothers people on the Mescalero reservation, Comanche tribal policeman Daniel Killstraight waits to catch a train home when local cowboys bring disturbing news to southern New Mexico Territory: a Chiricahua Apache has brutally murdered a teenage girl in the railroad town of Deming - and a bunch of locals plan on lynching the Indian. Killstraight has no jurisdiction in this territory. He doesnt really care much for Apaches anyway. He knows nothing about Deming, the murdered girl, or the accused killer. Yet, still heart-broken over the death of his beloved Rain Shower, he is in no hurry to return home. So he hops a train for Deming to help a fellow Indian. Only Killstraight learns that the man in jail isnt really an Apache. Francis Groves is an embittered, binge-drinking white man who once lived with the Chiricahua. He had once been an excellent tracker who scouted and interpreted for the Army during the last of the Apache wars, but he has nothing to live for since his wife and daughter were murdered by Mexican scalp hunters. Killstraight sets out to prove Groves innocent ... in a town that hates Indians ... where he has few allies and many new enemies ... and with this thought in the back of his mind: What if Groves is really guilty?
