A young woman consents to a bad marriage to an unscrupulous man in order to save her father from ruin. When her marriage is disrupted by a murder, three different people confess to it.

Kate Vernon returns to "Mizzoura," after attending a fashionable seminary and looks down on her former suitor, sheriff Jim Radburn, who, unknown to Kate, paid for her education. When a highwayman robs the train, Sam Fowler, an express messenger, is arrested as being an accomplice. After Kate gently refuses Jim's marriage proposal, she plans to elope with handsome Robert Travers from St. Louis, whom she met at school.