A gunslinger named Jagade, Dale Robertson, happens upon a stranger in trouble on the trail and saves his life. Jagade immediately regrets it upon learning the man is Allan Burnett, Jock Mahoney, a U.S. Marshal who is on his way to West End to marry Jagade's former sweetheart.
Burnett arrives first and disrupts the proceedings, a surprising turn for a lawman who owes a debt to the man who saved him. Jagade, true to his hardened code, provokes both Burnett and the town, forcing open the saloon on a Sunday and re-importing the saloon girls despite local regulations. The bold move stirs anger among the townspeople and unsettles many, especially the meek Miss Timmons, Dee Carroll, and the steadfast Preacher Jason, John Dehner, who now vows to burn the saloon to the ground rather than let it stand.
The tension escalates when Burnett, slow to act, becomes entangled in the town’s quarrel with Jagade. The situation worsens as Sharman Fulton, Mara Corday, who has redeemed her name in the eyes of Judge John J. McLean, Carl Benton Reid, ends up in the center of the feud. The judge, provoked by Jagade’s blunt challenge to authority, kicks Sharman out of his home, while Burnett’s attempt to arrest Jagade ends in a gunfight that leaves the judge wounded in the arm. Fueled by fear and anger, the judge swears out a warrant and has Burnett jailed, cutting Burnett off from protection and leaving Sharman with nowhere to go but to seek refuge in the very saloon Jagade controls.
With nowhere else to go, Sharman moves into the saloon and agrees to Jagade's condition that she don her old red dancehall costume, a provocative symbol of her past that now serves as a grim reminder of the town’s judgment. Meanwhile, Billy Brand, a young resident who admires Jagade, shoots the Preacher, a blow that shakes the town’s moral compass. Yet Billy’s act is overshadowed by Miss Timmons, publicly humiliated by Jagade, who hangs herself in a moment that shakes everyone to the core.
Realizing that only the marshal can take on Jagade, the judge orders Burnett released from jail, unshackling the man who still bears the debt of gratitude to Jagade. As a final confrontation unfolds, a ringing church bell distracts Jagade during a shootout, and Burnett’s shot fatally wounds him. In his last moments, Jagade understands that the bell was rung in honor of the very preacher who opposed him and who was killed by Billy, a bitter echo of the town’s intertwined loyalties and misdeeds.
