In 1913 Woodrow Russell Hart relates how at age fifteen he came from Washington, D.C., to the violent goldfields of what would become Montana Territory. Woodie discovers that the territory is overrun with road agents looking to get rich quick and vigilantes wanting to stop them cold using makeshift gallows. Woodie must deal with romantic rejections, trying to tell the good guys from the bad guys, and the horror of seeing multiple victims swinging from nooses. Disillusioned Woodie eventually turns his back on the "civilized" white man's world to live on an Indian reservation but finds himself in bad company there, too, and facing his own legal hanging in Missoula.