When horse trader Con Carnigan finds his cabin looted and his newly trained cavalry horses stolen, he faces starvation if he cannot get the herd back. He tracks them to Sidewinder Flats in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, but finds himself in the domain of a Western Fagin. The town is a robbers' roost run by a criminal mastermind called Hoffman who offers Carnigan the job of sheriff so long as he turns a blind eye to the criminals.Carnigan, though, takes the job seriously and by the time he has finished, so do Hoffman and his cohorts.