Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens step off a dusty freight train into Northgate, the railroad shipping point for the Dancing Devil range, only to witness a man named Oren Blakely murdered with a shotgun blast. Heading down to Tomahawk Flats, the center of the local range, they find a community devastated by the recent robbery of the Cattleman's Independent Bank, an event that wiped out local savings and left ranchers on the brink of foreclosure. The local sheriff has arrested young Johnny Davidson for the bank robbery simply because a distinctive turquoise ring he traded was found at the crime scene. Before Hashknife and Sleepy can begin their nominal task of assessing local ranches for a prospective land syndicate, a local Mexican girl named Chiquita Morales is found shot to death in her buggy, adding a darker layer of violence to the winter season.
Hashknife visits Johnny in jail and extracts the truth: Johnny had traded the gaudy silver ring to Chiquita for a pinto horse, and she subsequently loaned or gave it to someone else before she was killed. As tensions mount, Hashknife uncovers connections linking the robbed bank's former owner, Thomas Colton, and a shady promoter named James Morrison to a systematic plan to bankrupt the local ranches. When Colton's son Harry is arrested for Chiquita's murder after the turquoise ring turns up in his possession, hidden tensions snap. A gunman named Cass Trent is hired to eliminate Hashknife, but the attempt fails and Trent is killed in a shootout at the local hotel.
The investigation reaches its climax during a confrontation at Colton's house, where the conspirators' plot unravels. Gus Staley breaks under pressure and confesses that Colton, along with his son Harry and cowhand Sam Hack, planned the bank robbery to ruin the county and buy up the land cheaply. Hack murdered Oren Blakely to keep him quiet, and both Hack and Harry Colton murdered Chiquita to silence her about the ring. With the true culprits exposed and the stolen money recovered, Johnny Davidson is released from jail just in time for Christmas Eve, restoring justice to the Dancing Devil range and offering a new beginning for the valley's resilient residents.
