After visiting his late mother's people on the Mescalero reservation, Comanche tribal policeman Daniel Killstraight waits to catch a train home when local cowboys bring disturbing news: an Apache has brutally murdered a teenage girl in the railroad town of Deming and locals want to lynch him. Killstraight has no jurisdiction in this territory and he doesn't care much for Apaches. He knows nothing about Deming, the murdered girl, or the accused killer, but he is in no hurry to return home. So he heads for Deming to help a fellow Indian. Once he arrives, Killstraight learns that the accused, Francis Groves, is a brooding, embittered, binge-drinking white man who once lived with the Chiricahuas and was known as "Walking Man." Killstraight sets out to prove Groves innocent -- in a town that hates Indians . . . where he has few allies and many new enemies . . . and with this thought in the back of his mind: What if Groves is really guilty?