The over-zealous mayor of Rapid City, Alexander Griffith, accidentally kills the wife of the town's sherrif, Aaron Dooley, in an attempt to stop a petty thief. After corrupting witnesses, Griffith is cleared of manslaughter charges but the whole town is outraged. After the killing of the two bribed testifiers and an attempt on his own life, Griffith flees, never to be seen again at Rapid City. But Sherrif Dooley knows that sooner or later he's "got to go find that man". In the meantime he has another problem. In a nearby extinct volcano, once the site of a prosperous sulphur mining operation, tens of bodies of Mexican workers are found in hidden mass graves. Dooley investigates. Only trouble is, that sulphur operation was owned and run by three of the biggest guns in South Dakota; Matthew King, rancher, Paul Fontal, State Governor, and Jeremiah Johnson, entrepreneur with several on-going activities throughout SD, everything from construction to banking and, it is whispered, prostitution.