With buzzards circling in the sky, young Tom Garvin hopes his search for the lost cattle of the Bar M Ranch has not ended in vain. It turns out the carrion those birds are after isn’t cows but the body of a man hanging from a dying tree with a very mysterious black rope around his neck.
Impressed by the rope, Garvin decides to take it—along with the dead man’s beautiful horse—back to the ranch where he works with John Slocum. And the two of them are about to learn that this is one rope they don’t want to be at the end of…