Robert Mace, a young Southerner, loves Cherry Clark. He has a rival in the person of Dirk McGraw, a Westerner. Robert tells his sweetheart of the love he holds for her and asks her hand in marriage. She accepts his proposal. On learning of this, Dirk McGraw is filled with thoughts of revenge. Robert Mace and Cherry Clark are married. Dirk McGraw is among the people to congratulate the couple. Their horses are waiting for them. Robert misses Cherry’s wedding ring and goes back to look for it, laying aside his long black traveling cloak and hat. Cherry awaits him on her horse. Dirk, seeing Robert’s cloak and hat, puts them on and pretends he is Robert. She sees through his deception. He seizes her and rides away. Robert, finding her ring, returns to find her horse riderless. The great shock turns his mind. Cherry learns to love Dirk McGraw for his daring. They are married and years later in the west Dirk McGraw is forcing her to do his own ends. He employs her as helper in his schemes to rob other men of their money, while she dances in the mining camp “free-and-easy.” Robert Mace has become an outcast in the west. He happens to be in the same town with McGraw and his wife and drops into the saloon where they are operating just as Cherry succeeds in doing a miner out of his dust. His memory returns and, going to the piano, he sits down and plays the melodies of long ago, which moves even the rough miners to tears. Seizing a miner’s revolver, he quickly swings around upon the piano stool and draws. Dirk also draws. They shoot. The miners, for their own safety, shoot out the lights. Cherry, realizing what has happened, lights a match. The two men she has loved she finds are dead, each killed by the other.