Confederate soldiers keep the war's ending a secret so they can escape to Mexico.

Near the end of the Civil War, a Confederate prisoner is sentenced to death for killing a Union guard while attempting to escape from Fort Hawkes, Utah. When he insults the fort's commanding officer, the military execution squad is replaced by Negro orderlies. Enraged by this humiliation, the Rebels' ranking officer, Capt. Dorrit Bentley, effects a mass escape by blowing up the fort. While on the run, he and his men kill a detail of Union soldiers and take as hostage Emily Biddle, a missionary engaged to the fort's second-in-command, Maj. Charles Wolcott. Wolcott is ordered to lead a pursuit party, and Bentley's men make their way to a small town in the Arizona badlands, where they plan to ambush their pursuers. Bentley allows one of his men to kill a Union dispatch rider in a saloon and learns from the victim's papers that Lee has surrendered at Appomattox. Although he conceals the news from his men, Bentley divulges the information to Emily, then rapes and beats her into unconsciousness before heading toward the Mexican border with his troops. Wolcott and his men enter town, and Emily, just as Bentley intended, withholds the news about the war and demands that he track down and kill the captain. The two men finally clash in a deserted mission at the Arizona-Mexico border; Bentley is mortally wounded but has his moment of triumph by telling Wolcott both of the war's end and of Emily's knowledge of the fact. Dazed, Wolcott and the remaining survivors of the senseless conflict begin the long trek home, with Emily following behind them.