This silent melodrama is set against the 1840s westward migration of the Mormons. Dora, a young woman, and her family are saved from an Indian attack by a Mormon community traveling to Utah. They join the wagon train. Dora is pursued by two men, one a recent convert, the other a scheming elder with a stable of wives. The Mormon elder wants her in his harem. When the mother kills herself from revulsion toward polygamy, the daughter must consider her own future and the man she loves. One of Mae Murray's few surviving films, this was intended by Robert Leonard to be a thoughtful drama about the goods and evils of Mormonism, but today it is generally considered pure anti-Mormon propaganda.

John Hogue, his wife, and their daughter Dora are saved from the Indians by the Mormons and taken into their community. Dora falls in love with Tom Rigdon, a youthful convert, but is desired by Elder Darius Burr who conspires to force Hogue into the sect in order to obtain his daughter. Burr informs Dora that her father will be forced to marry a second wife unless she agrees to marry the elder. Dora, ignorant that the ceremony has already taken place, agrees to the sacrifice but tells the sect, untruthfully, that she is not a virgin, disqualifying herself as a bride by Mormon law. When Hogue's second wife is brought to the house, Dora's mother commits suicide and Hogue, Tom and Dora are taken prisoner by the Avenging Angels, a band of masked Mormon militiamen. Left in the desert to die by the Avenging Angels, Hogue makes his way back in time to save his daughter from Burr's advances, and Tom and the three escape from the community.