Federal agent John Tipton heads for Wyoming to supervise the vote on whether to join the Union. One group of locals is using dynamite to terrorize the populace and a local newspaper editor is killed.
In 1890, in the territory of Wyoming, greedy men terrorize homesteaders to keep them from settling and voting for statehood. A month before the election, the Department of Justice sends John Tipton and his partner Bridges, Wyoming natives, to insure an honest election in Crockett City. When Major Carter and his daughter Janet arrive from Virginia to start a town newspaper, John escorts them into town safely, and Charles Plummer, chairman of the committee on law and order, warns Carter that the city paper's last editor was shot. The outlaws, who have tapped the Western Union wire, know that government agents are in town, and soon, Bridges is shot dead in the back. On a hunch, John sends a wire implicating the murderers and after catching two men leaving town, forces them to confess. Their leader remains anonymous, however. After putting up a poster urging citizens to fight the outlaws and politicians who are against Wyoming statehood, Major Carter is shot when intervening in a fight that was staged to result in his death. As he dies, the major asks John to look after Janet, who is determined to run the paper in her father's absence. John sends a bogus message through the wire regarding a silver bullion shipment, and when the criminals hold up the coach, John and his posse arrest the gang. Steele, the gang's second in command, gets away, however. John is then knocked out and tied up in the outlaws' office, where he overhears Plummer and Steele's plan to barricade polling places across the state. John escapes and rallies the homesteaders, who barge through the barricades, allowing voters into the polling places. After Plummer shoots Steele and takes their shared money, John jumps him and the marshal arrests him, while the Justice Department agents beat the enemy all over the territory. The Crockett City Blade declares that Wyoming has become a state, and Janet and John embrace at the celebration parade.
