Ruth Owens, her little girl and her second husband are journeying west with the train. Her husband is a teacher and they seem like any other average couple on the train.The weather has turned hot and the train has hit a dry patch. Water is rationed. Tempers are on a knife edge. One particularly hot night a young stranger rides into camp. He has had word that his older sister is on the train and he has come looking for her to tell her that their father is dead. The first family he comes across asks him about her. He explains that she was a waitress in a smart hotel. When one of the men hears the name of the "hotel" he laughs in the boy's face; the place is infamous for one type of woman in particular. Upset by the insinuation about his sister the boy lashes out and the man ends up dead. The men on the train form a lynching party but Major Adams intervenes. When Ruth Owens sees the boy she recognises him as her brother, but to step forward and defend him would mean losing her new found respectibility, maybe even her husband.