In the American Southwest, in 1930, Trude Mason and his mother ride out into the predawn quiet, hoping to escape Trude’, s brutal, violent father and an equally violent past. They plan on reaching Colorado, a place they believe holds the biggest ranches, the most limitless promise, and lives of the greatest ease. What Trude finds in a small border town in New Mexico, however, is brutality and lawlessness in the form of a cruel, pitiless sheriff and his devoted posse. When they arrest and sentence to death a young woman whose life Trude has saved, he must endure an explosive collision between conscience and self-preservation.