Steven Ghent has decided to sell the mine he's owned for fifteen years, located at the border of Mexico where the Great Divide ends. When the representatives are delayed for a few days, he visits the annual Fiesta for the last time, and he encounters Ruth Jordan, the daughter of his long-dead partner, and discovers that she is a decadent, world-weary society girl. He decides that she's in need of reforming, and that a dose of the Greats Outdoors might do it - so he kidnaps her.