When the Texas cattle trails to Kansas are blocked, cattle buyer Gene Autry (Gene Autry) goes to Texas to investigate. There, he finds his friend, land-agent "Buckeye" Buttram (Pat Buttram)and pretty Gay Kendall (Anne James, a newspaper reporter, siding with the homesteaders in a rancher-settlers dispute instigated by speculator Steve Ruttledge (Leonard Penn), in a land-grab scheme in which he will benefit when the railroad is built across the land he hopes to control.