Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Red Wolf crosses the Valley of Doom to the town of Timely, dragging a box of TNT behind him to blow up the dam that keeps water from the Indian territories. It's 1872 and Timely is a frontier town that's booming because of the Roxxon silver mines which built the dam. Mayor Wilson Fisk runs the town, and Governor Roxxon is boss of this zone of Battleworld.
Reporter Ben Urich rushes into Fisk's saloon to tell sheriff Steve Rogers about a lynching. He's with drunken Tony Stark. As the sheriff leaves to do his job, Stark remembers when he was a better man. The dam is still standing but Fisk's men, led by Turk, are about to hang Red Wolf until Rogers stops them and takes the prisoner to jail to await trial.
Red Wolf doesn't understand why Steve protects him against other white men. Wilson Fisk pays the sheriff a visit, to remind him that he works for Governor Roxxon. We hear about Rogers' dead deputy Bucky Barnes. The local doctor Bruce Banner tells Stark that Roxxon has just made all explosives illegal - he's now having to smuggle nitro pills to Ben Parker's widow for her heart problem.
Later Tony sees Turk and his men coming into town and starts singing 'Danny Boy' to alert the Irish sheriff. The men split up and Turk tries to silence Stark until Rogers decks him. A warning from Tony allows Steve to shoot another of the gang. The sheriff suggests that the drunk use the spring-activated gun he's got hidden up his sleeve. But Stark has modified the mechanism so that now it just delivers a flask of whisky to his hand.
There are still 2 gunmen left. Steve and Tony take refuge in Stark's place. Rogers tells him to grab a weapon, but Tony says he's sworn off guns and melted all his own down (but there was a rifle with his name on it over the bar). Instead, as Steve shoots a villain coming through 1 door, Tony kicks a bucket of water over in front of the other door. The 4th gunman enters, and Stark electrocutes him.
Stepping outside the sheriff discovers that Turk has recovered and gone. He rushes to the jail where the villain gets the drop on him outside. But Red Wolf reaches through his cell window and drags Turk's gun arm aside, allowing Rogers to shoot him.
Ben Urich is on the sheriff's side but he daren't cross Mayor Fisk for his wife's sake. Rogers expects the newspaper will report that Turk and friends were killed by an Indian raid or something. So he hangs the corpses up outside Fisk's saloon as a message. Urich goes to his office intending to write the truth, but a bottle of whisky douses his ardour.
Fisk gets a telegraph message from Governor Roxxon saying he's sending someone to deal with the problem. Next day 4 strangers arrive in town.