Trama

A young drifter is mistaken for Billy the Kid. The consequences prove deadly.

In 1876, Dakota Territory, a young drifter named Billy May (Arch Hall Jr.) saves Tennessee Thompson, a former Confederate Army soldier, whom is currently a drifter, from a group of Sioux Indians of the Dakota Badlands, and together they travel to the town of Deadwood in the Dakota Territory.

Upon arriving, the townspeople mistake Billy May for the outlaw Billy the Kid when Billy shoots and kills two local thugs who threaten him when they try to steal Tennessee's cats that he has brought with him to sell. Soon various people including, the brother owner Poker Kate, place bets on his impending fight with Wild Bill Hickok who is called to the town.

That evening, while drinking at a local saloon, Tennessee has purchased a gold claim in the Black Hills overlooking the town, despite rumors that there is no gold in that area and that it is inhabited by hostile Sioux Indians. The next day, Billy and Tennessee travel to the area and set up camp near a stream to begin prospecting for gold. After the first night passes uneventfully, Billy is captured by a group of Sioux who raid the camp, while Tennessee hides in the nearby woods.

The Indians take Billy to their camp where Billy meets his long-lost father, Boone May, an ex-Confederate army soldier who was thought to have been killed 14 years earlier. Boone tells Billy that he deserted from the Confederate army and fled west where he joined the Sioux Indians in hopes of destroying George Custer's troops that are rampaging through the area and to establish a new Confederate state. Billy also meets and falls in love with Little Bird (LaDonna Cottier), a young Sioux woman who acts as a translator for Billy.

Billy later escapes from the Indian camp, with a little help from Tennessee, and shoots and kills two outlaws who have raped Little Bird. By the time Billy returns to Deadwood, Wild Bill Hickok (Robert Dix) has arrived, when when Hickock meets Billy for the first time and learns his real identity, he decides not to fight him. However, a young and belligerent teenage boy named Hubert (John Bryant), who still thinks that Billy is the outlaw Billy the Kid, tricks Billy into a gunfight. However, Billy shoots and kills Hubert in self defense. Billy is hunted down by a mob of enraged townspeople, where they take him outside the town and decide to lynch him. When Preacher Smith (Richard S. Cowl) tries to intervene to stop the unjust execution, he is also shot and killed by the townsmen.

In the final scene, Tennessee, Little Bird, Boone and other Sioux arrive on the scene too late to save Billy after the vigilante mob has fled. The dead Billy is cut down and taken away for burial, while Little Bird and Boone return to the Sioux camp while Tennessee packs up and leaves for places unknown.