At the hotel, Sheriff Emmett Ryker gets ready to leave Medicine Bow on business and is seen off by several citizens including Regan (Geoffrey Horne) who has been appointed a deputy while Emmett is away. Also at the hotel on business are Morgan Starr and the Virginian who encounter, and are flirted with respectively, by Constance Burns (Jan Shepard) who works at the saloon and by the snobbish Louise Deavers (Barbara Turner) who is engaged to a man in San Francisco. As Emmett leaves on the train, a group of heavily armed Metis arrive (mixed blood Indians and French Canadians) led by Jean (Fabrizio Mioni) and Shilton (John Anderson). Smelling trouble, Regan resigns as deputy and the town leaders are wary of the strangers even though Starr and the Virginian tell them the are simply fearmongering. The owner of the hotel, Charlie Davis (Willard Sage) is reluctant to give rooms to the newcomers except at exhorbitant prices and certainly to those he perceives as ""Indians"" who are forbidden to
