Territory of New Mexico, 1875. Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy needs money to complete the new cathedral he's building in Santa Fe. He comes to see Father Clement Grantaire, pastor of a small parish near the Texas border, for help. Father Grantaire has a checkered past, but he also has an idea: he can use his less-than-priestly skills to obtain money for the cathedral. After a night of gambling, Grantaire wins over a thousand dollars from a group of soldiers. However, Sergeant Amos Tully is certain he was cheated. Riding back to his parish, Grantaire encounters a masked robber and breaks the robber's nose in a fight. But Grantaire is left for dead on the prairie. When he comes to that night, he finds himself nursed by Rachel, who lives near the town of Cimarron in Colfax County. He doesn't tell her he's a priest, but helps her shoot it out with two men trying to burn down her barn. She tells him there's a war in Colfax between the squatters and the new owners of the Maxwell Land Grant. Grantaire, however, must return to Lamy with the bad news about the lost money. Then he sees the man who robbed him with his broken nose in town-and he's wearing a deputy sheriff's badge. Grantaire needs that money. But how to get it?