When widower and drifter Leroy Jackson loses his job as a stagecoach guard after he inadvertently allows passage to a duo of thieves, he finds himself tossed into the West Texas desert as punishment. Lost and alone, he is saved by a band of Chinese railroad workers who are laying track for Texas & Pacific. Appointed the new overseer by the malicious foreman known as Slaughter, Jackson is given the name China Jack, which he loathes due to assumptions he holds of the Chinese people. As Slaughter continues his reign of abuse over the workers, Jackson realizes that in order to create a new future he must let go of his past, and he begins to find honor rather than scorn in his new name."