An army post in the western cavalry where his predecessors had been drunks and slackers has been assigned to Dr. Allen Seward (Robert Francis). The post doesn't like him either, especially after he flouts norms and attends to the sick Indians on the malaria-infested reservations. When the Comanches and the Indians join forces to besiege the fort, they brand Seward as a "woodhawk," a bird that betrays its own kind to feed on the enemy. It's no surprise that Donna Reed, the niece of post commander Phil Carey, is in the movie. Carey, a cavalry captain who believes that only a dead Indian can be considered a good Indian, and May Wynn, the white girl raised by Indians and married to the chief's son, are the three main characters in this film. Francis died in an aircraft crash in1955, after completing only two more films.