Sam Coyote, Walker's friend, the Sheriff at the Cherokee reservation has been seeing Nora Shannon, an archaeologist who's been working on the reservation. When he proposes and she refuses things between them go bad. At the same time an oil magnate who knows that there's oil under Shannon's site plans to get it. And part of his plans is to kill Nora and frame Coyote. While Walker has no doubt that Coyote's innocent; the Feds don't think so. So in order to keep them from taking Coyote off the reservation and buy some time to prove his innocence, Walker has Coyote's deputy arrest him and with help from the Tribal Judge to stall the Feds.