After doing time for a crime he didn't commit and busting rock on a work farm after he's picked up for vagrancy, young Joe Bell (John Garfield) figures the cards are stacked against him. Then a showdown with his sadistic foreman ends in the older man's accidental death. So Joe makes a run for it with the foreman's pretty stepdaughter (Priscilla Lane). And waits for Fate to deal the cards one last time.