A town Marshal and a party of six men find the body of Harbin, a miner, in a burnt down cabin on Raven's Bench — area in a mountainous region near a gold mine. They suspect that it was a suicide. In the gruesome conditions of this area in western America, accidents and suicide are not uncommon, so no one questions the verdict.

However, it was only framed as a suicide. Two of the three people who know this have died in accidents.

Louey, one of the other workers, had been feeding foxes in the area, hoping to make pets out of them. Harbin didn't like this, so he shot all the foxes. This caused a feud between the two men. Another time, Harbin beat up Louey. In retaliation, Louey got the help of John, a big and strong man who would later die in an electrocution accident, and Sam, who got lost in the winter. With the same efficiency as they worked with bagging sand at the mine, the three coworkers carried out the murder and then dragged the body up to the cabin and burnt it to the ground.