When Tip Creston comes to the town of Greenwood, he learns of the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old Romanian girl ten years earlier. Before long, a neighboring wheat farmer is found dead. Suspicion falls on a rancher who has been carrying on with the farmer's wife, but there is no compelling motive. Then Tip learns that the wheat farmer was in collusion with the owner of the grain elevator to embezzle wheat.
The disconsolate boyfriend of the missing girl is obsessed with the case and begins to meddle. Not much later, the housekeeper for the grain merchant's mother is found dead on the open range.
In town, Tip follows the crowd to the grain elevator, where the disconsolate boyfriend has gone after the grain dealer in the offices on the second story. He pursues the grain dealer out onto the roof and has a confrontation.
Many of the townspeople are reluctant to take the initiative to know more, but Tip feels a need to continue to push for the truth about what happened to Rosina Petrescu, the rose of Greenwood.