Print courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art New York, MGM and CIC

A sensitive young girl from Virginia goes to live with her cousin (Orlamond) and his coarse insensitive wife (Cummings) on a lonely and windy Texas prairie. The wife resents the additional burden of keeping the young girl, and to escape her intolerable surroundings, marries a rough cowboy (Hanson), whom she does not love, but who can support her.

She is revolted by dust . One night she is attacked by a former acquaintance (Love) who tries to rape her. Frantic with terror she kills him.D riven by guilt and loneliness, she rides off, deranged, into the wind