A bank robbery gone wrong leads to a horrific crime and the capture of the most relentless outlaw in Texas...the infamous Johnny Rios. Incarcerated, Rios ups the ante with a daring ultimatum that gives the sleepy town of Wardlaw a rude awakening as their courageous Sheriff prepares for the shoot-out of a lifetime - one that could either put this town on the map or annihilate it all together. The laws they live by are the laws they’ll die by on RETRIBUTION ROAD.
The efforts of crooked rancher Stephen Laban to force his local bank into an unsecured loan are foiled by Fred Hunter and Jake Robbins, and Laban vows vengeance on the pair; but he is temporarily thwarted by the arrival from the East of society girl Millicent Delacey. Knowing her weakness for social prestige, Hunter arranges to masquerade as the Duke of Black Butte, a visiting nobleman on a hunting expedition; Millicent and her social-climbing mother completely succumb to the duke's charm.
Easterner Robert Wagner has been lured West by the Government's announcement of new land grants. As he prepares for the approaching land rush he make the acquaintance of Westerner Jim Henderson and his wild daughter, Tex. Tex is a true daughter of the frontier unhampered by conventions or skirts and while she finds herself smitten with Wagner, he however is hampered by his New England sensibilities and can't abide a woman that behaves as Tex does. It takes a truly grim turn of events before Tex can prove herself to this reserved New Englander.
The unscrupulous attempts by speculators Dr. West and Jim Prince to have a railroad pass through lower California are met with opposition by Spanish landowners led by Dona Maria Saltonstall, who tries flirting with West to restore their property. Pereo, a religious fanatic who works for Dona Maria, believes in the curse of the Gray Wolf's Ghost: if a member of Dona Maria's family mates with an alien, fortune and life will be lost. Meanwhile, West's son Harry, whom he deserted years before, comes to avenge the wrong done to his mother.
Madge Nelson is ordered to move to the countryside for health reasons, but her finances prevent her from making the move from the city, so she answers an advertisement for a mail-order bride for miner Hugo Ennis in Nevada.
A hardened Texas judge survives a brutal cartel assassination attempt only to discover his wife has been kidnapped and is presumed dead. Abandoning the law, he forges an uneasy alliance with the cartel assassin sent to kill him. Together, they wage a relentless, bullet-riddled campaign of vengeance across the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, battling mercenaries, dirty cops, and outlaw bikers in a desperate quest to find his wife, dead or alive.