"The Telegraph Trail" is a western tale of greed as Gus Lynch (Albert J. Smith) who has a local western town under his iron grip. Lynch controls everything in town and has almost all the townsfolk indebted to him. However Lynch’s reign of oppression is going to come to an end soon. With the expansion of telegraph lines across the country, the town can now communicate with the rest of the country and increase sales and business. In order to stop this, Lynch has his henchman, an Indian named High Wolf (Yakima Canutt) use his influence of the local Indian tribes to stop the completion of this telegraph. Believing that there is more to the Indian uprising than meets the eye, Calvary scout John Trent (John Wayne) and his trusty steed, Duke (Duke) are sent to town to sort things out.