One evening, Kenesaw H. Clark, editor of the Plain View Citizen , a small town newspaper, sees a man peering through a window at bank president Col. Joseph Abercrombie. Recognizing the man as Lee Austin, who has returned to town after having served three years in prison for stealing money from the colonel's bank, where he used to work, Kenesaw, who knew and liked Lee's parents, invites him over to his house for pancakes. He then introduces Lee to Adele "Dell" Anderson, a schoolteacher who came to town around the time Lee left, and whom the colonel's son Joe, Jr. wants to marry. After Kenesaw hires Lee as general manager, the colonel orders Kenesaw to fire Lee. When Kenesaw refuses, the colonel demands immediate payment on a loan, and Kenesaw is forced to turn over the newspaper to him. Joe becomes the new editor, while Kenesaw, his neighbor, Ida Harris, and Lee start an opposition weekly called The Wildcat . Kenesaw prints a picture of Spanish-American war veteran T. Watterson Meriwhether, now a layabout who spends his time whittling in and on Kenesaw's office as he sleeps, with a caption that "T" is running against the colonel for head of the school board. Whipped into a frenzy by his wife, T angrily walks to Kenesaw's office with a horse whip to protest. However, when various citizens encourage him, T agrees to run. During the colonel's hog show, to which most of the town has come for free food, T and his many relatives give an unexpected hog-calling exhibition which disrupts the colonel's speech and causes a near-riot as the hogs break out of their pens. The colonel blames Kenesaw, and they fight a duel, during which Kenesaw humiliates the colonel by having T splatter a tomato on his bald head. After Joe, spurned by Dell, who loves Lee, publishes an editorial criticizing her for her association with an ex-convict, Lee slugs Joe, and he is put into jail. Kenesaw, out-of-town investigating Joe's whereabouts on the day the bank's money was taken, returns and, after promising Lee, now out of jail, that his name will be cleared within twenty-four hours, encourages him to propose to Dell. When Lee asks Kenesaw if he thinks that she would have him, Dell, who is secretly listening, answers "yes." After Kenesaw tells Joe that he has evidence that he took $3,000 from the bank three years earlier to bet on a horse at Churchill Downs, he promises not to print the story if Joe will clear Lee's name. During Lee and Dell's engagement party, Joe breaks into the bank, and he is shot by his father as he leaves. Rumors spread that Lee shot Joe, and a vigilante group invades the party and captures Lee. T's relatives engage the group in a fight, which is halted when the colonel, having learned that it was Joe whom he shot, intercedes and asks Lee for forgiveness. After the colonel gives Lee back his old job and Kenesaw his paper, Kenesaw gets T to end his campaign if the colonel will appoint him lightning rod inspector, an arrangement to which the colonel readily accedes, as the town has no lightning rods.