Lewis Tater, an innocent Iowa farm lad, aspires to be a famous Western novelist like his hero, Zane Grey. He goes home to respond to an advertisement for on-campus classes for a writing correspondence course, only to learn that the institution is nothing more than a row of postboxes at a remote Nevada train depot. On the run from the perpetrators, Lewis comes finds "actual" cowboys—cowboy actors filming a film in the desert. In Depression-era Hollywood, the would-be writer quickly finds himself instead acting in Westerns for the decrepit Tumbleweed Productions studio.