In 1897, in
New Mexico Territory, veteran
bounty hunter Max Borlund learns that Joe Cribbens, a
card sharp and armed robber who served five years in prison after being brought to justice by Borlund, will soon be released. Borlund visits Cribbens to warn him against following through with his vow to "buy a gun and look him up". A friend of Borlund's introduces him to a businessman, Martin Kidd, who hires Borlund to retrieve his wife, Rachel. He tells Borlund that Rachel was abducted and is being held for ransom in
Chihuahua, Mexico by Elijah Jones, an African American
army deserter. The officer assigns one of his men, Sergeant Alonzo Poe, to assist Borlund as he was a close friend of Jones and has a map to his hideout, after agreeing to deliver the ransom money. En route, the two men run afoul of Tiberio Vargas, a rich landowner who moonlights as a vicious bandit. Borlund refuses to accede to Vargas's extortion and forces him to leave. Jones explains that he had made an arrangement with Vargas to obtain passage to
Cuba for $5,000, which he planned to pay for out of the ransom. Borlund and Poe find the two runaways hiding with Jack Hannon, an American fugitive who mistakenly assumes that Borlund is after him and threatens Rachel's head. Borlund shoots him and saves her. Cribbens also heads south to Chihuahua, where he tries to support himself by winning
poker games. One night, he wins a large sum of money from William "English Bill" Palmer; when Palmer threatens Cribbens at gunpoint for his money back, the latter shoots Palmer dead in self-defense. Vargas goes to see Cribbens and reveals that he and Palmer were working together on a lucrative mining scheme. Since Cribbens killed him, Vargas insists that he now owes him a "favor". Borlund and his party reach a small border town, where the local police captain agrees to incarcerate Jones and send a
telegram to Martin informing him that Rachel has been found. Told to keep an eye on Jones, Poe secretly explains that he intends to set him free, feeling that Jones deserves a chance to live his life how he chooses. Borlund realises this and devises a plan to help Poe engineer Jones's escape once they cross over into the United States. Borlund learns from Rachel what he had already begun to suspect: Rachel was not abducted; she chose to leave with Jones because Martin married her only for her money and routinely cheats on her with other women. She believes that her husband, humiliated by a black man running off with his wife, has no intention of taking her back home alive. Vargas sends Cribbens to kill Borlund; Poe and Rachel aim their guns at him and Cribbens leaves empty-handed. Vargas then intercepts the stagecoach transporting Martin into Mexico and the two men cut a deal. When Martin arrives, he bribes the captain's corrupt deputy to cover for him while he shoots Jones dead in his cell. Rachel and her husband reunite and Martin admits that he paid Vargas off to
rape and kill her, hoping to sell her death as a story to the newspapers to boost his political ambitions. Rachel takes out her
derringer and shoots Martin dead. Vargas and his men arrive and murder both the captain and his deputy. Borlund kills several bandits, while Poe and Rachel kill the rest in a close-quarters shoot-out with the help of a friendly female innkeeper. Vargas manages to shoot Poe in the shoulder, while Cribbens sneaks up from behind and shoots him. Borlund offers his old enemy the chance to leave with his life but Cribbens refuses and subsequently dies when Borlund outdraws him. Poe is patched up and the movie ends as the three go their separate ways after returning to America. Poe serves in the army for nearly thirty years, retires and dies an old man in a veterans' home in 1937, Rachel never remarries and spends the rest of her life fighting for politically progressive causes after moving to
Philadelphia and Borlund works as a bounty hunter for the rest of his days. ==Cast==