Aging town constable Bob Valdez (Burt Lancaster) is tricked into killing an innocent man by powerful rancher Frank Tanner (Jon Cypher), whose hired gun R.L. Davis (Richard Jordan) shot up the hovel where the wrongly accused man and his Indian wife were trapped. Valdez believes it would be a fair gesture to raise $200 for the widow, $100 from Tanner and the rest from others in town.