1886. Tommy Stallings, deputy sheriff of Colfax County, is tracking a bad man. Jake Flynt robs banks. He hates sodbusters and has a nasty habit of taking his bullwhip to them, after which he burns them for fun. The man is a psychopathic monster and the gang he has assembled is a "who's who" of bad hombrés in the Territory. Stallings must track them down on the rolling plains of northern New Mexico known as the Big Empty. The land goes on forever, the wind blows like a banshee and you never know who waits over the next rise. Tough duty for a young man who a few years earlier was a drifting cowboy trailing steers up to Colorado. Bodies pile up at an alarming rate as Jake Flynt goes on a murderous rampage, and it all comes to a head in a showdown on top of Black Mesa out in the Big Empty.