The Missouri Breaks
Tom Logan is a rustler experiencing hard times. He and his gang are particularly upset by the hanging of a friend by Braxton, a land baron who takes the law into his own hands.
Logan's men pull off a daring train robbery, only to lose much of the money. They decide to seek vengeance against Braxton by killing his foreman Pete Marker and by buying a small property close to Braxton's ranch, then rustling his stock. First the gang, without Logan, rides off across the Missouri River and north of the border to steal horses belonging to the North West Mounted Police. In their absence, Logan plants crops and enters into a relationship with Braxton's virginal daughter, Jane.
Braxton is obsessed with both his rustling problem and his daughter. He sends for Robert E. Lee Clayton, a notorious "regulator" who, for a price, will take care of rustlers personally. Clayton arrives with a fancy wardrobe, a perfumed scent, an Irish brogue and a Creedmoor rifle (a Model 1859 Sharps rifle) with which he is deadly accurate from a very long distance.
Quickly suspicious of Logan, who doesn't strike him as a farmer, Clayton dons a variety of disguises and begins to pick off Logan's gang, one by one. Identifying himself as "Jim Ferguson," he kills Logan's young friend Little Tod by dragging him with a rope through the raging Missouri.
Clayton spies on Logan with binoculars and taunts Braxton about his daughter's affair with a horse thief. Braxton attempts to discharge him but Clayton is determined to finish what he starts. He amuses himself by shooting two more of Logan's partners, Cary and Cy, from a distance and then by wearing a "granny" dress while brutally killing Logan's closest friend, Cal, with a handmade weapon.
Logan knows it's kill or be killed. He also wants vengeance against Braxton for having hired the regulator in the first place, despite his feelings for Jane. One night after a campfire goes dark with Clayton serenading his horse, Logan slits his throat. He then comes after Braxton, who has lost his mind — perhaps having suffered a stroke — as well as losing his daughter. Braxton pulls a weapon on Logan, but is himself shot in the chest.
Logan abandons his farm and packs up to leave. He acknowledges to Jane the possibility that they can renew their relationship another time, another place.
violence, revenge, murder, sadist, romantic