In the 1950s, a poor Georgia cotton farmer and his sons search for the gold presumably buried on the farm by their great-grandfather, but problems related to poverty, infidelity, unemployment, and booze threaten to destroy their family.
In a remote Californian desert town, a lawyer arranges for a wanted mobster to skip the country via a small airstrip but the local sheriff and his deputy could pose a problem.
Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.