After the end of the racing season, Tod is working at a greyhound dog racing track in a small town in the Arizona desert. As he is about to start work one day, he, with a group of others, witnesses two murders in the process of the track being robbed by two unknown men, the two victims being Al Kirk, the owner of the track and of one of the dogs named Dutchman's Gold, and elderly Larry Bradford, a track regular. As the two robbers did not pass the highway checkpoint in the direction they were seen heading and as the distinctive getaway car is later located abandoned in the desert, Sheriff Jimmy Haskell believes they must have escaped on horseback using the old Apache Trail through the desert mountains. As such, he forms a posse to track the perpetrators on horseback. Along with the sheriff and some of his men, the posse includes (some with who the sheriff has some reluctance in including): Tod, who is not an obvious choice because of he not knowing the local ways as an outsider; Diana Kirk, Al's much younger wife, who many see as a gold-digger solely for marrying an older man; Hank Saxon, Dutch's trainer who both embraces yet runs from the fact of his one-third Apache blood; and Mr. Scranton, an equally elderly friend of Mr. Bradford's and nicknamed the General because of his rank as a war vet. One within the posse knows more about the robbery and murder than he/she lets on, that fact which ultimately has a profound effect on the outcome of the chase, and on Tod's psyche.
—Huggo