Clint Eastwood is a man of few words but many bullets in this, the first western he made back in America after Sergio Leone had virtually invented him as a film star and a distinctive screen character in the spaghetti westerns that they made together. Eastwood does the strong, silent stuff with characteristic efficiency, in a tale of revenge and justice for all. The laconic one plays a rancher who's mistakenly hanged by a lynch mob but survives to become a deputy sheriff and wreak terrible vengeance on the perpetrators. It's perhaps more memorable as a staging post in Eastwood's career than as a landmark in the history of the Hollywood western.

Marshall Jed Cooper survives a hanging, vowing revenge on the lynch mob that left him dangling. To carry out his oath for vengeance, he returns to his former job as a lawman. Before long, he's caught up with the nine men on his hit list and starts dispensing his own brand of Wild West justice.