Jess leaves Calcutta and heads to the town of Menard on the hunt for Derik Bartholin. While there, he runs into two rather strange-acting men. Feeling confident that they robbed the bank in the town of Tecumseh, he follows them out of town and arrests them.
After Jess brings them to Menard and locks them up, a sharp attorney gets the charges dropped. Jess is stung by the law he swears to uphold. Frustrated, he heads back out to hunt for Bartholin.
He returns to Menard and finds two sisters, Betty and Susan Arnold, badly beaten by Susan’s husband, Mack Burden. He promises to hunt down Burden and bring him to justice. Then, he gets an assignment from United States Marshal Frank Reedy. He is to find two escapees who were being transported to the Huntsville State Penitentiary and deliver them to the nearest jail…alive.
Along the way, he runs into another professional bounty hunter who is after the same two escapees. Jess is concerned that he’ll end up hauling Burden to Menard alive at the same time that he hauls the two escapees to jail. The idea of tending not just one, but three criminals stretches his patience to the limit.