Jess is back on the hunt for more wanted killers. His search for Lester Donnely takes him to the town of Tobin, where he confronts two drifters who killed one of the town locals. Then, a badly wounded man rides his horse into town. He falls unconscious and drops onto the street.
When the Kirby County sheriff shows up in Tobin, he questions Jess about his killing of the two drifters. Then, he identifies the wounded man as State Supreme Court Justice Chris Meacham.
When United States Marshal Frank Reedy hears about Meacham, he assigns Jess the task of finding the two men who ambushed the Supreme Court justice. Meacham finally comes around and describes the two ambushers in detail. Jess knows exactly who they are.
Reedy sends Bodine to help Jess capture the ambushers to bring them in alive to hang. Things get much more difficult when Jess discovers an unknown shooter is attempting to kill him.
Jess is out on the trail looking for the killer, Ron Westfall, who murdered his former partner in cold blood while making the man’s wife and young son watch.
He then receives a wire with instructions from Frank Reedy to travel to Spruce to help out Matt Helm, a Texas Ranger. Helm was transferring the outlaw and killer, Alec Lynch, to the penitentiary when Lynch escaped, shot Helm and left him for dead.
Lynch took Helm’s pistol and horse and then found his extra Rangers badge. He began using the badge to pass himself off as a Texas Ranger to help escape capture.
Jess picks up Helm in Spruce and the two begin their search for Lynch, but fate seems to throw more problems at them, making the job of capturing Lynch much more difficult.
Jess is back on the trail, hunting for Saul Green, when he comes across a cattle ranch run by Loretta McIntire. She offers him a job chasing rustlers off her land, but he turns it down.
While there, he meets a high-priced gun for hire, Raif Wood. He’s looking to get hired on as Loretta’s personal bodyguard. Jess joins them for lunch and then leaves to go back on the hunt for Green.
When he takes Green’s body to the town of Clinton to turn in to the law for the bounty, he discovers that Lorretta has been brutally murdered and Raif Wood took a bullet in his shoulder trying to protect her.
Jess goes after the four killers and Wood goes along with him even though he’s wounded. Once that problem is resolved, he happens upon another tragedy and meets a man by the name of Jimmy.
Another hunt begins, but it doesn’t end the way Jess thought it would.
Jess is back on the hunt for more vicious killers. His first target is Howard McClure. He ends up in Clayton, Texas, where he talks to McClure’s brother Doug.
Meanwhile, he is still trying to figure out who paid the man called Jackal five thousand dollars up front to kill him back in Ludlow, Texas.
To complicate things even more, some unknown person is trailing him. When he finally confronts McClure out in his camp on the trail, the unknown person kills McClure with a headshot from a distance even Jess might not be able to make.
As he continues his hunt for wanted men, another hired killer confronts him, hired by the same shadowy figure hiding in the background. Before Jess kills him, he gives Jess some information that might help him figure out who is behind it all.
As he continues to dodge bullets and killers, he races to find out who is putting up the private bounty on his head.
He finds help in a very unlikely person.