Jess is hot on the trail of the ruthless killer Jonah Beechum. His hunt takes him to the town of Kinsdale, where he meets a young girl named Lilly and her two brothers, Scott and Rafe.
Recently, Beechum had savagely raped and beaten Lilly. She and her two brothers plan on going after the outlaw to make him pay. Lilly wants to personally put the bullet in him.
Jess feels partially responsible for what happened to Lilly because he hadn’t caught Beechum in time to prevent the gruesome crime from happening.
Knowing that if the three siblings were looking for Beechum at the same time he was there’d likely be trouble, he agrees to lead them on the hunt.
A gunslinger by the name of Van Hall shows up in Kinsdale and plans to challenge Jess to a duel, but when he finds out what happened to Lilly he agrees to join the hunt as well.
Along the way, men start showing up with the intent of killing Jess…and each wears a red bandanna around his neck.
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 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.