Arizona lawman Walt Coogan (Clint Eastwood) hopes to make a short business trip to the big city, but his journey quickly becomes an odyssey of violence. Walt is flummoxed when Manhattan police put the brakes on his plan to return a jailed murderer (Don Stroud) to the Southwest. Bent on getting his man, he temporarily outwits the New Yorkers, only to be plunged into a series of ugly confrontations with counterculture types who are the antithesis of the straitlaced Walt.