Veteran Army scout Sam Varner (Gregory Peck) agrees to escort a former Apache captive (Eva Marie Saint) and her half-Indian son to safety across a sprawling Southwest of desert wastelands and imposing mountains. But shadowing their path is a renegade killer dead set on getting the boy back.

Peck powerfully reunites with his To Kill A Mockingbird producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan for a suspenseful tale with the direct leanness and hypnotic landscape of classic Westerns. Events tighten around Varner, his charges and his best friend (Robert Forster) like a noose. The siege is relentless. The terror grows. And the stage is set for a final, violent showdown between hunter and hunted.