Bose struggles to survive in the wild west, where he faces discrimination every time he goes into town for his identity as a freed African American. Confined to herding cattle on the range, he becomes an excellent survivalist, capable of anything. He joins the cowherd of Will Grimes, a wealthy man with a dark past and a cruel streak. Shortly into their journey, things go awry. Their cattle begin to rot alive, flesh falling off them in chunks. The men are plagued by nightmares about women who peel off their skin to reveal rotting corpses. One makes love to a prostitute who rots before his eyes. A ghostly presence makes itself known, a being called the Desert Judge - the phantom of a human who died hungering for revenge, who threatens that all living things shall rot around the accursed cowboys. One of the men finds all their cattle dead overnight, and the Desert Judge appears to deliver its final reckoning. The dead cattle knit themselves together into a monstrous longhorn, and the Desert Judge declares he has come to seek revenge for the desecration of his dead daughter upon Will Grimes. Bose draws and shoots the Desert Judge to death, destroying his creation in the process. Despite his heroism, his white companions walk in the light of triumph as he continues to be forced out onto the range to escape racist settlers.