Sheriff Rudd, Deputy Bill Melvin, a civilian volunteer named Sid Jaynes, and a few others gather to hunt for four convicts who escaped from a Colorado state penitentiary and robbed a gas station before trekking through the Rocky Mountains. Jaynes, who owns a high-powered rifle and enjoys manhunts, shoots and kills the first convict with a single shot. The others are slightly concerned by his enthusiasm for shooting people, but they are not upset about his results. The group tracks the next two convicts to an abandoned mine, where they see from the tracks that one of the men began limping. They find him a mile ahead in a lean-to that local hunters sometimes use. The posse surrounds the lean-to and Sheriff Rudd orders the convict to exit. He crawls out unarmed and props himself up. When he lowers his arm to catch himself from falling, Jaynes shoots him through the hand, thinking the convict was reaching for a gun. The sheriff has one of the men get a first aid kit and treat the fugitive's wounds and offers him food. Then, he has Jaynes get rid of all his hunting bullets that are designed to kill. With the second convict apprehended and tied to a horse, the posse continues along the trail of footprints until they find a gun on the ground along with an arrow carved into the dirt. A little ways ahead, the third fugitive is sleeping. Sheriff Rudd and his deputy Melvin go to apprehend him. They bring him back to the group and begin to tie him up, Jaynes lifts his rifle, and Rudd realizes that they didn't search the convict. They find a pistol strapped to his thigh. They realize that the convict had drawn the arrow towards himself in a fake surrender, with the intent of using the pistol to free himself and the other captured convict. Knowing that this fugitive is very clever, the sheriff decides to take their two apprehended prisoners back with most of the men, leaving Melvin and Jaynes to track and recapture Kaygo, the final escaped convict. They know that even though Kaygo is not a local, he has a great instinct in the outdoors and will be difficult to track. The sheriff says that he'll send a supply plane to deliver more food in three days if the two men don't catch Kaygo by then. Melvin and Jaynes set out together tracking Kaygo. They determine that he is most likely heading towards a meadow. Jaynes knows a short cut to the meadow, but Melvin wants to keep following the tracks, so the split up. At night, Melvin catches some food and camps by himself. As he's sleeping, he awakes to see Kaygo sitting by the fire, eating some leftover food. Both men have the opportunity to kill each other, but decide not to, operating by an unspoken code. Melvin realizes that even though Kaygo is a convicted murderer, they are still similar in some ways, more similar than he and Jaynes. In the morning, Melvin meets up with Jaynes. They try to set a trap for Kaygo but it fails. Jaynes discovers Kaygo's footprints in Melvin's camp and suspects that he doesn't want to catch the convict, but Melvin convinces him otherwise.

The plane comes on the third day, but it is windy and a storm is coming. When it drops the package of food and supplies, the wind blows it into flooded swampland, then it started to rain. Before Melvin and Jaynes could get to it, Kaygo waded out to it and grabbed it. Jaynes took a few shots at him but was too far away. The men went around the swamp and located the supplies and found that a quarter of the food remained. The next day, they split up once more, Jaynes reasoning that Kaygo would be headed towards the highway, but Melvin thinking that he would keep heading towards the mountains, where he felt free. Melvin found him in a clearing below but was too far away to take a shot. Knowing that Kaygo was unfamiliar with the area, he knew the convict wouldn't know about a shortcut towards the mountain, so he went to cut him off. As Melvin staked out, he noticed that a storm was approaching when his rifle barrel began to sparkle from the electrified air. He saw that Kaygo had noticed this too and was waving his hands in the air, enjoying the sparks. The rain began to fall and Kaygo looked for shelter, heading right towards where Melvin was hiding. Melvin heard some rocks clatter behind him but didn't worry about it as he lifted his rifle and aimed. He yelled at Kaygo, who began to run, but Melvin's finger hesitated over the trigger. He heard a shot ring out from behind him and turns to see Jaynes. Jaynes had hit his target in the heart. He had decided to circle back and followed Melvin, thinking his theory was better. Jaynes wanted to leave the body as it was, but Melvin covered Kaygo with a sleeping bag out of respect. Before they headed down the mountain, Melvin smashed Jaynes's high-powered rifle against a rock.