When an old man finds a cowboy at a yard sale looking at loose horses, he brings the cowboy back to an old woman to introduce the two. They hire the cowboy to work on their ranch, and he lives in a trailer on their property. He helps the old man take care of the cattle and the horses, and the two men get along well. The cowboy realizes that the old man and woman are siblings and that, in her prime, the old woman was a reckless hellraiser in a motorcycle gang. The siblings start inviting the cowboy to eat with them. After some time, he trusts the old man enough to tell him he was once in prison, and prison is where he learned to be a farmhand. The old man says he could tell that he must be an ex-con because there is no other reason a good hand like him would not have already been hired. He tells the old man he "rustled some yearlings," a lie about why he went to jail. After the cowboy has been working for the brother and sister a few years, the old lady dies. The cowboy moves into the house with the old man and out of the trailer. They take turns cooking meals, and the cowboy reveals the real reason he went to prison: he robbed a store and shot the proprietor, though he is still not sure why he did it. The old man starts dying and losing his memory. After a while, the cowboy cannot even visit the old man in the hospital because he does not remember who he is. After the old man's death, the townspeople tell the authorities the cowboy was responsible for the spread of disease among livestock. The cowboy is kicked off the land he worked on for years, left with only a horse, a saddle, and the clothes on his back. He rides toward Idaho, knowing someone will always be in need of a cowboy.