High Plains Drifter

A mysterious stranger rides out of the desert into the isolated mining town of Lago, on the shore of a small lake in an unnamed western territory. In a flashback, Jim Duncan, a federal marshal, is whipped to death in front of the hotel by outlaws Stacey Bridges and brothers Dan and Cole Carlin as the citizens look on. The Stranger learns that the townspeople were complicit in Duncan's murder; they hired the outlaws to kill him after he discovered the town's only source of income, the mine, was on government land.