When mild-mannered teacher Billy Ray Smith vows to bring a student's kidnapper to justice, he needs a bit of help. Lacking any cowboy skills of his own, he signs on a speedy gunslinger and a no-nonsense cowboy to help. Now, Smith may just have a chance at capturing his man: the merciless bandit El Diablo.

In the 1930s the family of old Sinas Cavinder, gathered for the reading of his will, find themselves being murdered by a mysterious phantom while two rival reporters compete for the story.

Samantha Hughes, a teenaged Kentucky girl, never knew her father, who died in Vietnam before her birth. Samantha lives with her uncle Emmett, who also served in Vietnam. Emmett hangs around with Tom, Earl, and Pete, three other Vietnam vets who, like Emmett, all have problems of one kind or another that relate to their war experiences. Samantha becomes obsessed with finding out about her father.

A desperate young woman, on the run from the law, takes a job at a remote desert motel. She quickly discovers the motel's patrons are rendezvousing after a large robbery. With nothing to lose, and all to gain, she hatches a plan to steal their loot.