The plot centers on the conflict between a group of simple, poor, panning miners and the most powerful man in the nearby town, Coy LaHood, the boss of a successful hydraulic mining outfit, that wants to take over their land. The film opens with the ruffians of LaHood riding into the panner's camp, shooting things up and pulling down tents and cabins. Soon after, Hull Barret, one of the panners heads into town for supplies, and is set upon by the same ruffians. A drifter (Clint Eastwood) rides in and defends the miner with unexpected skill wielding a hickory axe handle. Upon returning to the placers camp, the drifter compounds this surprise by revealing a minister's collar when invited to dinner, thus acquiring the name "Preacher".

Clint Eastwood portrays Josey Wales, a peaceful Missouri farmer, who is driven to revenge by the brutal rape and murder of his wife and family by a band of pro-Union Jayhawkers—Senator James H. Lane's Redlegs from Kansas.

High Plains Drifter is a 1973 Western film, with a hint of the supernatural, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood as a mysterious gunfighter who is hired by a corrupt frontier mining town to defend it against a group of criminals.