The Hired Hand - Plot

Plot

Harry Collings (Fonda) and Arch Harris (Oates) are two saddle tramps who have grown weary after seven years of wandering through the southwest. Along with a younger companion, Dan Griffen (Robert Pratt), they stop off in Del Norte, a ramshackle town in the middle of nowhere run by the corrupt McVey (Severn Darden). Harris and Griffen discuss traveling to California to look for work when Collings abruptly informs them he has decided to return to the wife he had left years before. Griffen temporarily leaves the two in a bar while he goes to buy supplies. Some town thugs shoot him to death out of pure meanness. Collings and Harris manage to escape, but they return that night and Collings shoots McVey repeatedly in his feet, crippling him.

After riding hundreds of miles back to his old house, Collings finds that he is understandably less than welcome by his wife, Hannah (Bloom). In order to be allowed to stay, he offers his services not as a husband but as a mere “hired hand”. Hannah agrees and quickly puts him to work. Gradually, the distrust and unease caused by years of estrangement slip away, and the two begin to become close again. For the first time, Collings finds himself willing to settle down forever.

McVey and his troupe of hooligans, however, suddenly make it difficult for Collings to make what should have been an easy decision. They kidnap Harris and Collings is forced to leave Hannah once again to save his friend. In a subsequent brutal shootout with McVey's gang, all of the villains are killed but Collings is fatally wounded. Harris rides back alone to Hannah's house.