Drifter Harry Madox stops for gas in tiny Landers, Texas. He drinks a beer at the “Yellow Rose” and watches a man in a cowboy hat tuck money under a dancer’s g-string. Harry walks across the street to Harshaw Motors, a car dealership, and talks a browsing customer into buying a car. Owner George Harshaw admires Harry’s sales ability and hires him. The next day, when Harry reports to work, Harshaw wants him to drive Gloria Harper, the dealership’s bookkeeper, to repossess a car from Frank Sutton. Harry turns down the job because there is no commission, but when he sees beautiful young Gloria, he changes his mind. As Harry waits at Sutton’s empty farmhouse, Gloria walks to a nearby spring to find Sutton and returns ostensibly with his monthly payment, but Harry doubts her story. Moments later, Sutton returns home in a dune buggy and whispers to Gloria as he appears to pay her. Driving back to town, Harry stops, kisses Gloria, and asks if Sutton is a relative. Gloria says no. They drive past a burning hamburger shack. Harry goes to the Landers State Bank to open an account, but the place appears empty until the owner, Julian Ward, comes out of the bathroom and apologizes that his male employees are volunteer firemen who had to run to the fire. Harry recognizes Ward as the man with the cowboy hat in the strip bar. When Harry returns to work, George Harshaw’s wife, Dolly Harshaw, drives onto the lot in a 1959 pink Cadillac and asks Harry to unload some things in the car trunk at a nearby charity office. As Harry carries the material upstairs in an old, mostly empty building, Dolly tells him there are only two things to do in town, and one is watching television. Harry looks out the window at Landers State Bank on the opposite corner. Later, fellow car salesman Lon Gulik tells Harry that George Harshaw has gone hunting for the weekend. Gulik explains that George met the much younger Dolly on a hunting trip and “she just sorta happened.” Harry remarks that George should have let her “happen” to someone else. Dolly telephones and asks Harry to bring George’s hunting cap to the Harshaw house. As he parks in front of the mansion, a lady across the street glares at him though a window. Dolly invites Harry in and shows him George’s hunting trophies, which includes a stuffed mountain lion that, she muses, thought it was stalking George until he killed it. She fixes Harry a drink, but when he kisses her, Dolly tells him to leave, because the lady across the street will be expecting his departure. Harry runs into Gloria Harper at a convenience store, buys her a soda, and walks her to her boardinghouse. He compliments her on being very pretty. That evening, Harry returns to the Harshaw house, slips inside, and finds Dolly in bed. She pulls a gun, puts the barrel to Harry’s head, and slides on her knees to pleasure him. Later, they lie in bed, drink liquor, and talk, but Harry insults her and leaves. Later, in his room at the Landmark Inn, Harry experiments with an alarm clock and an ignition device. The next day, on the lot, Dolly coaxes Harry into the back of a car, and he pleasures her. As soon as Dolly leaves, Frank Sutton appears and asks for a light for his cigarette, but clearly wants Harry to know he saw what he did with Dolly. Later, Harry sets his alarm-clock bomb in the empty building across from the bank and piles old newspapers on top. When it bursts into flames and sets the building on fire, he waits for Julian Ward and his employees to leave the bank. Harry slips inside and creates a flood in the bathroom. As Ward comes inside at the sight of water, Harry throws a blanket over his head and ties him up. After the frightened banker gives him the combination to the vault, Harry stuffs money in a bag and carries it to the trunk of his car. Then, as he watches the fire with other townspeople, he sees an old drunk in an upper window, trapped by flames. Harry runs upstairs and rescues him. Later, he buries the money outside town. The next day, Harry swims with Gloria in a secluded spring. She confides that she is only nineteen, and hopes Harry is not disappointed by her youth. As he walks her home, they kiss. When Harry returns to Harshaw Motors, the sheriff and a deputy arrest him. During interrogation, the sheriff tells Harry he knows he scouted the bank a couple of days earlier. A blind black man, the only one in the bank during the robbery, identifies Harry by sound only, even though Harry never spoke. Harry is jailed, but George Harshaw telephones to tell the sheriff that Dolly saw Harry at the fire just after it started. Harry is freed, but when he walks to his car outside Gloria’s house, a deputy follows. Harry offers to drive Gloria to work, but Sutton arrives and convinces her to leave with him. At the car lot, Harry notices Gloria has not yet arrived for work, and asks Lon Gulik about Sutton. The salesman says Sutton used to work for George Harshaw. Dolly telephones Harry for a date that night, and when he balks, she threatens to recant her eyewitness report. Later, Dolly takes Harry to an abandoned sawmill, where they make love. She tells him her husband needs an operation and that another heart attack would kill him. The next day, as Harry swims with Gloria, he asks why Frank Sutton has such power over her. She explains that Sutton originally blackmailed her best friend, Irene Davey, after discovering she had a lesbian relationship with a schoolteacher. He had photographs to prove it. After Irene killed herself, Sutton blackmailed Gloria, because he had photos of her and Irene swimming nude together. That night, Harry drives to Frank Sutton’s house, tells him to leave Gloria alone, and beats him. Afterward, when Harry goes for a drink at the strip bar, Dolly confronts him about his relationship with Gloria. When Dolly goes home, George Harshaw is drinking. She lures him upstairs and ties him down in bed during a bondage session, then tells him she did the same thing to Harry Madox. As she exerts George during sex, he has a heart attack. The next day, Frank Sutton, his face puffy and bruised, tells Harry he wants a free Lincoln automobile and enough money to leave town, or else he will tell the sheriff he saw him at the bank during the fire. After Sutton leaves, Harry implores Gloria not to pay Frank any more money. That night, in heavy rain, Harry digs up the bank money and drives to Frank Sutton’s place. Hearing a woman having sex inside, Harry enters the house, but Sutton fires a gun at him, and a woman runs out of the room and drives away, leaving behind a pair of open-toed shoes common to both Gloria and Dolly. Harry beats Sutton into submission and finds an envelope on the table with $500 inside. When Sutton pulls a gun, Harry wrestles it away and shoots him. He stages a suicide by pouring liquor down Sutton’s throat, putting the gun in Sutton’s hand, and shooting him in the mouth. He leaves the bank money on a table, and disposes of the open-toed shoes. The next day, the sheriff stops at the car lot to apologize to Harry for accusing him of the bank robbery. Dolly telephones both Harry and Gloria to inform them that George Harshaw has died, and Harry relays the news to Lon Gulik. When Gloria tells Harry that Dolly has summoned her, he drives her to the house. Harry notices that Gloria still has her distinctive open-toed shoes, which means Dolly was at Sutton’s house. At the mansion, Dolly shows them a signed letter, a last testament from George, that she wants Harry to read. George, or someone, has written that Harry robbed the bank and staged Frank Sutton’s suicide, and Gloria robbed Harshaw Motors to pay blackmail money to Sutton. Dolly tells Gloria she forgives her for stealing and will give her time to pay it back. She lies that she learned about her thievery from Harry. Devastated by Harry’s supposed betrayal, Gloria leaves and refuses Harry’s offer to drive. Alone with Dolly, Harry knocks her down and chokes her, but relents. Dolly tells him to kiss her, and Harry laughs at his situation. The two go for a drive in Dolly’s pink Cadillac, with Dolly driving.