Cynthia Palmer hires Paladin to clean up the town of Cedar Wells and get a gang out. She also wants him to send her schoolteacher nephew named Laredo back east. Paladin decides he can restore Laredo's self-respect and get rid of the gang at the same time.

Paladin is sent a $100 bill and told there are 9 more like it if he travels to a town called Last Gasp.

Mrs. Quincy longs to see her granddaughter who has been away since she was six. When her daughter and husband died in the mine fields, she was taken in.