America, Texas, 1946. His thirty-six-year-old daughter intends to sell the land - it does not generate income, and life on the outskirts definitely does not suit the heiress. Sixteen-year-old John Grady is trying to persuade his mother not to sell the ranch, on which representatives of this family worked for many years. He himself adores horses, and rural labor is the norm for him. Mother is adamant. John Grady turns for help to his father, who has long been living with his family, but he recently officially filed for divorce and refused to claim the land.
John Grady decides to go to Mexico and try to find there what his fate refused in his native Texas. His friend, seventeen-year-old Lacey Rawlins, is leaving with him.
On the way, a teenager joins them on a magnificent bay horse. He is called Jimmy Blevins and reports that he is sixteen years old, although it is difficult for him to look more than thirteen, and the name suspiciously coincides with the name of the famous preacher in these places. The three of them continue their journey, although John Grady and Rawlins have an alarming feeling that this acquaintance will bring nothing but trouble.
The new satellite is stubborn, proud, accurately shoots from a revolver and is not talkative. He reports that he escaped from home, not wanting to obey his stepfather, but where he got his magnificent bay horse, remains a mystery.
It is this stallion that causes conflict with far-reaching consequences. The first thing they see when they are in the small Mexican town of Encantada is the Blevins revolver sticking out of the back pocket of a local resident digging into the car’s motor. Having traveled around the town, John Grady and Rawlins finally establish the whereabouts of the bay. “Operation — the return of Blevins’s property is carried out in the dead of night, but it is not possible to leave quietly: the barking of dogs raises the whole district, and after the horse thieves the chase was sent. In order to confuse the pursuers, the detachment breaks up. Now John Grady and Rawlins are traveling together again.
Soon they manage to get a job on a big hacienda. The love of John Grady in horses does not go unnoticed by the owner, don Hector Roch, who himself is a passionate horse. John Grady moves to the stable and focuses on horse breeding issues. Rawlins remains in a shared barrack with the vaquero shepherds.
A fleeting meeting with the owner’s seventeen-year-old daughter Alejandra dramatically changes the life of John Grady. He falls in love with a beautiful Mexican, and she, apparently, drew attention to a young American cowboy.
Their horseback ridings go unnoticed. Duet Alfonso, the aunt of Don Rocha, fears that such a hobby will bring her great-niece a lot of grief. She invites John Grady to play chess at home, and then makes it clear in tea that she does not approve of his contacts with Alejandra.
It is not known what direction events would take, but here Alejandra herself takes the initiative. Insulted by the aunt's interference in her personal life, she, contrary to the arguments of common sense and the rules of conduct of a Mexican woman, plunges headlong into the maelstrom of passion. At night, she arrives in John Grady's closet, and then they go on horseback riding at night.
Once John Grady and Rawlins notice a detachment of mounted policemen on the road, who, bypassing the hut, are sent to the owner's house. Then they leave, but the feeling of impending disaster remains.
One day in the morning, police officers come into John Grady's closet and pick him up. In the courtyard, he sees Rawlins in the saddle, with his hands shackled. They also handcuffed him, after which they sent him under guard to Encantada, where they put him in a local prison. There they meet again with Blevins. It turns out that, having escaped from the chase, he got a job at some ranch and, having earned some money, returned to Encantada to return his revolver. However, here the return of property is not smooth. Only this time, Blevins is unable to escape from the chase, and, shooting back, he kills one of the local residents, injuring two more.
John Grady and Rawlins are summoned for questioning by the captain, the local police chief. He demands that they admit that they entered Mexico in order to steal horses and rob locals, and all the assurances of young Americans that they came here to work honestly appear to the captain as the most frank lie: he can not understand why Texas residents are hired to work for a Mexican ranch, if at home for the same work they could get several times more.
A few more days pass, and three prisoners are put in a truck, which should take them to the prison of Saltillo. But only John Grady and Rawlins get to the destination. The truck stops at an abandoned estate, the captain and a relative of the deceased take Blevins to an eucalyptus grove, two shots come from there, after which the Mexicans return to the car alone.
Before parting with his wards, the captain makes it clear that they can’t survive in a Mexican prison and if they want to be free, then they must make a deal based on the silence, in addition to the “material part” occurred in a eucalyptus grove. The first days in prison confirm the captain’s words. John Grady and Rawlins have to defend their right to life with their fists. Then the local "authority" Perez, who lives in a separate house and enjoys all the privileges that a bird can fly in prison, takes interest in them. Perez transparently hints that he is ready to become an intermediary between them and the prison authorities in order to ensure their release, of course, not for free. John Grady and Rawlins report that they have no money and there can be no talk of any transactions.
Shortly after this conversation, a thug attacks Rolins and inflicts several stab wounds on him. He is sent to a hospital in serious condition, and John Grady realizes that, most likely, a new attempt is not far off. With the money that Blevins managed to transfer to him just before his death, he buys a knife. As it turned out, the premonition did not deceive him: on the same day in the dining room he was attacked by a man who was clearly specially hired. In a desperate battle, John Grady mortally wounds his opponent, but he himself ends up in a prison hospital.
His life, however, is in danger, and he is quickly recovering. Once a stranger comes to his ward and finds out whether he is able to move independently. It turns out that this is none other than the head of the prison. Soon they already meet in his office, where he hands John Grady an envelope with money and tells him that he and Rawlins are free to clean up on all four sides. John Grady realizes that they were bought by the duo Alfons. He also understands the conditions under which she did this.
Rawlins announces a decision to return home. John Grady, on the contrary, is going to visit the hacienda again, where he lived and worked in order to explain himself to both the duet Alphonse and Alejandra.
When he returns there, it turns out that Alejandra is now in Mexico City, but Alfonso's duet agrees to accept him. John Grady is trying to explain to her that neither he nor Rawlins had anything to do with "horse-stealing", that they only helped their companion to return the horse that ran away from him, but he soon realized that that was not the point. The main reason for their arrest is the revenge of Don Rochi, who took the daughter’s romance with his employee hard.
John Grady wants a meeting with Alejandra, and they spend one day in the city of Zacatecas. This is a very sad meeting. Alejandra tells him that he still loves him, but promised to never see him again - only at that price could you buy him freedom.
They break up. This time, it seems, forever. Now John Grady is on his way to Encantad to return the horses — him, Rawlins and Blevins. He takes the captain as a hostage and gets his way, but in a shootout at the ranch he gets a bullet in his leg. Taking the captain with him, he goes into the mountains, hoping to confuse his footprints and escape from the pursuit. One night, armed men still overtake him, who, however, had nothing to do with the police. They pick up the captain and depart with him in an unknown direction, leaving John Grady to guess who they are and why they needed the captain.
Now he is returning to Texas, trying to find the real owner of the bay stallion, but he does not succeed. True, some claim their rights to the horse, but as a result of the trial their claims are declared insolvent and the bay remains in the ownership of John Grady.
He meets Rawlins again and returns his horse to him. He offers John Grady to stay with him, to go to work for oil development, where they pay well, but John Grady refuses. He feels like a stranger in the new industrial world, the road to Mexico is closed to him, the family ranch is sold. In the finals, he rides west, into the sunset, followed by the bay stallion of Blevins. The outlines of the Texas plain become vague, and it is already difficult to say in the real or mythological space the silhouettes of the horseman and horses dissolve.
