Dead Man

William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, Ohio, boards a train to the frontier company town of Machine to take up a promised accounting job at the town’s metal works. A warning from the train fireman hints that this enterprise may not be what it seems. Upon arrival, Blake notices the town’s palpable hostility toward him and quickly discovers that the position has already been filled. John Dickinson, the fierce owner of the company, drives Blake from the workplace at gunpoint, leaving him stranded and without prospects.

With no money and nowhere to turn, Blake meets Thel Russell, a former prostitute who sells paper flowers and offers him shelter. Thel’s fragile world is shattered when her ex-boyfriend Charlie arrives, sneaks into their bed, shoots at Blake, and accidentally kills Thel as she shields him with her body. The bullet wounds Blake as well, and, in a desperate moment, he uses Thel’s gun to kill Charlie before escaping out of a window on Charlie’s horse. Dickinson, revealed as Charlie’s father, orders three killers—Cole Wilson, Conway Twill, and Johnny “The Kid” Pickett—to capture or kill Blake and bring him back “dead or alive.”

Blake awakens with a large Native American man named Nobody who tries to dislodge the bullet lodged near Blake’s heart. Nobody explains that the bullet’s proximity to the heart makes Blake effectively a walking dead man, and upon learning Blake’s full name, he believes Blake is a reincarnation of the English poet William Blake. Nobody decides to care for him and uses Native methods to ease him toward death, seeing in Blake a path to fulfilling a spiritual journey.

As Blake travels with Nobody, he learns about Nobody’s past, a life marked by prejudice from Euro-Americans who scorned his Indigenous ancestry and from Native Americans who rejected that his mother and father came from two different tribes—Piikáni and Apsáalooke. Abducted to Europe by English soldiers as a boy to be shown as a “model savage,” he was briefly educated before returning home, where his stories of white culture were dismissed. They nickname him Xebeche, meaning “He who talks loud, saying nothing.” Nobody resolves to escort Blake to the Pacific Ocean to return him to his rightful place in the spirit world.

The two set out west, leaving a trail of death behind them, as wanted posters multiply announcing rewards for Blake’s capture or death. Nobody parts from Blake briefly to allow him to undertake a vision quest, during which Blake kills two U.S. Marshals, experiences visions of nature spirits, and mourns the remains of a fawn killed by Blake’s pursuers. He paints his face with the fawn’s blood and rejoins Nobody. Meanwhile, the toughest bounty hunter among them, Cole Wilson, has killed his fellow hunters and continues the chase alone, growing more dangerous by the day.

At a trading post, a bigoted missionary who spots Blake tries to kill him but dies instead at Blake’s hands. Not long after, Blake is shot again, and his condition rapidly worsens. Nobody rushes him toward a Makah village, securing a canoe for his ship burial and appealing to the village to honor Blake’s journey home.

Blake, delirious, makes his way through the village before collapsing. He wakes to find himself in a canoe on a beach, dressed in Native American funeral garb. Nobody bids him farewell and then pushes the canoe out to sea. As Blake drifts away, he spots Cole approaching Nobody, but Blake is too weak to call out. The two men on the shore shoot and kill each other, and, looking up at the sky one last time, Blake dies as his canoe sails farther into the open sea.

Last Updated: October 01, 2025 at 10:21