Four of the Apocalypse

In 1873, professional gambler Stubby Preston steps off the stagecoach into Salt Flats, Utah and is promptly arrested by the local sheriff. The town is already tense with a looming vigilante attack on the casino later that night. Stubby’s fate is sealed by the law’s willingness to bend to fear and violence.

During the casino confrontation, the four who were jailed survive the raid while others are killed, and the sheriff seems to turn a blind eye. Stubby, Bunny, Bud, and Clem become the only criminals to survive the night. The raid underscores the lawlessness weighing on Salt Flats.

The next morning the sheriff sends them on their way with a wagon and horses in exchange for Stubby’s thousand-dollar stake. The four decide to head south toward Sun City, hoping to put distance between themselves and the trouble behind them. They leave Salt Flats with a fragile sense of alliance.

On the road they meet a group of Quaker immigrants; their patriarch mistakes Bunny for Stubby’s wife and accepts the pretence. Stubby and Bunny play along to keep the peace, then carry the ruse forward as they travel. The Quakers eventually go their own way, leaving the four to continue alone.

Not long after, the four witness a violent bandit raid on settlers along the road, reminding them of the dangers in this frontier country. The Quaker caravan parts ways, and Stubby, Bunny, Bud, and Clem press on toward Sun City. The mood remains tense as the landscape grows harsher.

At a riverbank stop for Bunny’s birthday, Bud catches a fish and a makeshift cake is formed from sand. Gunshots interrupt the toast, and a wanderer named Chaco negotiates his way into the group with a confident offer. Stubby remains wary, but the others accept the new member.

Three gunmen approach; Chaco demonstrates surprising skill by saving the group. The supposed gunmen turn out to be lawmen who brutalize a deputy, revealing a brutal underworld behind their frontier journey. The group grows more uneasy about their new ally.

The group shares peyote buttons around a campfire, and Stubby resists while Chaco uses whiskey to push Clem into a coercive binding. Stubby and Bud are tied together, Bunny is bound to a tree, and the night feels both surreal and dangerous. Suspense tightens as power dynamics shift within the group.

Chaco rapes Bunny and taunts Stubby with the violence. He orders Clem to join and Clem makes a half-hearted attempt to resist, but Chaco shoots Clem in the leg and abandons them. The group is bound and left to die in the bleak wilderness.

Clem frees Stubby; Stubby frees Bud and Bunny. Bud struggles but manages to carry Clem's body to safety. A makeshift stretcher is built and the group continues on the road, driven by a need for revenge and survival.

Chaco and his cohorts resume the chase, lured by the trail of a caravan of Bible-folk offering supplies. They trail the group; Stubby and company discover the remains of the caravan and the immigrants, hard evidence of Chaco’s brutality. Stubby swears to kill Chaco again.

The travelers take shelter in a rain-soaked ghost town, where Clem dies from infection. Bud, already fragile, descends into a delirious belief that the town’s residents come out to meet him each night. The tragedy deepens as the group processes loss in the desolate place.

The group reaches a snowy mountaintop mining town and Bunny goes into labor. She dies in childbirth, leaving Stubby in shock. The baby is baptized and christened Lucky, and the townsmen insist on guardianship of the child, which Stubby reluctantly grants.

Stubby, alone again, seeks revenge on Chaco. He borrows the sheriff’s wagon and finds the barber’s shaving gear in it to approach a barn where Chaco and two friends hide. Stubby shoots Chaco dead after taunting him about Bunny’s rape, then heads into the horizon with a stray dog by his side.