Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil's romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter - all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form - he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil's cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?

Calvin, an alcoholic wastrel, is forced to find a new job after he is fired from his grounds-keeping job at a golf course. After scaring away other potential applicants, he is hired to tend the grounds of a beautiful hillside mansion by Julie, the personal assistant to the owner of the home. Jack, heartbroken and suicidal, has refused to leave his property since his wife left him for a past love a year prior. On the night Jack decides to end it all, a drunken Calvin accidentally interrupts his boss' suicide attempt. Calvin convinces Jack that it's not worth it to kill himself when he has the means to continue living his reclusive lifestyle indefinitely. The two bond over their shared inclination to numb and preoccupy their minds rather than confront the pains of their past. When they can no longer run from their problems, their wills, and friendship, are truly tested.