Jack (Jeff Bridges) and his Indian buddy Cecil (Sam Waterston) pass the time in Montana shooting cattle and sawing them up on the spot with a chainsaw. Rancher John Brown (Clifton James) and his wife (Elizabeth Ashley) – who sold a chain of beauty parlors to buy the “B-Bar Lazy” – decide to break the monotony of western living by declaring “war” on the penny ante cattle rustlers.
Trying to think big, Jack and Cecil kidnap Brown’s blue ribbon seed bull from a livestock show. The Browns pay off and are directed to a hotel room, where the boys have stashed the 2,600-pound steer. Brown’s droopy ranch hands Curt (Harry Dean Stanton) and Burt (Richard Bright) are sent to find the rustlers, but after meeting Jack and Cecil at a saloon, decide to name them as the thieves so they can go back to goofing off.
Jack proposes they work together, masterminding a plan to steal a truck full of Brown’s cattle. Stock detective Henry Beige (Slim Pickens) has been hired by Brown to find the rustlers, but can barely walk and doesn’t appear interested in doing much detecting. Curt becomes infatuated with Beige’s foxy niece (Charlene Dallas), while Jack amuses himself with the wild daughter (Patti D’Arbanville) of a man with a Lincoln Continental Mark IV.
