An elderly couple on a horse-drawn carriage is attacked by a gang led by Morgan (Kinski). Sartana (Garko) arrives on the scene and kills the robbers except for Morgan who gets away. Soon after, a stagecoach carrying a shipment of gold is robbed by a Mexico gang at the order of General Jose Manuel Mendoza (Sancho), with a gang member posing as a passenger murdering the others. However, the gang is ambushed and killed by Lasky (Berger) and his men. Lasky then tells his gang that he will meet them later. As the men are about to open the strongbox from the coach, Lasky kills them all with a Gatling gun. After opening the strongbox, he finds only rocks instead of gold. Spooked by Sartana's playing one of the murdered passengers' musical watch, he heads to town to meet with Jeff Stewal (Sydney Chaplin (American actor)), a politician, and Alman (Gianni Rizzo), a banker, to collect his payment as part of an insurance fraud.
A man disguised as Sartana leads a gang in robbing a bank of $300,000. While the real Sartana tries to prove his innocence and find the imposter, he is constantly pursued by bounty hunters: some who only care about the $10,000 reward on his head, a few who are more interested in locating the stolen money and one who mixes bad luck at gambling with good luck in bounty-hunting.
Bounty Hunter Sartana is eagerly awaiting to kill or capture a wanted man who is riding shotgun on a shipment of gold. Interrupting Sartana's picnic and bounty hunting, a gang of Mexican ''Banditrys'' kill all the outriders but leave the gold intact and ride away but not before throwing dynamite into the wagon. Sartana prevents the explosion and discovers the gold sacks in the wagon are full of sand.
After witnessing the massacre of Joe Benson and his band of prospectors (and wiping out the killers), Sartana is ready to do some investigating as to why. However, since almost everyone in the town of Indian Creek is eager to buy up the dead man's land, there's a long list of suspects, including the town banker, a female saloon owner and the owner of the local gambling house. Even the local sheriff can't be ruled out, and the closer Sartana gets to the truth the more attempts are made on his life ... and the more funerals he'll willingly pay for.
After killing a corrupt sheriff and his deputies in the town of Sandy Creek, Sartana voluntarily surrenders himself to Everglades Penitentiary under the guise of a convict with the purpose of meeting a man called Granville who is imprisoned there. Creating diversions well enough after breaking free, Sartana helps Granville escape from the prison and learns of the deal that got him in custody of the law in the first place. Granville claims to have been double-crossed by his casino business partner, Horace Johnson, in a deal with an outlaw named Monk and Joe, the younger brother of corrupt sheriff Manassas Jim. The deal was for Monk to obtain two million dollars in counterfeit money from Joe in exchange for half a million dollars in gold, and Johnson's role, as a banker, was to legalize the transaction, except that he killed both Monk's representative and Joe and framed Granville for it. However, Johnson was found dead in the casino while the counterfeit money and the bag of gold disappeared, thus leaving Granville as the prime suspect who was captured and imprisoned by Manassas Jim.