The Scalphunters

“"I'M JOE BASS and I say that scalphunters are the most ornery, girl-grabbing, back-stubbers on earth. I HUNT SCALPHUNTERS!"”

In the American West, the trapper Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) is made to hand over a season of valuable furs for Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis), an escaped slave who talks like a man with a library behind him. Sydney Pollack sends Bass after the pelts, first against the Indians who took them, then the renegades who killed those Indians. Every mile costs him his furs, his temper and a living, and the man he's stuck with won't stop talking.