Plot: Arizona Deputy Sheriff Coogan (Clint Eastwood) doesn't get along with his boss and doesn't exactly do things by the book, and is also a little arrogant. Fed up with his rugged individualness, his boss sends him to New York City to get a man who's waiting to extradited. Upon arriving, everybody thinks he's just another bumpkin. When N.Y.P.D. Lieutenant McElroy (Lee J. Cobb) tells him that his prisoner is still not ready to be transported, Coogan tries to be patient. But when he decides that he can't wait anymore, he tricks one of the attendants into releasing the prisoner, and at the airport, someone springs him. Coogan's boss is pleased that he has screwed up so badly, and orders him to return, but Coogan, feeling responsible, or his ego has been bruised, stays and tries to find him despite being warned by McElroy that he has no authority here.
Alternative Plot: Arizona lawman Walt Coogan (Clint Eastwood) hopes to make a short business trip to the big city, but his journey quickly becomes an odyssey of violence. Walt is flummoxed when Manhattan police put the brakes on his plan to return a jailed murderer (Don Stroud) to the Southwest. Bent on getting his man, he temporarily outwits the New Yorkers, only to be plunged into a series of ugly confrontations with counterculture types who are the antithesis of the straitlaced Walt.
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