Fear West

A lone cowboy, thirsty and tired, as if he's been traveling nonstop for days, comes across a carriage in the desert. The horses are on the verge of dying from thirst, and inside the carriage are only dismembered corpses. There's just one survivor, who has only minutes left to live. In his final moments, the survivor hands the cowboy an ancient parchment written in Algonquin, which also contains a map. The cowboy understands only a few words: gold and mine. After leaving the carriage, the cowboy heads toward Springfield, a small nearby town. It's a classic place with a saloon, a post and telegraph office, a stagecoach station, a barber, an undertaker, and a sheriff. The community, which appears peaceful, views him with suspicion, and the sheriff immediately warns him not to cause any trouble, or he’ll regret it. The cowboy is only looking for information about the mine, which has been declared dangerous and depleted after a serious accident a few months earlier, where there was only one survivor. Soon, strange phenomena begin to occur, people disappear and accidents happen, but these don’t seem to worry the townsfolk much. The cowboy becomes friends with the sheriff, with a smart poker player and wins the favor and affection of the owner of the saloon, a rude woman though enough to survive in a man's world, but he also draws the attention of the richest man in town, who tries to stop him from reaching the mine. After various investigations and with the help of a Native American who can read the entire parchment, the cowboy discovers that it wasn’t a treasure map but a warning about a monster from Native American mythology: the Wendigo. In the town, half of the people are infected by the curse and feed on human flesh, luring visitors and travelers to eat them and to offer them as food to the original Wendigo, which is buried in the mine, while its followers try to release it. According to Native American legend, those who consume human flesh for weeks turn into a Wendigo, a strong and incredibly fast creature that can infect others. The only survivor of the mine accident months earlier, had been infected by the monster, which remained trapped and cursed many townsfolk to aid in its escape from its rocky prison. Together with the sheriff, the woman, the poker player and the native american, the cowboy is determined to kill the creature and claim the remaining gold in the mine.