During a cattle drive, Mike Jordan finds his father and brothers murdered and the herd stolen.

Eventually, Mike is able to expose the rancher Barret as the perpetrator.

He is assisted by Lisa, Barret's former sister-in-law, and Chris, a wanted horse thief.

In his investigation of narrative structures in Spaghetti Western films, Fridlund discusses Stranger in Sacramento among films that mix some characters, motifs and plots well known from American traditional Westerns with others usual in Spaghetti Westerns.

For example, Mike Jordan is close to the typical American Western hero, while Chris is more like Joe in A Fistful of Dollars.