A small gold mining camp is terrorised by a ruthless land owner wanting to take their land. Clint Eastwood arrives riding a pale horse just as a young girl is praying to God to help the miners. He is revealed to be a preacher with mysterious and possible otherworldly origins who teams up with the miners to defeat the land owner and the corrupt sheriff.
The bad guys come rampaging into the miners' camp, destroying tents and supplies. They also kill anything they can, including a few miners, the cow (which is shown lying down, mooing in distress, with blood on its nose), and the teen girl's Jack Russell terrier (which yelps) . But the scene where she is crying and picks the dog up is laughable because it is *very* obviously a stuffed dog.
Nobody should kill animals for a stupid ass movie. Whoever directed “pale rider “ should not have allowed animals to be killed . Whoever killed those animals needed to go to jail and rot there. Evil motherfuckers.