The old and sick detective superintendent Bärlach has to investigate the murder of his colleague Ulrich Schmied, who was murdered in the middle of the country road.
Young forester Sixt is wounded one night. Smuggling in the mountains is the reason. By day, the brothers Benno and Simon Schaidler are respectable citizens - by night, they are smugglers and poachers.
A young street vendor who is a cockfighting aficionado, attracted by the image of one of them, settles on the ranch of its owner where he falls in love with the foreman's daughter.
A mad doctor uses patients at his isolated psychiatric institute as subjects in his attempts to create longevity by surgically installing an artificial gland in their skulls.