A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.
The brother (House Peters Jr.) of rancher Bill Martin (Bill Elliott) is killed in a stampede started by cattleman. Bill returns to the Fargo country to take his brother's place and is welcomed by law-abiding cattleman MacKenzie (Jack Ingram)) and his daughter Kathy (Phyllis Coates). The leader of the ruthless cattle interests are townsman Austin (Arthur Space) and his henchmen Red (Myron Healey), Link (Robert J. Wilke) and Albord (Terry Frost). Bill has the idea of putting up barbed wire to keep the herds from been driven over the land cultivated by the farmers. He, aided by Tad Sloan (Fuzzy Knight), produces the wire by make-shift methods, but it proves effective. The cattleman charge in court that the wire is dangerous to their herds but lose the case. Austin orders his men to seize Bill, bale him in strands of the wire, and throw him on the stage of the town hall during a fall festival. Bill doesn't take kindly to this and it precipitates open war.
Jim Waters arrives at Ed Parks' ranch to find Parks' cattle herd mysteriously increased. Hamp Harvey has been losing cattle and he suspects Parks. But the culprit is Harvey's foreman Brent who gets his orders from the town's leading citizen Sig Barstell. Barstell wants Harvey's ranch and after trying to frame Harvey by killing Parks, Waters takes over and goes after both the killer and the rustlers.
Will Penny, an aging cowpoke, takes a job on a ranch which requires him to ride the line of the property looking for trespassers or, worse, squatters. He finds that his cabin in the high mountains has been appropriated by a woman whose guide to Oregon has deserted her and her son. Too ashamed to kick mother and child out just as the bitter winter of the mountains sets in, he agrees to share the cabin until the spring thaw. But it isn't just the snow that slowly thaws; the lonely man and woman soon forget their mutual hostility and start developing a deep love for one another.
An intimate story of the enduring bond of friendship between two hard-living men, set against a sweeping backdrop: the American West, post-World War II, in its twilight. Pete and Big Boy are masters of the prairie, but ultimately face trickier terrain: the human heart.
The swinging Andrews Sisters provide the musical interludes and romance in this western. They play a trio of WW II era ranchers. That they are so good at running it proves terrible surprise for a ranch hand who has just returned home after serving in the Navy.
Raton Pass is a curious western based on the rules of Community Property. Dennis Morgan and Patricia Neal portray a recently married husband and wife, each of whom owns half of a huge cattle ranch. Neal is a tad more ambitious than her husband, and with the help of a little legal chicanery she tries to obtain Morgan's half of the spread. He balks, so she hires a few gunslingers to press the issue. In a 1951 western, the greedy party usually came to a sorry end; Raton Pass adheres strictly to tradition.
Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.
Chicago hotel clerk Frank Harris dreams of life as a cowboy, and he gets his chance when, jilted by the father of the woman he loves, he joins Tom Reece and his cattle-driving outfit. Soon, though, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for...
On parole from prison for a murder he did not commit, and not allowed to carry a gun, Buck sets out to find the real killer. His clue is a corner torn off a wanted poster with some handwriting on it.
A cattle baron takes in an orphaned boy and raises him, causing his own son to resent the boy. As they get older the resentment festers into hatred, and eventually the real son frames his stepbrother for fathering an illegitimate child that is actually his, seeing it as an opportunity to get his half-brother out of the way so he can have his father's empire all to himself.
Fictionalized look at life on a ranch
Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.
An Easterner Inherits a cattle ranch, only to discover that thousands of cattle have been stolen. He secretly signs on as a hired hand at his own ranch to discover who's stealing them.
In 1887 Arizona, in the context of the settler-vs-cattleman struggle, two rancher brothers fall in-love with the same settler girl while crooked businessmen try to swindle both sides.
On America's frontier, a St. Louis woman marries a New Mexico cattleman who is seen as a tyrant by the locals.
A frontier widow aims to raise sheep despite a cattle rancher in old Wyoming.
An English dreamer experiences both the beauty and harshness of nature when he relocates to the Canadian prairie.
Sierra Nevada Jones must fight a villainous rancher to regain the land that is rightfully hers.
An "absolutely authentic account of the grazing land battles of the sheep and cattle wars of the early west," pitting sheep rancher Droopy against a cattle ranching wolf.