The plot has Gary Cooper playing the ex-Confederate Colonel Blayde Hollister, who rides into the pioneer town of Dallas masquerading as a frontier marshal in search of the war opportunists who killed his Georgia family, torched their plantation and stole his land. Blayde assumes the identity of the dandy U.S. Marshall Martin Weatherby (Leif Erickson) from Boston. In the process, he’ll give law and order to the wild brawling town by taming it with frontier justice. A refreshingly bosomy Ruth Roman becomes his romantic interest, recognizing he’s not her fiancé, Weatherby, but remaining mum as she obviously prefers his broad shoulders to the real marshal’s. The real marshal soon arrives in Dallas, but goes along with the pretense because he feels he’s a tinhorn who is not up to the job. While the baddies, the killers Coop is after, are played by Steve Cochran and Raymond Massey, the good-for-nothing cattle baron and banker respectively, the Marlow brothers. There’s also a third brother, a cattle rustler (Zon Murray), and their first names are oddly enough William, Cullen and Bryant. I don’t know what it means, but there you are. Antonio Moreno is the friendly rancher and Jerome Cowan the good town citizen, who both aid Blayde in revealing the Marlows as low-down land-grabbers.