The Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) has himself thrown in jail to trick an outlaw known as the Hawk (Clayton Moore) and bring him and his entire gang to justice.
While being escorted to jail, bank robber Jim Larson (Fred MacMurray) manages to get the upper hand on his captor and escape. Jim is surprised to see his brother appear on the scene, ready to aid his sibling. As they make their getaway, his brother and the pursuing lawman shoot each other, leaving the stunned Jim alone and on the run. Assuming a different identity, Jim travels to a mining town and befriends the local sheriff (Lin McCarthy), hoping to start over and find redemption.
On a cattle drive to Kansas after the Civil War, an ex-Union soldier comes up against Apache and Confederate renegades.
The honorable Calem Ware (Randolph Scott), marshal of the Wild West boomtown of Medicine Bend, attempts to defuse the simmering tensions in his rapidly growing and increasingly violent town, as a greedy businessman (Warner Anderson) hires a sinister black-gloved gunman (Michael Pate) to take care of his problems with the marshal for good. Meanwhile, a traveling song-and-dance troupe arrives in town, bearing Ware's lost love, Tally (Angela Lansbury), who holds the secret to his violent past.
Hell-bent on revenge, flinty gunslinger Bart Allison (Randolph Scott) rides into a sleepy Western town with one goal in mind: to kill local roughneck Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll), who kidnapped his wife years ago. Both men have blood on their hands over the woman's eventual suicide. Allison and Kimbrough, wracked with guilt but boiling over with bloodlust, are set to face off for one final confrontation. Tensions mount as sunset approaches, and the townspeople must choose sides.
A Confederate plot to turn the Sioux against the Union crumbles when a double agent makes off with a shipment of gold.
The Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) looks for his friend Big Jack (Jack Mahoney) and finds out that Jack is illegally commandeering the mines and claims of others.
For a fee, hard-drinking Texas marshal Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart) agrees to help Army officer Jim Gary (Richard Widmark) search for a group of whites who were abducted years earlier by Comanche warriors. After rescuing two of the abductees, McCabe and Gary find that the former captives have fully adopted the culture of their American Indian captors and are barely recognizable. Cultures collide as they attempt to return the settlers to their original -- and now long-forgotten -- lives.
Returning to Fort Lincoln, Capt. Benson learns of Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn. At the inquiry as Custer's officers blame Custer for the defeat, Benson tries to defend him. However, Benson was suspiciously absent at the time of the battle and is now despised by the troops. So when an order to retrieve the bodies from the battlefield arrives, Benson volunteers for the dangerous mission of returning back into Indian territory.
The Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) has himself thrown in jail to trick an outlaw known as the Hawk (Clayton Moore) and bring him and his entire gang to justice.
A cavalry major (George Montgomery) makes peace with Indians despite an agitator (Richard Denning) working for carpetbaggers.
In Colorado at the end of the Civil War, Col. Owen Devereaux (Glenn Ford), affected by four years of brutal bloodshed, orders the massacre of a Confederate unit, even as they try to surrender. Devereaux's friend and second in command, Capt. Del Stewart (William Holden), is the only one aware of the surrender attempt. Devereaux returns home to a hero's welcome and is appointed a judge, yet his irrational and angry behavior continues, affecting his fianceé, Caroline (Ellen Drew), as well as Del.
Trouble-shooters (Rod Cameron, Wayne Morris) track Arizona stagecoaches hijacked for sale to the Confederacy.
Four soldiers of fortune are hired by a wealthy rancher to rescue his beautiful young wife who has been kidnapped by a villainous Mexican bandit. When they finally find her, after fighting their way across deserts and mountains, they discover she is not being held against her will. This causes friction within the band as to whether they should honor their agreement.
A lone gunslinger, Jack McCall (George Montgomery), bursts into a saloon and shoots dead the legendary Wild Bill Hickok (Douglas Kennedy). Arrested and put on trial, McCall recounts a twisted tale that paints Hickok as anything but heroic, explaining how Hickok and McCall's cousin Bat (James Seay) took over McCall's family's plantation, killed his parents and even framed him for crimes he didn't commit. McCall's cold-blooded killing of Hickok was warranted. Or was it?
A drifter crossing the Arizona desert routs a band of marauding Apaches and rescues the young survivor of a massacre.
A cavalry captain (Audie Murphy) rescues settlers and catches a corporal (Kenneth Tobey) selling rifles to Apaches.
Two men and a young woman in the Mexican wilderness are intent on tracking down a wild stallion.
The inhabitants of a small western community turn on Jim Guthrie (Dana Andrews) when he becomes the prime suspect for a murder he didn't commit. Before getting a chance to prove his innocence, Jim is driven from his home and into the wilderness, where he is left for dead. Despite the danger, he comes back years later, discovering that he's still a wanted man. But a kindhearted local named Chris (Dianne Foster) believes his story, and together they begin a desperate search for the true culprit.
A Swedish settler (David Brian) starts a war when he tries to drive Dakotas off their Wyoming reservation.