***SPOILERS*** Having hist fill of fighting and killing Confederate soldier Jefferson Waring, John Ireland, decides to turn over a new leaf and start a new life in the territory of Missouri as a farmer only to run into a gang of bushwhackers who plan to take over land that's to have a rail line go through it. The gang lead by the blind and crippled Artemis Taylor, Lon Cheney, plans to run out those living on the land by burning them out and killing them if they resist. Waring who takes the settlers side at first is totally against using armed forced against Taylor's toughs but after himself almost being killed by them he suddenly changes his mind. That after earlier he was worked over at a local bar by Sam Tobin, Lawrence Tierney, Taylor's top hit man when he refused a drink he offered him by insisting on him paying for one himself!
Back at independence-the future home of Pres. Harry "S" for nothing Truman-Waring gets real friendly with newspaper editor Peter Sharpe, Frank Marlow, and even friendlier with his hot looking and gun toting daughter Cathy, Dorothy Malone,who caught him sleeping in her boudoir-bedroom-after a hard days work at her father's office setting type for the morning bulldog edition. Cathy soon realizes that Waring is an OK guy by him throwing in his lot with the settlers whom her dad is in fully support of.
***SPOILERS*** It's Taylor's hot headed daughter Norah, Myrna Dell, who plans to escalate the situation by rustling up some two dozen bushwhackers and drive the settlers off their land in order to claim it and make a killing on it when the railroad is built over it. This has Waring with a number of settlers counter-attack and ambush the bushwhackers having their leader Norah flee the scene. This while her dad Artemis Taylor drops dead of a sudden heart attack due to all of the action and excitement going on in the movie. Norah planning to skip town with some $50,000.00 in cash is confronted by bank president Justin Stone, Charles Trowbridge, who won't let her take the money until the bank opens! That leads to a wild shoot out between the two with both ending up dead.
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