Based on the novel of the same name, a scout is sent by the British to infiltrate a French stronghold near the Great Lakes in the 1750s.
Géneros
FilmRise, Sonar, Screen Media, James Fenimore Cooper, based on a novel, history, wilderness, war, scout, fortress, American frontier, pre-Revolutionary
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.
After fighting for the Union during the Civil War, Luke Fargo (Van Heflin) is greeted with resentment when he returns home to his small southern town. Luke has a reputation as a rogue, but he's reinvented himself as a man of God and plans to fix up the town's damaged church. Recalling their romantic past, Georgina Decrais (Allison Hayes) tries to reclaim Luke. But, to the dismay of some suspicious townspeople, he concentrates on mentoring an unsophisticated young woman, Lissy (Joanne Woodward).
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?
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.
When solitary cowboy Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott) hears tales of a white woman living as a captive of the Comanche tribe, he rides deep into the tribe's territory to exchange goods for her freedom. As Cody escorts the captive woman away, he learns that she is Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates), and that there is a sizable reward offered by her husband for her return. Cody and Mrs. Lowe must brave ruthless bounty hunters greedy for the reward, as well as the now-warring Comanches, to make it to safety.
Jed Cooper (Victor Mature), a trapper, enlists as an army fort scout, and shortly after meets and falls for Corinna Marston (Anne Bancroft), the wife of a nearby fort's commander. Jed comes across her husband, Col. Marston (Robert Preston), after he's suffered an attack at the hands of Native Americans. Col. Marston forces the captain of Jed's fort, Glenn Riordan (Guy Madison), to send out Jed and the troops to fight his attackers, despite their lack of battle experience.
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.