An early work from Don Siegel and you can feel his effort to make a decent film - there's energy in the staging, exciting tracking shorts of horses galloping across the plains, use of close ups, etc. It's not much of a story, though - there's lots of voice over narration explaining what's going on which suggests maybe test audiences were having trouble understanding it.
Audie Murphy is top billed but really he shares hero duties with Stephen McNally (the voice over dude), a local marshall fighting claim jumpers kicking miners off their land; Murphy is a gunslinger who is hired as deputy.
Really it's McNally's movie more than Murphy's, which doesn't feel right as Murphy has more of a personal stake in the action (the baddies killed his paw) and he always looks as though he's about to do something interesting in his all black outfit, but never does.
Howard Hughes protege Faith Domergue has a decent role as a woman who loves McNally but may not be entirely trustworthy; Susan Cabot plays a tomboy, one of several appearances she would make as a love interest for Audie Murphy. Lee Marvin has a small role as a baddie and I liked the sombrero wearing Mexican gunslinger but generally this is a pretty average Western.
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