Kirk Douglas plays Dempsey, a cowhand who drifts from place to place, working with cattle on the open range. As soon as someone starts putting up barbed wire, though, he's off again. Bad experiences from Texas.
This time around, there are two complications. One is the Jeff, a youngster Dempsey met riding the rails. The kid wants to be a cowhand, but knows nothing, so Dempsey's been showing him the ropes. Jeff gets caught up in the need to prove himself, meaning he isn't inclined to leave. The other problem is their boss on the spread, Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain). She and Dempsey are attracted to each other. Not enough for Dempsey to stay and fight a range war for her, though. So Reed turns her attention to Jeff, and him being a dumb kid, she's got him on a string in no time.
Dempsey is stuck between paths. Run like he usually does when this trouble starts. Stay and try to save the kid. Fight the armed goons from Texas Bowman hired. Help the guys putting up wire, even though he hates the fence builders. Or just keep drinking. Well, the last one isn't liable to work, since the other lady in his life is just gonna keep squawking at him until he does something.
The other, smaller ranches in the area are the ones who start putting up wire first. But they do it because Bowman decides to get aggressive. Her previous foreman tried to keep her cattle to certain sections of the range, leaving the rest for those other ranchers. Didn't have to, but it was neighborly, kept the peace. The way Bowman figures it, there's nothing that says she can't bring in 15,000 cattle and run them over the entire range, so that's what she should do. To hell with neighborly.
Problem being, the movie won't quite commit to Bowman as a villain. She decides she should bring in hands who are less about working with cattle, and more about shooting people. Then she seems horrified when those guys start running around doing whatever they feel like, shooting and killing people. She can't control them, but doesn't really even try. Makes her look ineffectual, a foolish girl playing at range boss. Barbara Stanwyck's character in The Violent Men would have eaten Reed alive.
The best part of the movie was near the end, when the out-of-control killers declare that they will take care of those wire fences with a herd of cattle, Texas style. As opposed to stampeding cattle through a fence Omaha style, I suppose. Or Blazing Saddles style (meaning through the Vatican).
Leave it to Texans to think anything they do must have never been thought of by any other person anywhere else before.
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