Ben Stride (Randolph Scott, in a role originally slated for John Wayne) trudges stoically through the West, hunting down the seven men responsible for the murder of his wife in a Wells Fargo station holdup. As the film opens, we see him dispatching two of the miscreants during a driving rainstorm. Though the victims are deserving of their fate, the script is careful to detail the moral deterioration of Scott, who'd quit his sheriff's job to go on this unauthorized death hunt. Also turning up is Bill Master (Lee Marvin), not one of the bandits per se but actually a villain from Stride's past who happens upon the situation and sees a chance to make off with some loot. This film marked one of the few Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher collaborations not released by Columbia Pictures.