The horse-rustling, thieving, murdering Welles has escaped from prison, and is heading back to town to seek revenge on a lot of people: on his wife, Jean Willes, who divorced him and married John Pickard, who adopted her boy, telling him his father was dead; on Herb Armstrong, whose testimony convicted him; and on everyone else in town. The mayor wants sheriff James Brown to track Welles down and kill him. Brown is not anxious to do so. He's newly in love and thinking of heading to California. If the town wanted Welles dead, why didn't the jury order him hanged? So everyone is antsy as Welles approaches with his proposed reign of terror.
Director Edward L. Cahn's last western -- he had been in charge of a fair number of them among his more than 120 movies -- suffers from its attempt to have an O. Henry sort of snapper ending, resulting in the whole thing playing like a shaggy dog story. It's efficiently directed, which in many ways was the source of Cahn's failure to ever turn out a great movie. Coming into directing from editing, he showed an ability to "cut in the camera", running a shoot that took less time than other, more nominally creative directors did. This meant he could turn out a feature cheap and fast, which is why he averaged four a year for 30 years, turning out what was in the script according to the abilities of his crew. It's hard o be great on that schedule, and his ability to turn out a decent movie on that schedule kept him working steadily through his death in 1963 at the age of 64.
