Plot
Owen Daybright is ranch foreman and Lee Strobie is the son of Colorado cattleman Arch Strobie, who adopted Owen 15 years ago.
Lily Fasken gives birth and won't identify the father. Her brothers Hub and Dick believe that Owen is responsible. They know he gave her $500 to take care of the baby, but aren't aware Owen did so on Lee's behalf. The brothers pick a fight with Owen and are put behind bars for a week, vowing to get even as soon as they're out.
Lee is married to Jen, who is unaware he has been unfaithful. Lee also is ambitious. He says he'll leave forever unless Arch grants him a half-interest in the ranch, now rather than later. Arch agrees, saying Owen can inherit the other half after the old man dies.
Arch blurts out that Lee withdrew $500 in gold from the bank, causing Jen to realize that her husband is the father of Lily's baby. She wants to leave him, but is persuaded by Owen to stay and try to work things out.
Jen locks Lee out of their bedroom. Lee gets drunk and mistakenly believes she and Owen are carrying on behind his back. He schemes to get rid of Owen and make a fortune at the same time by conspiring with Hub and Dick to ambush Owen on a cattle roundup.
On the trail, Lee sells 3,000 head of Arch's cattle. He does it secretly, but Owen learns about it. Lee pretends that he just wants his share of the money and will be leaving Jen and the ranch permanently, but he lures Owen into a trap.
Hub and Dick hide, waiting for them. Owen is shot and wounded, but he kills Dick and his men ride up to do away with Hub. When he catches up with Lee, in a stream, they shoot it out and Lee ends up dead.
Read more about this topic: Vengeance Valley
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)