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
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“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)