Where the Trail Divides

Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore. In the world of the takers and the taken, Hud is a winner. He's a cheat, but, he explains, "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner."

In Apache territory, a supply Army column heads for the next fort, an ex-scout searches for the killer of his Native wife, and a housewife abandons her husband to rejoin her Apache lover's tribe.

Down-and-out cowhand Jim Garry is asked by his old friend Tate Riling to help mediate a cattle dispute. When Garry arrives, however, it soon becomes clear that Riling has not been entirely forthright. Garry uncovers Riling's plot to dupe local rancher John Lufton out of a fortune. When Lufton's firecracker of a daughter, Amy, gets involved, Garry must choose between his old loyalties and what he knows to be right.

A pioneering family fights back against a gang of vicious outlaws that is terrorizing them on their newly-built farm on the plains of Montana.