The last of the series finds Randolph Scott in the quiet grip of a decade-long obsession, to find the wife who was taken from him by Indians. In the meantime, he escorts another man's wife across dangerous territory, the danger coming less from Comanches than from the couple's villainous traveling companions, tagging along for a hefty if tainted reward. The film's moonscape setting and monumental, high Renaissance compositions make a neat foil for its deceptively plain–faced plot, which pits the pitiless quests of age-Scott, ever the gentleman madman-against the hopes of youth, in the form of a young bandit on the verge of discovering himself. Of course, in Boetticher's ironic literary landscape, the quixotic quest prevails. (JB) "With characters doomed from the start, it's a bleakly pessimistic film that gains warmth from gently ironic humor and a discreetly elegiac tone." (Time Out)