Plot: Dempsey Rae, a cowboy with no clear aim in life, winds up working on a spread with a hard lady owner just arrived from the East. She needs a tough new top hand and uses all her means of persuasion to get Rae to take the job. But he doesn't like the way the other settlers are getting treated and starts to side with them, despite their introduction of the barbed wire he loathes.
Alternative Plot: Texas drifter Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) enters Wyoming in search of work as a cattle herder. In his company is another drifter, young Jeff Jimson (William Campbell), whom he mentors in the same line of work. The two find employment on a ranch owned by a steely woman from the East, Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain). When Bowman's increasing, unfenced herds begin crowding out the smaller ranches, violence escalates on the range -- and Dempsey and Jeff must choose which is the lesser of two evils.
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