In The searchers, a Civil War veteran spends five years on the trail of a Comanche raiding party that kidnapped his dead brother's daughter. In Fort Apache, a calvary officer whose by-the-book tactics and ignorance of the western frontier cause him to lead his men into a fatal Apache ambush. In Rio Bravo, a Texas border sheriff fights off hired gunmen to keep a murderer in custody. In The cowboys, a rancher is deserted by his regular cattle drivers...

Wayne plays ex-Confederate soldier Ethan Edwards, an Indian-hater who believes more in bullets than words. He's out to find his young niece, who's been taken captive by the renegade Comanches who massacred her family.