Four Faces West 1948

Ross McEwen quietly robs a bank in the New Mexico town of Santa Maria, taking the banker Frenger with him, then letting him go a few miles away, minus boots but with an I.O.U. for the $2000 he has taken. When he returns to town, Frenger offers a reward of $3000, dead or alive. Pat Garrett, the new marshal, warns the bounty hunters against unnecessary shooting, particularly in the back.

McEwen is bitten by a rattlesnake before he can board a train, where a passenger, nurse Fay Hollister, helps him. The posse stops the train and searches it, but McEwen’s quick thinking—masquerading as the sleeping Hollister’s husband, complete with a fake baby—saves the wanted man. Yet Monte Marquez, a gambler passenger, observes and overhears enough to figure out what McEwen has done.

The train tracks are washed out near Albuquerque, so the small group goes off together via a route once used to deliver mail. Fay Hollister discovers that a Santa Maria posse is after a wanted man and recalls that is where McEwen originally came aboard. But the pair have developed an attraction despite the danger surrounding them.

When they reach an Alamogordo saloon run by Marquez’s cousins, a cattleman named Burnett is willing to hire McEwen as a hand. Garrett and deputy Clint Waters arrive in town, forcing McEwen to slip away, though he offers Fay an engagement ring as a promise of what has grown between them. Fay rides along but ends up separated from him and captured by Garrett’s men.

After crossing the desert with difficulty, McEwen encounters a Mexican rancher named Florencio, whose family is ill. He stays to help and builds a fire to signal the lawmen, needing their assistance. Monte Marquez arrives again along with Garrett and Fay, but because Florencio is another relative of his, Marquez pretends that McEwen is a total stranger.

Garrett is not fooled, and McEwen is persuaded to turn himself in, the marshal promising to vouch for his good deed.