The Moonlighter 1953

Wes Anderson, Fred MacMurray has been moonlighting, riding the moonlit plains to rustle cattle at night. While he waits for his trial behind bars, a lynch mob led by rancher Alex Prince bursts into the jail and, due to a mix-up from a cell change during a routine cleaning, hangs the wrong man. Wes makes a break for freedom and escapes into the wild.

Rela, Barbara Stanwyck, Wes’s former sweetheart, returns after a five-year absence to discover that he’s now a fugitive. She has become involved with his younger brother Tom, who works at a bank and has always admired Wes. With a stubborn resolve to set things right, Wes targets the men who took part in the lynching, seeking vengeance for the innocent man who was wrongly killed. He’s wounded by one of Prince’s men and retreats to a familiar place—their family home where Tom lives with their mother—to recover.

Rela tells Wes she plans to marry Tom and pleads with him not to pull Tom into trouble. But on the same day that Cole Gardner, an outlaw, convinces Wes to join a bank robbery, Tom is fired from the bank, and he then decides to join the pair. Rela warns Wes that if anything happens to Tom, she will hold him responsible.

During the robbery, Wes and Cole escape with the money, but Tom is shot and killed. A posse is formed, and Rela insists on being deputized to help bring Wes in dead or alive. Cole double-crosses his partner, takes the money, and leaves Wes tied up. Rela eventually catches up with Cole on the trail, outflanks and shoots him, and then finds Wes bound and taken prisoner.

On the journey back to town, Rela slips at a waterfall and nearly drowns, only to be saved by Wes. Ashamed of the path his life has taken, Wes offers to ride back to town with Rela to turn himself in and face whatever fate awaits him. He asks Rela to wait for him, and she agrees to do so.