Range Feud(1931)

Tags

Buck Jones, John Wayne, western

Buck Jones is Sheriff Buck Gordon, a man caught up in a budding range war.

Edward LeSaint as John Walton is one side and Will Walling as Dad Turner the other. Gordon’s problem is that Turner raised him as if he was his son and Gordon loves “kid brother” Clint(a very young John Wayne).

But Gordon makes it clear at a church service that he will not take sides. His almost father violated the law by driving his cattle onto Walton land for grazing because he’d always done so. But Walton was in the right, saying he barely had enough grazing land for his own. In the budding feud a man died. Dad Turner claims Walton has been rustling his cattle. Gordon makes it clear that the feud will stop.

Wayne’s character is in a Romeo and Juliette subplot with Judy Walton(Susan Fleming) and that leads to trouble when he declares for her hand with her father. A bitter argument follows, Clint leaves, then Walton is murdered, a gun shown sticking in the window.

Clint is blamed and Gordon arrests him to save his life as a lynching is in progress. His gun has a fired shell, he claims he shot at a coyote, but missed. The trial finds him guilty and he’s scheduled to hang the next day.

Gordon is looking into the rustling charge. A letter was found in his hand written by a seller letting him know he was coming to examine the cattle he’d sold to Walton, still penned up. He’d tell him then who from whom he’d bought them.

That night someone releases those cattle and in the chase Buck is shot. The only clue is a piece of cloth caught in a nail on the gate. Buck regains consciousness almost to late the next morning. He has to get into town to stop the hanging and clear Clint’s name.

Not a bad film, though in a Wayne biography it was referred to as the first in a collection of “cheap, assembly line pictures.”