Red River (1948 Film) - Plot

Plot

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) is a stubborn man who wants nothing more than to start up a successful cattle ranch in Texas. Shortly after he begins his journey to Texas with his trail hand, Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan), Dunson learns that his love interest (Coleen Gray), whom he had told to stay behind with the wagon train with the understanding that he would send for her later, was killed in an Indian attack. Despite this tragedy, Dunson and Groot press on. That night, Dunson and Groot, keeping watch, heard a group of Indians planning to attack them. They kill the Indians, and on the wrist of one, Dunson finds a bracelet he had been left by his late mother. One day before, he had presented it to his young love as he left the wagon train. The bracelet reappears significantly later in the film. The next day, an orphaned boy named Matthew Garth (played as a boy by Mickey Kuhn and as an adult by Montgomery Clift) who had been part of the wagon train Dunson had left, and who came back from finding a strayed cow to see the ruins of the train wanders into Dunson and Groot's camp, babbling inchoerently. He was the sole survivor of the wagon train. Dunson adopts him and ties the boy's cow to his wagon, alongside a bull Dunson already owned.

With only the bull and the cow, Dunson, Groot and the boy enter Texas by crossing the Red River and Dunson proudly proclaims all the land about them as his own. Two Mexican men appear on horseback and inform Dunson that the land already belongs to their boss. Dunson dismisses this inconvenient fact and thanks to a quicker draw in a showdown, kills one of the men and tells the other man to inform his boss that Dunson now owns the land. Dunson names his new spread the Red River D, after his chosen cattle brand for his herd. Fatefully, he promises to add M (for Matt) to the brand, once Matt has earned it.

14 years pass and Dunson now has a fully operational cattle ranch. With the help of Matt and Groot, his herd now numbers over ten thousand cattle, but he is also broke as a result of widespread poverty in the southern United States. Due to its loss of the American Civil War, the south cannot afford Dunson's beef. Dunson decides to drive his massive herd hundreds of miles north to Missouri, where he believes they will fetch a good price.

After Dunson hires some extra men to help out with the drive, including professional gunman Cherry Valance (John Ireland), the perilous northward drive starts. Along the way, they encounter many troubles, including a stampede sparked by one of the men making a clatter while trying to steal sugar from the chuck wagon. En route, they are told by casually met strangers that the railroad line has reached Abilene, Kansas, much closer than Missouri. When Dunson establishes that none of these wayfarers have seen the railroad, he disregards the news in favor of plugging on to Missouri.

Deeper problems arise when Dunson's tyrannical leadership style begins to affect the rest of the men. One of the two chuck wagons accompanying the drive had been destroyed in the stampede, morale drops because the men are living on nothing but beef, and have no coffee to drink. Dunson by now is broke and cannot buy more supplies. When he attempts to lynch two men who had deserted the drive and taken a sack of flour and 100 rounds with them, Matt rebels. With the help of Valance and the other men, Matt takes control of the drive in order to take it to the hoped-for closer railhead in Abilene, Kansas. Face to face, Dunson curses him and threatens to kill him when next they meet. The drive resumes toward Abilene, leaving the lightly injured Dunson behind with his horse and a few supplies. Matt and his men are well aware that Dunson will try to recruit a posse to pursue and attack them.

On the way to Abilene, Matt and his men repulse an Indian attack on a wagon train. One of the people they save is Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), who falls in love with Matt. They spend a night together and he gives her Dunson's mother's bracelet, evidently given to him in earlier years. Eager to outpace Dunson to Abilene, he leaves early in the morning—as Dunson had left the original wagon train 14 years earlier.

Later Tess encounters Dunson, who has followed Matt's trail to the new wagon train. He sees that she wears his mother's bracelet. Weary and emotional, he tells Tess what he wants most of all is a son. She offers to bear him one if he abandons his hunt. Dunson sees in her the same anguish that his beloved had expressed when he left her at the original doomed wagon train. Regardless of that, he resumes his hunt. The bracelet has moved from one sweetheart to another.

When Matt reaches Abilene, he finds the town has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of such a herd to buy it and ship it east by rail. Unknowingly, he has completed the first cattle drive along what would become known as the Chisholm Trail. He accepts an excellent offer for the cattle. Shortly thereafter, Dunson arrives in Abilene with a posse to follow through with his vow to kill Matt. Cherry Valance tries to keep the two apart. Dunson shoots him and Valance inflicts a flesh wound on Dunson. Dunson and Matt begin a furious fight, which Tess interrupts by drawing a gun on both men, shooting wildly, and demanding that they realize the love that they share. Dunson and Matt see the error of their ways and make peace. In earlier days, both men had laid their inner hearts open to her. The film ends with Dunson telling Matt that he will incorporate an M into the brand as he had promised 14 years before, and advises Matt to marry Tess.

Note: In Chase's original Saturday Evening Post story, Valance shoots Dunson dead in Abilene and Matt takes his body back to Texas to be buried on his ranch.