Beautifully scripted by Burt Kennedy, with excellent performances all round as the characters evolve through subtly shifting loyalties and ambitions, it's a small masterpiece.

There is hardly any pretense of action or suspense as the characters move, almost aimlessly, through an open landscape, testing each other's strengths and weaknesses through conversations that become psychological chess games.

It might be the best of the Ranown Cycle, a series of tough and economical westerns Randolph Scott, Budd Boetticher, and Harry Joe Brown made for Columbia Pictures.

Wait till Ride Lonesome shows its hand. Boone utters a line that could summarize the Ranown films: “Funny, ain’t it, how a thing can seem one way and then turn out altogether somethin’ else.”