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is the story
HE story opens vihen James McKay (Gregory Peck), whose city-refined exterior conceals a tough seaman's spirit, reels into the Texas Big Country in a jolting stagecoach. He finds his intended bride's family involved in a bitter blood-feud with another rancher tycoon's clan. The battle ranges over claims to exclusive watering rights on Big Muddy, a valuable slice of property owned by school teacher Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons). Though she has tactfully granted watering use to both powers, the teetering truce threatens to crumble at any moment under each family's personal law code. McKay incurs the wrath of the Terrill clan's ranch foreman, Steve Leech (Oiarlton Heston) who has loved McKay's fiancee, Pat Terrill (Carroll Baker). The easterner's courage is questioned by domineering Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford) and by daughter Pat when he steadfastly refuses to attack the rival Hannassey clan, led by Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives), following a drunken assault on McKay and Pat by Hannassey's son (Chuck Conners). McKay rides off with the unspoken accusations of "coward " behind him. Realizing the full deterioration of his relations with inflexible Pat, McKay drifts into a tender romance with Julie Maragon and finally succeeds in buying Big Muddy from her after agreeing to continue joint watering rights. But the young Hannassey fancies himself in love with Julie and, when Rufus sees in this the chance for complete control of Big Muddy, he abducts her. The Major, seizing the kidnapping as excuse for plundering the Hannassey haunts, plunges his ranchmen into an ambush concocted by his adversary. This final explosive melee sees McKay rebut the "coward" epithets in a fiery gun-duel with Rufus' son, while the land barons slaughter each other in a withering exchange of fire that is a bloody exclamation point to the years of brutal hatred and stormy feuding.