Riding Shotgun (1954)

A stagecoach guard (Randolph Scott) is bushwhacked by a gang of outlaws that he's been trailing for a few years. When the outlaws shoot up and rob a stagecoach, the townspeople are under the impression that the guard was part of the gang. In reality, the stagecoach robbery was a ruse to detract the law into forming a posse and hunting them down while they backtrack and and rob the town which is left without protection. Based on the short story RIDING SOLO by Kenneth Taylor Perkins and directed by Andre De Toth (HOUSE OF WAX). The film has none of the complexity or subtext of the superior Boetticher westerns that Scott would begin making in a couple of years but it's much better than a lot of the westerns Scott was making around this time. My only problem with the movie is how stupid everybody is including our hero. Scott deliberately falls into a trap in order to catch the outlaw (James Millican) he's been chasing and thus is responsible for the mess he later finds himself in. His stupidity and arrogance got him there. The outlaws are bunglers and the townspeople are idiots too, blindly accusing a man as guilty based on hearsay so one has no sympathy for them either. That aside, this is a more than decent western and De Toth manages  to keep the tension quotient tight. There's a good underscore by David Buttolph. With Charles Bronson, Wayne Morris, Joan Weldon and Paul Picerni.