As the Civil War spills our nation's blood, Capt. John Hayes (Randolph Scott) fights on a vital but little-known battlefront. He aims to ship gold to Union banks through a small Colorado town, defying Southern sympathizers who aim to stop him. At any cost. As chiseled and bone-lean as its star, Westbound is the sixth of seven Westerns Scott made with director Budd Boetticher, films that - along with the James Stewart-Anthony Mann Westerns - helped remake the genre in the 50s, substituting grit and veracity for white-hat heroics.

A fast-paced western with a romantic twist, this was one of the last films pairing director Budd Boetticher and popular cowboy hero Randolph Scott before Scott's retirement. John Hayes (Scott) left the Civil War behind him when he took on the job of managing the Overland Stage Lines out of a small Colorado town. Clay Putnam has not forgotten that the Confederacy lost and he plans on robbing Hayes' Overland Stage of one of its gold shipments from California to the North. He wants the gold to stay in the South to revive the Confederate cause. Meanwhile, his wife Norma (Virginia Mayo) complicates matters since she was Hayes' old flame, and Putnam's cronies want the gold for themselves.