Moonlight and Cactus

Will Penny, an aging cowpoke, takes a job on a ranch which requires him to ride the line of the property looking for trespassers or, worse, squatters. He finds that his cabin in the high mountains has been appropriated by a woman whose guide to Oregon has deserted her and her son. Too ashamed to kick mother and child out just as the bitter winter of the mountains sets in, he agrees to share the cabin until the spring thaw. But it isn't just the snow that slowly thaws; the lonely man and woman soon forget their mutual hostility and start developing a deep love for one another.

An intimate story of the enduring bond of friendship between two hard-living men, set against a sweeping backdrop: the American West, post-World War II, in its twilight. Pete and Big Boy are masters of the prairie, but ultimately face trickier terrain: the human heart.

The brother (House Peters Jr.) of rancher Bill Martin (Bill Elliott) is killed in a stampede started by cattleman. Bill returns to the Fargo country to take his brother's place and is welcomed by law-abiding cattleman MacKenzie (Jack Ingram)) and his daughter Kathy (Phyllis Coates). The leader of the ruthless cattle interests are townsman Austin (Arthur Space) and his henchmen Red (Myron Healey), Link (Robert J. Wilke) and Albord (Terry Frost). Bill has the idea of putting up barbed wire to keep the herds from been driven over the land cultivated by the farmers. He, aided by Tad Sloan (Fuzzy Knight), produces the wire by make-shift methods, but it proves effective. The cattleman charge in court that the wire is dangerous to their herds but lose the case. Austin orders his men to seize Bill, bale him in strands of the wire, and throw him on the stage of the town hall during a fall festival. Bill doesn't take kindly to this and it precipitates open war.

On parole from prison for a murder he did not commit, and not allowed to carry a gun, Buck sets out to find the real killer. His clue is a corner torn off a wanted poster with some handwriting on it.

Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.

Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.

Chicago hotel clerk Frank Harris dreams of life as a cowboy, and he gets his chance when, jilted by the father of the woman he loves, he joins Tom Reece and his cattle-driving outfit. Soon, though, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for...

Fictionalized look at life on a ranch

A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.

Brash businessman Hideki (Arata Iura) convinces his Tokyo bosses he can turn a profitless Montana cattle ranch into a premiere-performing asset. However, when his Japanese Wagyu-beef expert fails him, Hideki is poised to fail unless he identifies a missing element that's key to the transformation: himself.

Buck runs into trouble when he buys a deserted cattle ranch that he turns into a dude ranch.