William A. Wellman’s 1948 western, beautifully shot in Death Valley by Joe MacDonald, is gritty and ambitious, but the story, adapted by producer Lamar Trotti from a short story by W.R. Burnett, grows more conventional as it develops. A group of bank robbers fleeing the law (among them Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, John Russell, and Harry Morgan) happen upon a ghost town where a prospector (James Barton) and his tough granddaughter (Anne Baxter) have been mining gold; some nearby Apaches serve to heighten all the tensions and conflicted loyalties. 98 min. (JR)