They Rode West

With his predecessor having been more content swilling the contents of a bottle, the new doctor “Seward” (Robert Francis) arrives at his remote western cavalry post to a surgery that’s a bit of a mess and to a command that’s entirely indifferent to his presence. That is actually reduced to downright antagonism when he ventures up into them thar hills and encounters the local Comanche population who happen to be suffering from malaria. He advises them to move to a higher altitude where the mozzies aren’t so prevalent, but that just earns him the enmity of his colleagues - especially when the disease visits them too. With the Indians getting more desperate outside their fort and the captain (Phil Carey) getting more desperate inside it’s walls it falls to the optimistic young lieutenant to try to reconcile the parties before open war breaks out and finishes off the disease’s work for it. Of course, there’s the usual romantic element to the story provided by a distinctly below par Donna Reed and there’s a tiny bit of a moral message delivered in the form of a young girl from a white family raised by the Comanche and shunned by her own. It does at least try to tell a slightly more nuanced story than many soldier and Indian conflict tales of the American west, but Francis just looks like he has come straight out of the Richard Chamberlain aisle at central casting and though Carey adds a little weary ruggedness to his character, the rest of this is merely standard afternoon cinema fodder that nobody is likely to recall.