The screenplay was written by Frank S. Nugent and Laurence Stallings based on the 1913 novelette The Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne.

[2] It is a remake of the black and white 1929 movie Hell's Heroes, starring Charles Bickman, Raymond Hatton, and Fred Kohler, directed by William Wyler.

Doubling back to Terrapin Tanks, a granite sump at the edge of the desert, the robbers lose their horses in a sandstorm.

The posse later comes upon the abandoned wagon, and recognizing the possessions of his niece-in-law, Sweet believes that the fugitives killed her and sets out for revenge.

John Ford had already adapted the novelette once before in Marked Men (1919), a silent film thought to be lost today.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote:[T]he sentimental story that is told in this handsome Western film stems directly from the format and the literary style of Bret Harte.

And what's more, John Ford has filmed it so that the characters and gritty atmosphere that slosh from the screen in great warm sluices of grandeur and emotion are much like Harte's.

... And, more than the character of nature, Ford has captured in his style the leathery, dry-humored romance and sentiment of the traditional good badman.

From a script spiced with wry and pungent dialogue, which Laurence Stallings and Frank S. Nugent wrote, he has brought forth a gang of frontier people who have the fullness and flavor of the hearty West.

[1][8] Maltin describes the 1948 film as "sturdy, sentimental, sometimes beautiful", but feels that the last scene "didn't ring true".