El Paso is a 1949 American Western film directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring John Payne, Gail Russell and Sterling Hayden.
[4][5] Clay Fletcher (John Payne),[6] lawyer and returned Civil War Confederate officer, feels he needs to ease back into his legal career; he takes an assignment to travel west from his home state of South Carolina to a "frontier settlement called El Paso", in Texas.
Along the way, he meets a pots-and-pans peddler named Pesky (George 'Gabby' Hayes) and a con-woman, Stagecoach Nellie (Mary Beth Hughes), who steals his wallet.
In a saloon in El Paso, Clay witnesses a sham trial; a man is convicted of murder by a drunken judge, who turns out to be Jeffers.
Clay learns the man found guilty of murder was framed by rich, shady land owner Bert Donner (Sterling Hayden) and his stooge, Sheriff La Farge (Dick Foran).
La Farge brutally beats rancher John Elkins (Arthur Space), who has tried to stand up for his rights after discovering that Donner and his crowd, including the sheriff, are going to foreclose on him as they have many other landowners in the area.
Donner ends up dead and La Farge is set to be lynched when Clay comes to his senses and asks that El Paso's next judge be the one to hand out justice.