[3] When longtime professional rodeo competitor Jeff McCloud is injured by a Brahma bull that he was riding, he quits the circuit and begins to drift.

Wes, who has competed in some local rodeos, wants Jeff to help him improve his skills so he can chase big prize money in the professional circuit.

Louise, who grew up with nothing, is against the idea, because it puts Wes in harm's way and means abandoning both their securely rented home and plans for a permanent one.

When banged-up veteran circuit rider Buster Burgess is gored and killed by a bull, he leaves a bitter widow, and Louise unable to bear watching her husband compete.

As he grows an ever more swelled head and parties his winnings away, Louise gets fed up and starts staying home in their trailer even at night.

Even though she too had warmed up towards him - after initially growing to despise him and the effect he had had on her husband and the couple's simple stable life together - she proclaims her loyalty to Wes.

He then shows his old stuff in bronc riding, but his foot gets stuck in his stirrup when he is finally thrown; twisted and dragged violently on the ground, he is then crushed when the horse falls and rolls over him.

Arriving moments later, Wes learns of Jeff's grisly end from Louise, quits the rodeo, and leaves arm-in-arm with her for Bandera...with Booker and his young daughter in tow as cowhand and company.

[5] In a review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther praised the film's realism: "This vivid and pungent demonstration of the activities of professional 'saddle tramps'—the cowboys who scratch erratic livings on the circuit of the Western rodeos—gives such a harsh, discouraging insight into this form of commercialized sport that every backyard bronc-buster who sees it should go back to being a railroad engineer...Director Nicholas Ray has really captured the muscle and thump of rodeos.