The Shadow Riders is a 1982 American Western television film directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and starring Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, Dominique Dunne, and Katharine Ross.

Based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Louis L'Amour, the film is about two brothers who meet up after fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War and return home only to find their siblings kidnapped by ruthless raiders.

[1] At the end of the Civil War, Confederate soldier Dal Traven (Sam Elliott) is about to be executed by a firing squad when he is rescued by a cavalry force led by Major Ashbury.

Ashbury has made camp by the Gulf of Mexico, where he is waiting to meet a smuggler by the name of Holiday Hammond.

The brothers save their sisters and capture Hammond, but just as the Travens are reunited, the Texan sheriff who put Jack in jail arrives to arrest him again.

With the rest of the prisoners freed, all five Traven siblings, Kate, and Jack begin the trip back to Texas.