Down Dakota Way

Roy Rogers is passing Down Dakota Way through the place of his birth on the way to the Cheyenne rodeo. He finds that the old school marm, Elizabeth Risdon, has been retired forcibly and Dale Evans taking her place. More importantly Roy finds out that unscrupulous rancher Roy Barcroft is up to no good.

Barcroft has hired a paid killer in Byron Barr to kill the area veterinarian Emmett Vogan and destroy a report stating that hoof and mouth disease is present in his cattle herd. Barcroft wants to get his cattle shipped and paid for before news gets out of the epidemic. Barr carries out the murder, but then he kind of goes off on his own game, neither of them really trust the other.

To see how these two events intersect you'll have to watch Down Dakota Way. Barr is particularly effective as the punk killer, the kind usually found in urban noir films. In fact Byron Barr's screen debut was as Zaccetti, the punk that Barbara Stanwyck almost frames for the murder of her husband in Double Indemnity. Barr played mostly those kind of roles in his career and did them well.

Roy and Dale and get their usual quota of songs to sing and although the accent is on plot and action more than music in this western. It's not a bad one from the great western studio of Republic and its boss Herbert J. Yates.