TENSION AT TABLE ROCK

A superb color RKO western from 1956.  Richard Egan plays a Robert Ford like gunslinger, vilified in folklore in song after shooting a fabled outlaw.  After a gunfight disposing of three stagecoach robbers that leaves a boy orphaned, he arrives at the title town and meets a sheriff played by Cameron Mitchell who is also haunted by his past.  My favorite scene: a line of bored cowboys, after months on the trail, forced to behave themselves in the town by the ramrod, line up outside along the storefronts and stomp their feet in unision at passerbys, including the sheriff - a percussive metaphor for the inescapable past, always stalking him.  Directed by Charles Marquis Warren.