A Wyoming horse breeder (James Cagney) is callous in his treatment of rustlers... He hangs them from his trees in the Colorado Rockies and forces horse thieves to march barefoot over rocky terrain...
Into the wild frontier of the 1870s rides Don Dubbins, a young grocery clerk from Pennsylvania, who stays to grow up under Cagney's tutelage...
Dubbins seeks the love of Irene Papas (completely wasted in her first Hollywood debut), a woman Cagney has befriended, but learns she really loves the older man... Through their relationship the 'bad man with bad teeth, broken bones, a double hernia and lice' learns that justice should be tempered with mercy and reveals a warm heart that few suspected he had...
Beautifully photographed in CinemaScope and Technicolor and with a sweeping musical score by Miklos Rozsa, "Tribute to a Bad Man" is a convincing picture of life in the Old West...