Directed by Sydney Polluck
Written by William W. Norton
IMDB

Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) is forced by a tribe of Native Americans to trade his entire winter's supply of pelts for a slave, Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis). Lee is very well educated, actually he's the smartest person to appear on screen in this flick. They follow the tribe in order to steal the pelts back once the N.A.'s get drunk. A hitch is thrown into their plan when a group of scalphunters slaughter the tribe and take the pelts.
They then follow the scalphunters in order to get the pelts, but Lee falls down a hill and gets captured by the hunters. Now Bass has to get his slave and his pelts back. When Lee learns that the scalphunters are headed to Mexico (where slavery is illegal) he tries to talk to the leaders wife (Shelley Winters) into letting him stay on as her personal servant. Bass, follows them waiting for the right opportunity to strike and take back what he feels belongs to him.
There is a slight comedic edge to this film, but it's fairly dry. Really, it doesn't matter, because it's still a good western. Ossie Davis is excellent as the overly educated runaway slave and Burt Lancaster is great as the hard-assed trapper. Definitely worth watching if you're into westerns.

7/10