Jack Shaefer, who wrote the book Shane, almost certainly had Johnson County in mind [later portrayed in Heaven's Gate]. But his Wyoming is a landscape for myth, and the conflict is simplified and reduced to one cattle baron, one hired killer and one brave resister—the mysterious Shane.
— Steven Bach: Final Cut: Art, Money and Ego in the Making of "Heaven's Gate" (1985)
Synopsis: A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.