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The synopsis below may give away important plot points.
Synopsis
In 1925 Montana, wealthy ranch owner brothers Phil and George Burbank meet widow and inn owner Rose Gordon during a cattle drive. The gentle-mannered George is quickly taken with Rose, while the volatile Phil, much influenced by his late mentor “Bronco” Henry, mocks Rose’s son Peter for his lisp and effeminate manner. George and Rose soon marry. Rose uses George’s money to send her son to college to study medicine and surgery, while she moves into the Burbank ranch house. Phil immediately takes a dislike to her, believing she took advantage of George for his wealth. His rough ways and taunting manner unnerve her. George organizes a dinner party with his parents and the governor so they can meet Rose and hear her play their new piano. Phil, after being asked by George to wash up before dinner, is nowhere to be found. Rose is very reluctant to play the piano, citing her lack of ability, but is pressured to do so by George and their guests. She is unable to play more than a few notes and is further humiliated when Phil, still dirty, enters and belittles her. As they leave, she takes a drink of alcohol, something she was previously opposed to. By the time Peter comes to stay at the ranch for the summer break, Rose has become an alcoholic, which she hides from George. Phil and his men taunt Peter, and he sequesters himself in his room, dissecting animals and studying diseases. In a secluded glade, Phil masturbates with Bronco Henry’s handkerchief. Peter enters the glade and finds a stash of magazines with Bronco Henry’s name on them depicting nude men. He observes Phil bathing in a pond with the kerchief around his neck; Phil notices him and chases him off. Phil suddenly begins to show decency to Peter, offering to plait him a lasso from rawhide and teach him how to ride a horse. Phil is impressed when Peter immediately picks out a shadow in the shape of a dog on a nearby mountain. Peter, out on a solo ride, comes across a diseased cattle carcass and cuts into its hide with a scalpel. Out on a fencing job, Peter and Phil corner and kill a rabbit, and Phil gets an open wound on his hand. Afterwards, Peter tells Phil about finding the body of his father, who had hanged himself. Seeing how much time her son is spending with Phil, Rose’s alcoholism worsens. Upon learning about Phil’s policy of burning the hides he does not need for himself, Rose defiantly gives them to local Indigenous traders who thank her with a pair of gloves. She then collapses from her rapid alcohol consumption and George tends to her. With no hides to finish Peter’s lasso, Phil is despondent until Peter offers him the hide he cut from the dead cattle. They spend the night in the barn finishing it, and Phil tells Peter a story of how Bronco Henry saved his life by combining their body heat in freezing weather and does not answer when Peter asks if they were naked and they then seductively share a cigarette. When Phil does not show up for breakfast the next morning, George finds him sickened in bed and his wound heavily infected. A delirious Phil looks for Peter to give him the finished lasso but George takes him away to the hospital before he can hand it over. In the next scene, George is seen picking out a coffin while Phil’s body is prepared for burial. At his funeral, a doctor tells George that Phil most likely died from anthrax, puzzling him, as Phil was always careful to avoid diseased cattle. Having not gone to the funeral, Peter opens a Book of Common Prayer to the burial rite and then flips to the Psalter and reads Psalm 22:20: “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.” He puts his finished lasso under his bed with gloved hands and watches George and a now sober Rose embrace, smiling, implying he intentionally gave Phil the diseased hide to save her life.