On the run after killing a man in self-defense, John Alexander hires on for the anonymity and toil of an oil field roughneck. But the law is closing in on him. Again cast as a troubled outsider, john Garfield portrays Alexander in a drama that offers powerful depictions of the boot-sucking quagmire of boomtown streets, the desperation of men who hire themselves as taxis to piggyback fares through the mire, the dangers of working the rig