John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy

Yesterday I slummed it on the couch and gazed at (among other things) two-thirds of John Ford's well-known cavalry trilogy, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon ('49) and Rio Grande ('50). 
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With this week or two of relative downtime, I'm working hard to get my definitive "Best Westerns" list together, which was partly spurred on by my dalliance (good or bad) with The Coen Brothers' True Grit and that interesting, highly combative Playlist article. 
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Truth is, with a few notable exceptions, I've never been really big fan of John Ford's westerns. Stagecoach ('39) and My Darling Clementine ('46) are pretty great and Fort Apache ('48) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ('62) are pretty stirring for the way they demythicize the Old West.
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His so-called masterpiece, The Searchers ('56), is a confounding American classic with an astonishing closing shot and numerous vistas of wide-screen mastery that somehow mask what a mess it is. 
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With She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande, Ford's trademark Monument Valley wide-angles, service reverence and goofy camaraderie take center stage on equal footing with his sloppy continuity and errant grasp of time and space. In short, they're beautiful, strangely watchable calamities. 
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Which isn't to say they aren't worthy of a viewing or in any way bad films (the visual craftsmanship on display is head-and-shoulders above anything of the time period), but for this viewer anyway, the roll call, hoo-rah narrative, dusty outpost conflicts and cloying humanism frankly border on tedium. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: [C+] Rio Grande: [B-]