On a train heading home, Marine reservist John Hills, a veteran of the Korean War and single survivor among his hometown peers who were called up to fight, is returning to Crawford, a small western Nebraska town steeped in military history. The Marine is facing a hero's welcome at the train station. Waiting his return is his wife and mother, the mayor. a blaring band and his best friend, the local newspaper editor. As the train-stop celebration ends and usurping a continuing celebration at the city park, the Marine with his ...
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On a train heading home, Marine reservist John Hills, a veteran of the Korean War and single survivor among his hometown peers who were called up to fight, is returning to Crawford, a small western Nebraska town steeped in military history. The Marine is facing a hero's welcome at the train station. Waiting his return is his wife and mother, the mayor. a blaring band and his best friend, the local newspaper editor. As the train-stop celebration ends and usurping a continuing celebration at the city park, the Marine with his wife in tow, jumps into the front seat of his friends running car to a getaway and lovemaking on the banks of the White River which winds its way past Crawford, through the Nebraska Panhandle and into South Dakota. This unplanned escape is not without consequences for the couple who are hospitalized by day's end. Early that morning and as a coal-fired locomotive chugs into Horseshoe Bend and on down into the town, the couple's eight-year-old son, Tommy is silently easing out of the back door of the Hills home. His silent departure is spurred on by the threat of punishment promised by his mother and to be dealt by his father, all for a prank which was spirited by his grandfather's story telling. When the train-stop celebration begins, the child is well on his way, trekking through prairie grass and heading into the Pine Ridge where clay buttes show majestically in the morning sun. In the boy's mind, these clay and pine tree clustered foothills, glorified by his grandfather's recollections of the past frontier military and Indian skirmishes, make the buttes and hidden valleys a perfect sanctuary. Tommy's early morning departure is not unnoticed, however, as his faithful dog and his grandfather join him on a perilous adventure leading to a heroic endeavor by the boy and his dog.
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