The Cowboys

“All they wanted was their chance to be men... and he gave it to them.”

With his hands gone for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen (John Wayne) has a herd to get to market and nobody left to drive it, so he signs on a crew of schoolboys instead. Mark Rydell has them learning the work on the trail, with the cook Jebediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne) riding along. Behind them, Wayne in the saddle and the boys in a straggling line, a gang of cattle thieves trails the dust.