Boy, talk about conflicted women, this story had two of them. Ann Kenyon (Jaclynne Green) laments her position as the caretaker at the Apache River Station, distraught over her husband's long and frequent departures on business, and desperately wants to make a clean get away when a band of Apaches threaten a small group of travelers that just arrived. Valerie Kendrick (Julie Adams) is one of those travelers, on her way to meet her fiancé, but questioning whether she even loves the man enough to make a commitment. It doesn't help that she's pretty much a bleeding heart when lawman Lane Dakota (Stephen McNally) hauls in a wounded outlaw intending to bring him to trial for a hanging. She shares all the classic arguments for the man's possible innocence in the absence of witnesses. Well, she was from back East, so what does she know?
This happens an awful lot in old time Westerns but I've never mentioned it before, so this might be a good place to do so. It's not till near the end of the story we find out the sheriff's name is Dakota. So when you pull up the title here on IMDb, one finds out his full name is Lane Dakota. The name 'Lane' was never mentioned in the story, so why bring it up here? It probably appeared that way in the source material and/or screenplay, but it would be a good idea to give the viewer a heads up at some point, don't you think?
This story has one of those classic confrontations between a hotheaded, racist military Colonel (Hugh Marlowe) and a more level headed plainsman (McNally) who grew up around Indians and knows the score on what they're intentions might be after being pushed around by the white man all their lives. The Apache band in the story is led by a chief called Cara Blanca, which puzzled me a bit because the translation from Spanish means 'White Face', and that wouldn't seem to be a characteristic of an Apache. I don't know, sometimes I manage to over think these things in stories like this.
With Colonel Morsby and Chief Cara Blanca recounting abuses between the soldiers and Indians over a span of time, the stage is set for a showdown at the trail station when both sides refuse to buckle under to the other side's demands. Throughout this ordeal I couldn't help but notice Miss Kendrick's quite fashionable change of attire from scene to scene; I couldn't imagine why she would have preferred to be dressed to the nines at a desert outpost while under potential attack. One thing I haven't seen before occurred when the Apaches fired on the station; a fire arrow entering it neatly pinned the sleeve of Miss Kendrick's dress to the wall in a remarkable feat of accuracy. I'm sure the Apache wasn't even trying.
Making a late appearance in the story was an unusually grim looking Hugh O'Brian in the role of Ann Kenyon's husband. Seeing as how she ditched him for two other guys in the story hoping to make her escape, I'd say he had a right to be upset. A couple years shy of his role as Marshal Wyatt Earp in the classic TV series of the mid-Fifties, it occurred to me that between the three principals, McNally, Marlowe and O'Brian, the movie could have been made with any of them in each other's role.
This happens an awful lot in old time Westerns but I've never mentioned it before, so this might be a good place to do so. It's not till near the end of the story we find out the sheriff's name is Dakota. So when you pull up the title here on IMDb, one finds out his full name is Lane Dakota. The name 'Lane' was never mentioned in the story, so why bring it up here? It probably appeared that way in the source material and/or screenplay, but it would be a good idea to give the viewer a heads up at some point, don't you think?
This story has one of those classic confrontations between a hotheaded, racist military Colonel (Hugh Marlowe) and a more level headed plainsman (McNally) who grew up around Indians and knows the score on what they're intentions might be after being pushed around by the white man all their lives. The Apache band in the story is led by a chief called Cara Blanca, which puzzled me a bit because the translation from Spanish means 'White Face', and that wouldn't seem to be a characteristic of an Apache. I don't know, sometimes I manage to over think these things in stories like this.
With Colonel Morsby and Chief Cara Blanca recounting abuses between the soldiers and Indians over a span of time, the stage is set for a showdown at the trail station when both sides refuse to buckle under to the other side's demands. Throughout this ordeal I couldn't help but notice Miss Kendrick's quite fashionable change of attire from scene to scene; I couldn't imagine why she would have preferred to be dressed to the nines at a desert outpost while under potential attack. One thing I haven't seen before occurred when the Apaches fired on the station; a fire arrow entering it neatly pinned the sleeve of Miss Kendrick's dress to the wall in a remarkable feat of accuracy. I'm sure the Apache wasn't even trying.
Making a late appearance in the story was an unusually grim looking Hugh O'Brian in the role of Ann Kenyon's husband. Seeing as how she ditched him for two other guys in the story hoping to make her escape, I'd say he had a right to be upset. A couple years shy of his role as Marshal Wyatt Earp in the classic TV series of the mid-Fifties, it occurred to me that between the three principals, McNally, Marlowe and O'Brian, the movie could have been made with any of them in each other's role.