Will Penny
Will Penny (Charlton Heston) is an aging cowhand who at the end of a long trail hires on to ride the boundary of a ranch over the winter. He immediately comes across a woman, Catherine Allen (Joan Hackett), and her son Horace (Jon Gries) using one of the remote cabins to over-winter, having been deserted by the guide that her husband paid in advance to lead her and her son over the mountains. Despite his boss' instructions Penny lets them stay in the cabin and gives them a week to move out.
Later, Penny runs afoul of a sadistic family called the Quints, led by Preacher Quint (Donald Pleasence) who is after him for killing one of the Quint sons some time before, defending his comrades. While out checking the territory, Penny is ambushed and savagely beaten up by the Quints, who leave him for dead. Penny manages to drag himself back to the cabin, where he is slowly nursed back to health by Catherine, with whom he has little choice but to stay afterward.
As Christmas and winter pass, the lonely Penny and sexually repressed Catherine fall in love, and Penny begins to develop fatherly feelings towards the young boy Horace. The three have lived together as a family unit, during which Penny has caught poignant glimpses of everything that has been missing from his own nomadic, rootless life. For a while it seems there is a possibility that he can settle down with the woman and child and continue this happy arrangement. Around this time the Quint family bursts into the cabin, forces Penny into hard labor and coerces Catherine into marrying one of the ruthless Quint sons. When two of his fellow ranchers appear just in time to aid his escape from the Quints, they return to the cabin to free Catherine and Horace from their tormentors. At last it seems a happy ending may arrive at the appropriate moment. For part of Penny desperately wants to put down roots and end his lonely existence as an itinerant cow hand. Ultimately, however, Penny realizes that he is simply too old to keep on living like he used to (he is around 50) and too set in his ways to ever settle down in a domestic setting. Deeply regretful about what he is leaving behind, he rides away from the woman and child, never to return.
revenge, violence