John Wayne plays rancher Will Anderson who wants to sell his cattle in Belle Frouche, a town some 400 miles away. He typically gets help from local ranch hands, but they've left town to pursue gold mining. What's "The Duke" to do?

Hire the local schoolboys, that's what.

The movie follows a predictable pattern of montages where Will trains the dozen or so boys in the arts of horse riding and cattle wrangling. However, the movie starts to pick up and become more interesting when Asa Watts, the leader of a fresh-out-of-jail gang played by Bruce Dern, makes their intentions known that they want to steal the cattle for themselves.

The ending is a little preposterous, but it's the solid performances of Wayne, Dern, and Roscoe Lee Browne as the trail cook, that makes this movie enjoyable.

• Release Year: 1972
• Genre: Western
• Starring: John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Bruce Dern.
• Trailer
• Summary: Rancher Will Andersen is forced to hire inexperienced boys as cowhands in order to get his herd to market on time but the rough drive is full of dangers and a gang of cattle rustlers is trailing them.

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