Trooper Hook 1957

Led by Joel McCrea as First Sergeant Clovis Hook, the US cavalry attack an Apache village, set it ablaze, and round up the women and children to take back to their fort. Among the prisoners is Cora Sutliff, Barbara Stanwyck a quiet, scarred white woman who had been captured nine years earlier while traveling to join her rancher husband, Fred Sutliff John Dehner; she has a young son named Quito Terry Lawrence. Also among the captured is Apache Chief Nanchez, Quito’s father Rodolfo Acosta.

At the fort, most women are unsympathetic toward Cora, arguing that any sane white woman would rather die than be defiled by an Indian. Hook is assigned to escort Cora and Quito to her husband, and while he secures stagecoach tickets, Cora and Quito wait at the general store. A man insults mother and son; Cora stikes him with a shovel and warns that she will kill anyone who harms Quito, the first words she has spoken since her rescue. Hook arrives, and the pair set off on a stagecoach.

At a picnic rest stop, Cora asks Hook if he can understand wanting to live so much that you will put up with any humiliation. Hook answers with a memory from his own past: as a Confederate prisoner in the Andersonville prison, he pretended to be a dog for a month so a dog-loving fellow prisoner, dying of fever, would share his rations. Meanwhile, Nanchez escapes, rounds up Apache warriors, and begins tracking the stage.

As the journey unfolds, the stagecoach picks up and drops off other passengers, including young Jeff Bennett, known to all as “Cowboy” Earl Holliman. Also aboard are Señora Sandoval, a Spanish aristocrat Celia Lovsky, and her granddaughter Consuela Susan Kohner, who are on their way to an arranged marriage. Rancher Charlie Travers boards next, flush with winnings from a poker game Edward Andrews. The ride becomes a tense, layered mix of loyalties, memories, and the looming threat of pursuit, all under the steady watch of Hook as he shepherds Cora and Quito toward an uncertain reunion with her husband.