Next, the narrator offers more useless frontier gibberish; "The trail was mean and hard... Sometimes folks in the territory welcomed drifters; sometimes they didn't." To which I silently added, "Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't." By the way, what 'territory' is the narrator speaking of? It had been established earlier that the story was taking place in Missouri, which was a state even back at that time. If the brothers had wandered beyond any state's borders and into a territory, it'd have been sensible to state which one. Then again, this film has been vague about most other details so why bother changing now?
Will finds a house and pays the old woman there to allow sick Tommy to stay. Inevitably, bounty hunters show up. They beat up the poor old woman and capture the brothers. The hunters look forward to the reward for nabbing Tommy.
They don't bother killing him even though he's wanted either dead or alive. They don't search him for weapons either; maybe it wasn't the manly thing to do back then. Of course, Tommy pulls a gun and shoots them all down in his uncanny offscreen style. Now we plow ahead into the 'artistic' portion of the film. We see lots of fog and snow then Will wanders around. Tommy walks around elsewhere; Will follows him warily. They dig holes. Tommy (allegedly, hard to see in the fog) shoots some more guys. Will looks at Tommy, but sees Tommy's young red-shirted image. Will finds blood on his hand. He's shocked then wakes up... all just a dream. Well, at least we learned... something?
Will and Tommy resume riding through woods…and then some more woods… then some more woods… with some snow. For added effect, the ever-present audio of someone learning intermediate guitar becomes more noticeable. It might not be so annoying if the player were talented enough to strum more than one chord at a time. Will comes across another house and brings sick Tommy along as he heads inside.
It turns out they're in a house full of drunk armed men - another jackpot, Will!!! Will explains that Tommy is sick again, but they wind up taking a beatdown and have to leave. Maybe Tommy doesn't have a good enough health insurance plan. If we haven't gotten the point by now, the narrator, back from voicing commercials for rugged denim products and chewing tobacco, drills it into our skulls some more; "The trail was no place to look for mercy". The trail reminds me of my DVD player.
Great, so now we're back on the trail, watching them saunter through some more friggin' woods and more friggin' fields. They must be traveling around in a big circle or else they would've hit an ocean or seen polar bears by this point. Not so helpfully, the narrator informs us that "They spent most of their time driftin'." Thanks a bunch, Captain Noshit. As we see them resting on a floor, the narrator adds that they were "just lookin' for a place to rest." I'm actually beginning to think this really is an English-instruction dvd; next we'll see the narrator describe a ball, a dog, then an airplane. Anyhow, the brothers get kicked out of this abode as well, by yet more armed ranchers wearing new coats. One of them proclaims, "You're standing on Bud Jordan's spread!" He didn't say 'Mister Bud Jordan' so I guess he's not yet as big a shot as 'Mister Clay Randall'.
They lost their horses again, so the brothers now walk through woods some more. The mood feels ominous... I mean, my own mood is ominous, in fear the narrator is going to start blaring more folksy blabber again, but thankfully he doesn't do so here, I guess he had to go change his long johns or feed the chickens.
Flashback to those red-shirted halcyon days once again; young responsible Will looks on as his sick mom finally kicks the bucket. If you're tired of me mentioning the bright red shirts imagine how tired I am of seeing them. Maybe they didn't have a continuity director and decided 'hell with it… just put red shirts on the brats all the time'. The sad kids watch their mom get buried. A good friend of Nathan comes over to check on the boys in their home one day and gets shot by young Tommy for his trouble. It's a tragic accident, though the friend may have taken a moment to knock on the door instead of barging right in, this being a region where bad things happen to people who barge in and all. Later in front of the family fireplace, we see caring young Will try to reach out to young disturbed Tommy. It's a nice little scene finally; I must reiterate that the boy portraying young Will does a decent job, far better than a film like this deserves; this coming from a viewer that usually cringes when child actors spew dialogue.
That scene complete, we return to our present story for an update on adult Will and Tommy. If you guessed that they're currently walking through some woods, you're correct, but it doesn't exactly prove you're a psychic. Sick Tommy now collapses, his mysterious tubercululosish sickness now taking him over. The narrator pops in to blurt out some more uninformative information as Will lifts up his brother.
Will finds yet another cabin to stash Tommy in, but of course, there are a couple of armed outlaws already there. The leader is a mean guy named Max, who like Tommy, is wanted for murder. Max forcibly takes Will and Tommy's weapons, so at least he's sharper than most folks in this film. Now he orders Will to take Tommy and leave, or he'll kill them. The scene fades out.
The scene fades in, and Will is still relaxing in the same cabin. I guess I must have blinked and missed the part where Max changed his mind. Max now seems curious and asks Will where he's from. Will states he's from Defiance, and Max tells him he's a long way from there. Max, incidentally, must be a stranger to Defiance as well as his clothing doesn't look so fresh and clean, almost as if they've been worn at least once before. Will tires of Max's questions and gets angry, until Max points out that Tommy is dead.
After burying Tommy the terror, Will is forced to join up with Max to do outlaw stuff. Max does this because he fears Will would otherwise move on and tell people his whereabouts. Why he wouldn't just shoot him is beyond me, its already been established Max isn't a nice guy. The little gang's first victims are a young settler couple, who get roughed up by Max and his sidekick. Will, still a good guy by nature, can't take it and shoots Max and his sidekick dead. Then he decides to head back to Defiance.
Unfortunately, the filmmaker feels the need to re-introduce the viewer to the town, showing much of the earlier establishing shots of the town's buildings and inhabitants, with some new shots thrown in for good measure. It's amazing how much filler material can get jammed into a movie that's only 72 minutes long.
We get a scene in a civilized-looking boarding house with more uncannily well-dressed folks dining inside. The old nasty henchman, Riley, I think, walks in and cavorts with a hooker from upstairs; he acts increasingly horny and I get increasingly nauseated. A proper-looking woman named Nell comes down and upset at his behavior, boots him out of the place. Since she's running a bordello, I'm not sure why she was so perturbed at a guy being excited about giving her employee some business. Hopefully, we can now move on to a scene that carries some trace of significance.
Will walks back inside his family's home but finds a female stranger sitting inside. He also comes across her rifle-wielding husband, who angrily kicks Will out of his former home. Next we revisit Mister Clay Randall, still wearing the same shirt after all this time despite being super-wealthy; I guess he's 'keepin' it gangsta'. He has now upped the bounty on Tommy Cross to $3000., establishing that no one in town knows Tommy is dead.
Will visits an old friend that he and his father did business with. He's informed that after he split town with Tommy, his wife sold their house and took off. The old friend advises Will to leave town. Instead, Will asks if he can borrow a gun. Hopefully, it'll be a good one, not a cheap model that makes trash can-sounding noises.
Next we watch Will as he roams around the woods on the outskirts of town (oh, please don't start another journey into the woods). He's dressed in dark clothing now, and even sports a little dust and dirt, so we can tell he's fully matured into a hardcore individual. Cut to good old Randall for a moment, sitting in his house playing cards with his Nehru shirt and gray hair, looking exactly the same as he did at the beginning of this film, which supposedly occurred many years ago.
