What happens
Captain Biddle leads a cavalry patrol across the Plains after Lieutenant Grisham's patrol is found massacred, with bodies stripped and hands cut off. Biddle, a rigid officer, rejects Lieutenant Corral's suggestion to pursue and resists calls to try a decoy, citing standing orders to avoid fighting. His first sergeant, Sergeant Utterback, shows the men's bitterness at the orders and at their hard duty in the West. Biddle tries to read the signs of the enemy in the wilderness while his men grumble around their campfires, and his own father's reputation for bold action weighs on him. The episode is part of the Suspense series, originally broadcast in 1958 with Richard Anderson in the cast.
The Great Plains of the American West during the Indian wars, near the North Fork of the Platte River and the Mesa Roja, in the era of the United States Cavalry.
Characters: Captain Biddle, Lieutenant Corral, Sergeant Utterback, Lieutenant Grisham, Coffin
Listen for: The tense exchanges between Captain Biddle and his subordinates over the standing orders, and the sudden attack at the decoy camp by the moonlit wash.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.