The Stalking Moon

Sam Varner, an army scout, is preparing to move a group of Apaches to a reservation in Arizona when he discovers Sarah Carver, a white woman who has been living with the tribe. Sarah was taken from her home years earlier, and she now has a young son of mixed heritage. Sam agrees to take mother and child to safety in New Mexico, but the boy's father, an Apache warrior, pursues them without relenting, and the journey becomes a flight through desert and mountain country.

The film is a Western directed by Robert Mulligan, released in late 1968 and running just under two hours. It came in the middle of Mulligan's career, several years after To Kill a Mockingbird and a few years before Summer of '42, and it reunited him with producer Alan J. Pakula and star Gregory Peck, all of whom had worked together on that earlier film. Alvin Sargent wrote the screenplay. Eva Marie Saint plays Sarah, with Robert Forster as Nick Tana and Noland Clay as the boy.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.6 from roughly 3,600 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 5.9 from a much smaller set of 78 votes. The two scores are close, though the larger IMDb sample carries more weight. The modest numbers suggest a film that has retained some regard among viewers without ranking among the most celebrated Westerns of its era.