Johnny Holiday (Allen Martin Jr) is a fatherless boy whose mother (Greta Granstedt) is ill in hospital. He hero-worships the psychopathic teenager Eddie Duggan (Stanley Clements). Protecting the thieving Duggan, Johnny is sent to a reformatory in Indiana, where he is taken under the wing of Sgt Walker (William Bendix), the bluff but kindly man in charge of the school farm. Walker asks for Holiday to be assigned to him when he realises that Holiday has a natural aptitude for caring for horses, as well as an innocent, sweet nature.
When Duggan turns up in the reformatory, he persuades Holiday to break out with him. At a Christmas entertainment featuring Indiana-born Hoagy Carmichael, Duggan strong-arms Holiday into an attempt at escape. Holiday faces an ethical choice between Duggan, his former hero, and Walker, who has stood by him and taken care of him, even secretly bringing him to visit his mother…
