Trying to find - Old Movie - ranch burning, son dying

[Brad63]

I’m looking for a movie where a mother and father reluctantly leave their son ( about 12-14 yo) to look after the ranch for a while and when they return, the ranch is burning and the boy is lying with an arrow in his gut.

Father has time to say he’s so proud of him for being a man and then the kid dies.

It may be in black & white or color. I saw it in B & W but then we didn’t have a color TV at the time.

It’s not a spaghetti western but one of the classic American ones 40’s to 60’s vintage maybe?

[Tom_B]

Sounds like THE TRACKERS a 1971 TV movie with Ernest Borgnine and Sammy Davis Jr.

“A rancher comes home and finds that his son has been murdered and his daughter kidnapped by a bandit gang. He hires a professional tracker with a reputation for finding his quarry to help him find the gang and rescue his daughter.”

[Brad63]

Thanks very much for the suggestion. Not the one.

In the film I’m thinking of, the boy was still alive when the mother and father come home. The arrow in the boy’s gut suggests Indians, not bandits.