to come face to face with a screaming Nickie. He quickly exits but the next morning, returns to request the pack he had left the previous evening. He offers to help her but she turns him down.

As they leave, the pair are noticed by Les Cavanaugh (MARTIN SHEEN), a rock combo guitarist on his way down the coast for a recording date in Los Angeles in a battered red Cadillac. Using Nickie as bait, Bradley finagles a breakfast for himself out of the youth and a lift down the road for both himself and the girl. But the old car gives up the ghost before they cover many miles, catching fire and blasting its blue book value into a cloud of flame and oily smoke.

Afoot, the three travelers become vulnerable to local sheriffs and Nickie exits from a gas station restroom to find Bradley and Less ushered into a squad car. She hitch hikes into town and accepts a meal from Jesse (ROBERT DONNER) a local farm hand. But, as he propositions her for a "quickie," Les appears out of the police station door and she rushes across tearfully to hug him. Bradley follows on Les's heels, each having bought their freedom with savings.

They bed down on the outskirts of town for the night, but Nickie soon leaves the old man to join Les a short distance away and the two take advantage of their solitude and mutual physical attraction to enjoy each other. The next morning, Nickie is shocked to find that Les had left during the night and Bradley attempts to console her. He reveals that his destination is a farm he once owned near Lompoc, California where, convinced that his death is imminent, he wishes to be buried.

On reaching the main highway, they find Les sitting on a curb in tears at the site of an accident that had taken the lives of an entire family. At the end of their resources, the two men each decide that Nickie must return to her home. Bradley uses the last of his savings to buy her a bus ticket and Les earns a couple of dollars for her doing some chores for a roadside merchant (WILLIAM MIMS).

The merchant attempts to cheat the lad of fifty cents and, when Bradley upbraids him for his meanness, he shoves the old man away. Bradley attempts to retaliate but is suddenly stricken and falls gasping for breath. The merchant agrees to loan his pickup truck to Les and Nickie to take the ailing hobo to a doctor but Bradley begs them not to do so, asking them to drive him instead to the resting place of his dreams atop a hill on the Lompoc farm. While the kids argue over a decision, he leaves the truck and attempts to hop a passing freight but falls dead on the roadbed.

Now determined to make the old man's wish come true, the pair head south with Bradley's body wrapped in a tarpaulin in the truck. They find the farm of his dreams, but are prevented from burying him as he desired by the owner (HAROLD STONE). Despite the man's attitude, they return and try to bury him under cover of night but are discovered and are forced to disinter his corpse. Still unabashed, they pawn Nickie's camera and use the money to have Bradley's remains cremated Now they return to the precious hill and, at its summit they scatter the hobos ashes to the winds. happy to have thwarted the obstacles in their path and succeeded in making Bradley's dream come true.