A Hundred Yards Over the Rim

"A Hundred Yards Over the Rim"
	The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 23
Directed by	Buzz Kulik
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Fred Steiner
Production code	173-3654
Original air date	April 7, 1961
Guest appearance(s)
	Cliff Robertson John Crawford; Miranda Jones; Evans Evans; John Astin; Edward Platt;

"A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" is episode 59 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on April 7, 1961, on CBS.

Opening narration

The year is 1847, the place is the territory of New Mexico, the people are a tiny handful of men and women with a dream. Eleven months ago, they started out from Ohio and headed west. Someone told them about a place called California, about a warm sun and a blue sky, about rich land and fresh air, and at this moment, almost a year later, they've seen nothing but cold, heat, exhaustion, hunger, and sickness. This man's name is Christian Horn. He has a dying eight-year-old son and a heartsick wife, and he's the only one remaining who has even a fragment of the dream left. Mr. Chris Horn, who's going over the top of a rim to look for water and sustenance and in a moment will move into the Twilight Zone.

Plot

In the year 1847, Chris Horn is the leader of a small wagon train from Ohio attempting to reach California. Horn's wife and young son Christian are riding in one of the group's covered wagons. Christian is dangerously ill, and the others advise Horn the group wishes to turn back, as they're almost out of food and water, and they lack medicine for those who are sick, like young Christian. Determined not to turn back, Horn sets off alone in a desperate search for water and sustenance, which he tells himself he'll find over the rim of a nearby hill.

Horn crosses the sandy rim and suddenly finds himself in 1961 New Mexico. He is perplexed to see power lines, a hard black road, and a large truck coming at him, horn blaring. As the loud, fast-moving "monster with a face" zooms past the unnerved Horn, he stumbles, accidentally firing his rifle and grazing his arm.

He comes to a small café and gas station, owned by Joe and Mary Lou. The friendly Joe gives Horn water and Mary Lou tends to his injury, offering him penicillin, which she explains will ward off infection. They ask where he is from, curious about his old-fashioned clothes and "antique" (yet seemingly new) rifle; they don't believe his story of traveling by wagon from Ohio. When Horn says he was looking for water, Joe mentions the location of a nearby water source, which also attracts game for food. Horn is then shocked to see the year "1961" on a wall calendar, and the couple is convinced the desert heat has made him mentally unstable.

Joe calls a local doctor to come check on Horn. The doctor finds Horn to be fit and seemingly rational, with only the implausibility of the man's biography giving him reason to think otherwise. He calls the sheriff as the appropriate authority to look after him. Meanwhile, Horn has found an encyclopedia containing a brief biographical entry for "Horn, Christian Jr., M.D.", who did great work with children's diseases in late 19th-century California. Horn proudly concludes this is his son, and believes that he's been brought to this place to save him. Taking the penicillin tablets with him, he bolts from the café and runs back toward where he came from.

The sheriff arrives, and he and Joe go after Horn, nearly catching up to him. Horn stumbles, dropping his rifle before scrambling back over the rim. There he sees the wagon train where he had left it, then looks back over the rim to find the territory unsettled, with no power lines or highway. After giving his son a dose of penicillin, Horn leads the party toward the water and game he'd learned of, and onward to California.

Meanwhile, Joe and the sheriff have returned to the café. Joe tells Mary Lou that Horn simply vanished; all they found was Horn's rifle on the ground where he dropped it. Looking at it, they see that it now shows the effects of more than 100 years of exposure to the sun, its metal corroded and its wooden parts falling to pieces at their touch.

Closing narration

Mr. Christian Horn, one of the hearty breed of men who headed west during a time when there were no concrete highways or the solace of civilization. Mr. Christian Horn, and family and party, heading west, after a brief detour to The Twilight Zone.

Cast

Cliff Robertson as Chris Horn
John Crawford as Joe
Miranda Jones as Martha Horn
Evans Evans as Mary Lou
John Astin as Charlie
Edward Platt as Doctor
Ken Drake as Man
Robert L. McCord III as Sheriff

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

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The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"