Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: young boy is given small pony by father, Fact2: pony Despite strangles tracheotomy Buck 's best efforts to nurse, Fact3: Tom grows angry at Buck 's willingness to sacrifice horse and steals knife, Fact4: Characters names were changed from those in book, Fact5: Billy Buck has to kill mare in to remove uterus
Output (English): A young boy, Tom Tiflin Peter Miles, is given a small pony by his father Shepperd Strudwick. Tom asks the stable helper, Billy Buck Robert Mitchum, to help him raise and train it so that it can be ridden. During a rain storm the pony gets out of the stable and having been soaked becomes fevered. Despite Bucks best efforts to nurse the pony it develops strangles and requires a tracheotomy. Shortly after the procedure, the pony escapes from the farm. Tom follows the ponys hoof prints to a gully where it has died and is being eaten by vultures. He blames Buck for not saving its life. Buck, feeling remorse, prepares to kill his own pregnant mare in order to give Tom a colt, believing the unborn may not have turned. Tom grows angry at Bucks willingness to sacrifice a horse and steals his knife. When they return to the stable the foal has been born naturally, with both mother and colt surviving. In adapting his novella into a screenplay, Steinbeck focused mainly on the chapters The Gift and The Promise. Characters names were changed from those in the book: Jody Tiflin became Tom, and his parents Carl and Ruth became Fred and Alice. The film also features a much happier ending than the novella: in the book, Billy Buck cannot deliver the foal naturally and so has to kill the mare in order to remove her uterus. Other violent scenes, such as Jody beating a vulture to death, were also toned down or omitted entirely for the film adaptation.