Broken Bridge: The T & T Circus is stranded in town after a bridge is washed out. The efforts to fix a new bridge keep the tension between Bonnie Stevens and her ex-husband going as she tries to get him to let her see their son and he keeps turning her down.
Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: A rare female example. When the T & T Circus stops in a small town, sharpshooter Bonnie Stevens encounters the husband and son she abandoned years before, and she is forced to explain why she did so. She was feeling stifled and slowly going insane on the isolated ranch, so she left the child with the ranch foreman's wife (who had no children and who she knew would dote on the boy) because she knew life on the road was no life for a small child.
Divorce Is Temporary: At the end, Bonnie and Dan solve their long-lasting grudge and, because she'd been thinking of quitting her sharpshooter career for a while, she decides to stay in town and reunite with Dan and raise their son together.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Fittingly for a sharpshooter, Bonnie is skilled enough to put out candles with bullets, and even fire at her targets blindfolded, which she does during a challenge where her ex-husband tries to compete with her under their son's insistence (he didn't know she was his mother), but Dan gives up before trying, much to Ritchie's surprise and frustration as he thought his father to be the best shooter in the world. Then it gets temporarily subverted as the emotional stress of confronting her ex-husband and being forbidden to see their son causes her to miss a shot and hit a voluntary during a number of firing at her while she was spinning on a wheel, though thankfully it's nothing serious.
Lies to Children: Dan Osborne told his and Bonnie's son Ritchie that his mother was deceased to spare him the fact that she essentially abandoned them. When he overhears them during an argument and finds that she's alive, he doesn't take it well and even tries to sneak into her wagon to run away with her as the circus is about to depart.
