Summary

In Krasnodar district, during the first years after World War II, a detective story - in which a group of children from a southern seaside town help to neutralize a gang of ruthless thieves - emerges out of young Shurka's discovery of a headless, toy riding horse in a water cave wherein he had taken shelter from a sudden storm separately from his friends with whom he had been swimming in the once mine-infested coastal waters.