User Reviews

Paladin receives an urgent message while working a job in Nevada from a man named Roy (Clu Gulager) who was saved from the hanging noose thanks to a chaplain, Robert April (Larry J Blake). April is in pursuit of a "lost cause" he considers worth "saving", that of a no-good escaped convict, Eddie (Brad von Beltz). Up in "mountain country", as a snow storm starts a brewing, Paladin accepts the mission, but he has to sock Roy in the chops when he seems hesitant on going along (even though the chaplain rescued him from the hangman's noose). Paladin is sore, and ornery, in this episode of Have Gun – Will Travel, finding it hard to understand why April would risk his life and welfare for a rotten-to-the-core, weasely scumbag Eddie. The chaplain's benevolence--including when he insists on helping Paladin move Eddie (having stayed out in the night cold without warmth, he seems to be in a bad way) and Roy (shot by Eddie, who had been perched on a hill with rifle in hand), on a sled back to the horses (that were left a distance away by Paladin to keep them from suffering the rough trek up mountains to find April)--eventually leaves an impact on Paladin. Willing to sacrifice his own health for Eddie (who eventually pulls a machete in the attempt to murder Roy), April is the living embodiment of a saint. Tragically, the rough sled pull is too much for April, even as he and Paladin were successful in making it to the horses, and Eddie's faux "sickness" reveals that maybe such a sacrifice just wasn't worth it. Paladin quotes Macbeth, and he does chew on his bitter anger towards Eddie, really wondering what purpose could be served for such a good man as April to offer such a reprieve to a convict that stole his coat, food, and left him to die. Quoting from the Good Book at the end ("turn the other cheek"), Paladin comes to an understanding that despite all that Eddie does to deserve a bullet, he accepts that perhaps allowing the piece of trash to fall prey to the elements or posse in retreat pays better homage to April's memory. Having to dig a grave, believing Roy might just shoot him after the job was done, Eddie begs and pleads like a little bitch; this was at least some respite for all Eddie was responsible for…the death of a true hero who didn't live by the legend of the gun. The title of this episode is maybe a bit misleading; Roy is definitely a secondary character, and April is truly the centerpiece of the story's sympathy and inspiration.