Before Michael Burns became a regular on Wagon Train he was a part of this episode, an integral part in The Dr. Denker Story where the guest star was Theodore Bikel. This episode made use of Bikel's musical talents as well as acting ability.
Robert Horton and Terry Wilson find a young Burns on the trail beside a burned out wagon and a dead father. He's been frightened into silence and they take him on the train. Later on they come upon a wagon in need of repair and a slightly soused Theodore Bikel in the title role of this episode.
Bikel it turns out is a man of many parts, he makes and plays musical instruments and soon gets Burns into talking. But Bikel is a man of many parts, he's also the Denker of Denker's Arms Manufacturers and he's carrying crates of rifles and that new product that Alfred Nobel just invented over in Sweden, dynamite. That cargo made travel with wagon trains impossible and word of it was known. Three really scurvy individuals were preying on isolated wagons looking for that cargo and it was they who had bushwhacked the Burns wagon and killed his father.
The best scenes in the episode were with Bikel and the children. He taught them to play a musical piece, rather badly to be sure, they sounded like a product of The Music Man's Harold Hill and his 'think system'. But fans of Wagon Train might have recognized the tune, it was a song that Ann Blyth sang in a guest starring episode she did in Wagon Train's first season, To Settle In The West.
This was a nicely done episode displaying the many talents of Theodore Bikel.