The Clara Duncan Story Apr 22, 1959
The Duke Le May Story Apr 29, 1959
The Kate Parker Story May 6, 1959
The Steve Campden Story May 13, 1959
An unusual episode, (In a series that, like Rawhide, has a lot of them), which features a young Angie Dickinson as the fiancé of an artist who went out west after getting bad reviews and is now painting some (lousy watercolors) of western subjects. One is a sexy picture of Angie, (is there any other kind?), hanging above the bar in a saloon that has been very successful because of it. Another in "Portrait of a lynching", which has been getting him some attention back east. It's also been getting him some attention out west by the rancher, (not really so) accurately depicted in the painting and his henchmen. Flint has a supporting role after Clara and the artist's father arrive to find him.
Cameron Mitchell, a very fine actor, is Duke Le May who is an escaped convict hiding with the wagon train under an assumed name. A lawman arrives looking for him and Duke wins a shoot-out but is captured. The major orders McCullough to take him to a nearby fort, which sets up a classic back-and forth situation between a (temporary) lawman and his prisoner as they travel over the prairie. Le<ay tells Flint that he grew up in a strict religious household and that he became a criminal as a rebellion against his strict father. They come across a small ranch ruled by a man, (Ed Platt) very similar to his father. He has an attractive daughter who finds Le May interesting and young son about the same age Duke was when he left home and who looks up to Le May as a man it might be exciting to be. Le May's only opposition, other than Flint, is the father. But he wins him over -temporarily - by claiming he knows how to find water on the property, (there is a terrible drought), using a divining rod. That ends when he digs in a place that appears to have no water. He tries to escape but the boy tries to stop his father from shooting Duke. The gun goes off and the boy is shot. He'll survive. Duke returns after much thought, deciding he can't leave the boy - or leave him thinking that his type of life is one to leave. Then some water bubbles up in the hole they dug. Flint declares it three miracles. I wasn't sure I liked this one until that ending, which was very affecting.
It's interesting that, in the initial confrontation, Duke is disarmed by Charley Wooster with a whip, drawing rare admiration from his wagon train mates. This is the beginning of some attempts to make Charley, who heretofore has been a clownish character, into something more substantial. One wonders if this was at the behest of Frank McGrath, who got sick of playing Charley as an idiot.
The Kate Parker story was less satisfying. It features Virginia Grey, who had played Major Adams' long-lost love in "The Major Adams Story" in season one and now returns in a different role, although no one seems to notice the resemblance. She's married to the vile Warren Stevens, who views everything in terms of dollar signs. Robert Fuller, a future regular on the show but not in this role, is a young husband who is concerned about the condition of his wife, (Ruta Lee), who is injured in a wagon accident and has to stay behind. Major Adams will send a doctor back when they encounter one. (A wagon train is like a moving town: you would think they would make sure to have a doctor along.) Grey, (she's Kate Parker), agrees to stay with them, to help her and perhaps get away from her husband. But he won't go away as long as she's got a box of cash and gold coins. He demands the box. Fuller shoots him with a one-shot derringer, which wounds his leg. Stevens fortunately doesn't kill him. But insists his wife take him away with the wagon at gunpoint, leaving Bob and Ruta to try to survive a blizzard in a small tent. It winds up with Stevens breaking through some thin ice because he is weighed down with the gold coins, (something they borrowed from Jack London's "Call of the Wild"). Kate is recused by a mountain man, Royal Dano, who has lost his Indian wife and starts falling for her. Meanwhile Bob and Ruta have survived by warming themselves in each other's arms. The theme, obviously, is that caring for each other pays off more than carrying gold across ice.
More remarkable is The Steve Campden Story. The train is stuck in a mountain pass, (so many of these second-year stories take place in the mountains), and Flint is sent to find a way through, (haven't they been there before?). He encounters a father and son pair of mountaineers. The father, (the always excellent Torin Thatcher), is a Captain Ahab type whose Moby Dick is whatever mountain that hasn't been climbed yet. He suggests Flint come with them because the best way to spot a mountain pass is from the top of the highest mountain. He agrees to go and notices that the son, Steve Jr., (the also excellent Ben Cooper, who has a fine British accent for an actor from Memphis, Tennessee), is not an enthusiastic participant. He's clearly scared of mountain-climbing, which Steve Sr. Attributes to cowardice, always comparing him unfavorably to his deceased older brother - and himself.
Faced with a blizzard, the climbers find a cave high up the mountain. In there they find, (but we do not see, except for what was an obvious prop albino mountain lion with unusually long teeth). But we heard them constantly, their noises provided rather obviously by recordings of cats meowing. But it's unnerving to the men and to the audience. Big Steve puts on his act of bluster, mocking the concern of the two younger me. But he gets injured and insists that he'll stay in the mountain as the other two go for help. Little Steve, in a confrontation gets him to admit that his brother was no paragon: he died in battle, while covering in a foxhole. His father has just used him as a cudgel to belabor his younger son - and make it look like the father is so much stronger than his son. When Flint and Little Steve get back down the mountain, make contact with the train and return to rescue Big Steve, they find him overwhelmed by fear, (his hair has turned white), and he tries to get away form them but falls into what looks like a bottomless pit. Was he deluded into thinking they were a threat to him? Was he scared of showing them how weak he had become, destroyed by the fear he wouldn't admit? The answer is at the bottom of the pit in the mountain he couldn't conquer.
The episode is hurt by the cheesy effects. A climb supposedly up the mountain is an obvious crawl across a sound stage - perpendicular to the mountains in the background. And the 'saber tooth tiger' must be seen to be disbelieved.
