When you see James Griffith and Myron Healey in the cast line-up, you know somebody's going to be giving Cheyenne Bodie a very hard time. In this episode, he's a drive foreman. They are ne'er-do-well drovers who kill the herd's trail boss when he discovers that their real purpose is to rob the town bank; then they convince his sick, liquor-fueled brother Matt and the other ne'er-do-well drovers to storm the town to retrieve the boss's corpse, but it's really so they can rob the bank.
The churlish, no-nonsense marshal antagonizes almost everyone, from the reprobate drovers to the faint-hearted townspeople, to his own damaged family. So the only support he has when the drovers come a'stormin' consists of two old hands and Cheyenne Bodie. Quite a bit of carnage ensues, with mostly bad 'uns ending up on the hot end of a rifle. But the upside is that, due to Cheyenne's forceful assist on the one hand in defending the town from rampaging drovers and his gentle intervention on the other in convincing the marshal's wife that her son is not the milquetoast she'd like him to be, the town and the bank are saved, and the marshal's family goes from being fractured to reconciled with a bright future ahead.
Whether unintentionally or out of vindictiveness because he had called the studio's bluff during their notorious contract dispute and won, Warner Brothers didn't give Clint Walker much to do in some episodes for the final two years of the series. But since the show stars him as the ever-honorable Cheyenne Bodie and he gives every story his usual focused, solid effort, Clint Walker's presence alone makes every episode worth watching. In this one, Andrew Duggan as the staunch marshal and venerable codgers William Fawcett and Tim Graham lend able support. And suffice to say that those particular bad guys won't be giving Bodie a hard time again anytime soon.
The churlish, no-nonsense marshal antagonizes almost everyone, from the reprobate drovers to the faint-hearted townspeople, to his own damaged family. So the only support he has when the drovers come a'stormin' consists of two old hands and Cheyenne Bodie. Quite a bit of carnage ensues, with mostly bad 'uns ending up on the hot end of a rifle. But the upside is that, due to Cheyenne's forceful assist on the one hand in defending the town from rampaging drovers and his gentle intervention on the other in convincing the marshal's wife that her son is not the milquetoast she'd like him to be, the town and the bank are saved, and the marshal's family goes from being fractured to reconciled with a bright future ahead.
Whether unintentionally or out of vindictiveness because he had called the studio's bluff during their notorious contract dispute and won, Warner Brothers didn't give Clint Walker much to do in some episodes for the final two years of the series. But since the show stars him as the ever-honorable Cheyenne Bodie and he gives every story his usual focused, solid effort, Clint Walker's presence alone makes every episode worth watching. In this one, Andrew Duggan as the staunch marshal and venerable codgers William Fawcett and Tim Graham lend able support. And suffice to say that those particular bad guys won't be giving Bodie a hard time again anytime soon.
