Desperate Encounter

While Don Galloway and Barbara Anderson hold down the fort in San Francisco, Raymond Burr and Don Mitchell go up into the Sierras to visit an old friend of Chief Ironside's a hermit like dude who lives way up in the mountains in a cabin, where boyfriends used to excavate for mines with Darling Clementine.

Only the friend ain't there and in fact the Chief and Mark Sanger find a spot where they think he's buried. And the law as represented by the local police chief Ron Hayes is in on the plot.

This one was truly harebrained given Raymond Burr's prominence in San Francisco do they really think they could make him disappear? But it gives us a chance to see that even though Burr hasn't got the use of his legs, he's one resourceful fellow. The locals of Gold Strike, California haven't got a chance.

***SPOLERS*** Going to visit an old friend of his Orrie "the Hermit" Franklin in the High Sierras Chief Robert T. Ironside, Raymond Burr, together with his personal valet and driver Mark Sanger, Don Mitchell,end up getting kidnapped by the local law enforcer of the small town of Gold Strike Marshall Douglas, Ron Hayes, and two locals George and his son Charles Huff, Tom Simcox & Gene Raymond. The reason for all this happening to both Ironside and Sanger had to do with Ol' Orrie not being around or alive to greet them.

With Orrie refusing to give up the deed to his shack and property that was to have a new super highway built on it had the Huff's, who wanted to own it, together with Marshall Douglas put the squeeze on him. The squeeze that they put on Orrie ended up, with him falling down and breaking his neck, killing him. Held hostage independently from his loyal and faithful driver Mark Sanger Ironside tries to make his escape by crawling without his wheelchair to freedom only to be captured and brought back to the Huff Estate where he's given all the booze he can drink to immobilize and pacify him.

****SPOILERS****Not exactly knowing what to do it's Marshall Douglas who comes up with this hair brain plan to murder Chief Ironside and frame Mark Sanger with the crime. The trouble is that Douglas as well as the Huff's greatly underestimated Ol' Chief Ironside who as we soon see has a few tricks up his sleeve and was to use them with shocking efficiency. Even without his wheels, or wheelchair, the old guy still had enough gin & vinegar left in him to take care of his and Sanger's kidnappers. And last but not least at the same time solve his good friend Orrie the Hermit's murder in the process.