The Dark Rider

This story is basically a murder mystery, and so I won't discuss anything relating to the mystery.

Samantha makes a very improbable drover. Yes, she is a part owner--we know that from the start--but it is amazing that throughout she looks as glamorous as a fashion model. She must have brought along a large quantity of makeup and mascara. Perhaps another drover is secretly a hairdresser. I guess it could happen.

Cheyenne is spared the usual plot necessity of having a romance with Samantha. His presence on the cattle drive is explained by Samantha having swindled him of $300. We know that from the start.

The major plot feature is the murder mystery. See if you can figure it out.

Good episode.. So good that the writers used the same storyline in Maverick season 2 episode 20...

The day after a bank robbery, Cheyenne runs into Samantha Crawford. She offers Cheyenne $300 if he meets her later. After finding her, she tells him two men want to kill her and she needs him to hold them for the sheriff arriving on the stage in the morning. He does but there is no sheriff and the men have a different story about her conning them. He realises she's a con woman, bilking the men out of their mine.

Cheyenne tracks her to a cattle drive to collect the $300. Seeing her situation, Cheyenne offers to be trail boss for one dollar per head, but her partners refuse so he joins as a hand at $30 per month but it will cost them if they find they need his skill. Along the way, they are also joined by a padre who says his goal is to resurrect missions as well as the souls of men.

A fight breaks out between Lew and Jamie Dawson over Sam, and the next day, Jamie is found stabbed with everyone to suspect but no one to blame. Soon another partner is stabbed. As suspicion grows everyone wonders will they make it to Kansas and who will be next? Obviously someone is trying to cut the partnership down to size, hence get a bigger cut of the pie ...

The murderer in the midst element separates this from being an ordinary cattle drive yarn - gave it an Agatha Christie feel, with two men getting stabbed at night. Of course, we think it's because someone wants to whittle the partnership down, but that isn't the case. Loved how Cheyenne figures out who the killer is. Diana Brewster is beautiful as the con lady who has Cheyenne chasing after her and Myron Healey has designs for her.

In the book Warner Brothers Television by Lynn Woolley, Robert W. Malsbary and Robert G. Strange Jr., Diane Brewster's character, Samantha Crawford is discussed on pages 65-67: "Samantha, commonly known as 'Sam', was a beautiful, intelligent, avaricious dealer of the deck who would stop at nothing to take your last dollar...using her feminine charm to the fullest, (complete with 'Southern Belle' accent), Sam would make anyone her puppet.... Bret first came within her clutches when she beat his straight with only a pair of nines, costing him $20,000. She was sly enough to lure Bret into agreeing to play "According to Hoyle"...Brother Bart also later got mixed up with Sam. In "The Savage Hills" episode of Maverick, Sam accidentally awakened Bart while rifling through his clothes pockets in the middle of the night in his hotel room...The importance of Samantha cannot be over-stated. She was the original Maverick. On the Cheyenne segment of Warner Brothers Presents, Samantha debuted debuted as the Maverick prototype in an episode entitled "Dark Rider", which aired September 11, 1956. Owing Cheyenne Bodie money, she gave him the slip. Cheyenne caught up with her, only to have her get away again. Said Huggins "Maverick really started with Samantha". Page 24 of the same book says "The Dark Rider" was "a test show for Maverick. This episode pit Cheyenne against Samantha Crawford, (Diane Brewster), who will return later to plague Bret and Bart."

Ed Robertson's book "Maverick, Legend of the West" on page 66 says "I had used Diane Brewster before I knew that she was a good actress. She had played a similar character in an episode of Cheyenne called "The Dark Rider" and I'm sure I thought of her when I came up with the character Samantha Crawford"..."The Dark Rider is the focus of an interesting chapter in the history of Maverick. In "The Dark Rider", Brewster's character - a con artist - leads a group of men on a cattle drive to Kansas. Cheyenne (Clint Walker) joins the group and eventually saves their lives by unmaking a killer...The name of Brewster's character in "The Dark Rider" is Samantha, a fact which has led to one of the biggest myths surrounding Maverick, i.e. That "The Dark Rider" was designed as a prototype for the Maverick series, and that the 'Samantha' played by Brewster in that show was the same character she played on Maverick. Ironically, Roy Huggins himself created that myth when he told TV Guide in a 1959 interview that Maverick rally started with Samantha."

"Huggins remembers making that remark, but he also cautions that comments such as "Maverick really started with. Samantha" have to be understood in their proper context. Sometimes, when you're interviewed, you make statements that are exaggerations for the sake of the moment. And sometimes those exaggerations are taken quite literally and repeated until they become mythic in proportion. Since I was the one that started this particular myth about Samantha Crawford, let me be the one to end it. Maverick did not start with Samantha, even if I said that in TV Guide and The Dark Rider was not a forerunner of Maverick."

"There are, however, two interesting footnotes to the "Dark Rider" myth. Besides Diane Brewster, Samantha Crawford on Maverick and the Samantha character on Cheyenne have something else in common. Roy Huggins named both characters after his mother. "My mother's name was Samantha and Crawford was her maiden name" And there is a connection between The Dark Rider and Maverick: Huggins took the script and had it rewritten as a Maverick episode "Yellow River"

I read this and pulled out my DVD of "The Dark Rider". Very early on, in the scene in the church, Cheyenne asks Samantha what her name is and she replies "Samantha Crawford". The Dark Rider may not have bene a protoype for Maverick but the Samantha in The Dark Rider, is very clearly the same character who showed up on Maverick a year later.