The man he shot just happened to have shot at him first. On a mission from Fort Delgado, Cheyenne Bodie loses his horse and almost his life after being pursued by a band of Sioux. Trudging through an isolated stretch of land, he comes upon a miner who sees him and fires without waiting for introductions. Cheyenne fires back, and his shot is more effective. He carries the man, Morgan, to his cabin, where he tends to his wound. As Cheyenne is about to leave, the man's wife, Jeannie, notices his own grazing wound and insists that he stop to rest. He stays on to help out, but after a tension-filled couple of days between the two of them, three strangers show up and that's when the real action begins.
Three escaped convicts turn this into more of a nail-biter than it would have been without them, especially adding into the mix the existence of gold on the property, the Sioux chief's promise to keep the whites from carrying that secret beyond the valley, and the criminals' equal determination to get as much of it as possible for themselves. The tension of the days before their arrival centered around Jeannie's palpable and understandable attraction for the tall, honorable man who had gone out of his way to save her husband, and Cheyenne is likewise drawn to her. But when Willis Peake and his two cohorts arrive, romance takes a back seat to their callous disregard for anything except the gold, which puts all of their lives in danger. We could have told them that such single-minded greed would not end well.
A very young Angie Dickinson plays Jeannie, a demure, lonely frontier wife who is quite a departure from many later vixen roles that turned her into a sex symbol. But we do get hints of her future in her reaction to Cheyenne Bodie's intensely masculine presence. That lantern-lighting scene is possibly the most innocently seductive in tv history. James Garner as the somewhat slimy Willis Peake also departed from the genial, easy-going persona that later served him so well as Brett Maverick and Jim Rockford. This was a tight story with good performances and some reasonably heart-pounding moments. Clint Walker in that fringed white doeskin shirt would turn any pioneer woman's head, but it was what was inside--besides an incredible physique--that mattered most. His gentle, considerate demeanor cemented his reputation as a cowboy any lady of the old West would feel safe with. In this episode, he exudes not only kindness and unselfishness but also the manly courage and strength that are indispensable qualities in a genuine hero of any generation.
Three escaped convicts turn this into more of a nail-biter than it would have been without them, especially adding into the mix the existence of gold on the property, the Sioux chief's promise to keep the whites from carrying that secret beyond the valley, and the criminals' equal determination to get as much of it as possible for themselves. The tension of the days before their arrival centered around Jeannie's palpable and understandable attraction for the tall, honorable man who had gone out of his way to save her husband, and Cheyenne is likewise drawn to her. But when Willis Peake and his two cohorts arrive, romance takes a back seat to their callous disregard for anything except the gold, which puts all of their lives in danger. We could have told them that such single-minded greed would not end well.
A very young Angie Dickinson plays Jeannie, a demure, lonely frontier wife who is quite a departure from many later vixen roles that turned her into a sex symbol. But we do get hints of her future in her reaction to Cheyenne Bodie's intensely masculine presence. That lantern-lighting scene is possibly the most innocently seductive in tv history. James Garner as the somewhat slimy Willis Peake also departed from the genial, easy-going persona that later served him so well as Brett Maverick and Jim Rockford. This was a tight story with good performances and some reasonably heart-pounding moments. Clint Walker in that fringed white doeskin shirt would turn any pioneer woman's head, but it was what was inside--besides an incredible physique--that mattered most. His gentle, considerate demeanor cemented his reputation as a cowboy any lady of the old West would feel safe with. In this episode, he exudes not only kindness and unselfishness but also the manly courage and strength that are indispensable qualities in a genuine hero of any generation.
