User Reviews

I started watching Wagon Train on STARZ/Encore Western channel when they began airing the series from the beginning. I loved the Ward Bond/Major Adams seasons, but John McIntire is very good as Chris Hale. This particular episode showcased Terry Wilson as Bill Hawks. Dana Wynter, doing an atrocious Southern accent that was very distracting....was still pretty good as Lizbeth Calhoun. Not a bad episode, but not great either. All I kept thinking when I saw Bill 'falling in love' with Lizbeth was.....what the heck happened to Bill's wife and children? They were often featured in the first season.....then merely mentioned in the second season....and now completely forgotten in season five. 😔

Doing her best Scarlett O'Hara fiddle-dee-dee Dana Wynter joins the Wagon Train around the same time as the army tells John McIntire they're looking for some counterfeit plates last known to be in the hands of some Confederates who never surrendered. Dana Wynter also never surrendered and she's waging her own war and she's got those plates and a lot of counterfeit money to help collapse the economy of those damn Yankess.

Part of that war is getting both Terry Wilson and Denny Miller in heat over her. She kind of likes Bill Hawks but not after she hears of his Union Army service. Also interested in those plates is another unreconstructed rebel Peter Whitney who leads a Quantrill like outlaw gang.

Two things in this episode are worth waiting for. How John McIntire outsmarts Whitney and where Dana Wynter hid all that money. Also back when Wagon Train started who'd have thought Bill Hawks would get the girl? Then again back then he had a wife who was ever so quietly eliminated.

Have not seen every episode of Wagon Train, not by a long shot, but I have never seen Bill Hawkes and Duke acting so ridiculous, especially Bill. They are swooning over the same woman(Dana Wynter) and wind up in a fight with each other. Never before seen Bill kiss a woman but here he does and it seems so cringe worthy. Bill usually is the quite, reasonable type but here he is totally out of character. Anyway, it was not an especially good episode but I don't really like Wagon Train all that much anyway. Gunsmoke it aint. I think one thing wrong with Wagon Train is that it had too many main characters(total of 7) on the 8 seasons where as Gunsmoke only had 4 over TWENTY seasons with a couple thrown in that only lasted a couple of seasons(Thad and Quint). Wagon Train had 2 different wagon Masters( Chris and Seth), 2 different scouts(Cooper and Flint), a cook (Charlie Wooster) and 2 whatever they did(Bill and Duke) over the years.