User Reviews

The episode begins as Victoria, who is riding along a trail, notices a fire in the distance. She hauls it to the fire to find a neighbors house afire. Bandits (called O'Tools in this episode) have been around Stockton causing havoc among the citizens. When Victoria arrives the man of the house has been killed and the women passed-out in the yard.

When Victoria awakes her, she starts yelling that her baby is still in inside the burning house. With the flames engulfing the house there is no use trying to enter the residence. However just as all hope is given up- a man comes up and pulls the baby to safety. The man just happens to be an old flame of Victoria named David Wyncop.

Later it is learned that David Wyncop has been hired by the Stockton town council to protect the citizens from the bandits. David will bring in some of his men and set up patrols to stop the bandits.

The problem is that David's men start treating Stockton as their own person playhouse by disobeying any form of law or common decency. It goes from bad to worse when David decides - with the Barkley boys out on a cattle drive -that he will make the Barkley Ranch his headquarters for his type of justice.

This will cause Victoria to reexamine her memory of David Wyncop as she now sees him in a different light. Victoria will have to confront the present and forget about the past.

Barbara Stanwyck gives an excellent performance as the matriarch of the Barkley family. She gets the opportunity to project her strong attitude in many of the scenes. She is tough as nails when confronting the hired lawmen that act worse than most criminals and somewhat fragile when it comes to memories of a younger David Wyncop. Her acting makes the entire show worthy of a watch.

A good story with an interesting ending. Good watch for viewers!

The Barkley men are all away on a cattle drive when Victoria Barkley makes a re acquaintance of an old beau. It happens in the most dramatic fashion, Dan O'Herlihy rushes into a burning building to save an infant.

We learn that O'Herlihy was a southern gentlemen who lost all he had in the late Civil War. He's far more cynical gentleman than when Barbara Stanwyck knew him back when. What he's in Stockton for is that he's got himself a group of traveling regulators. There's an outlaw band that's been marauding lately and these guys are around to patrol the roads.

This crew that O'Herlihy has aren't any better than outlaws themselves. Some of the plot of the Kirk Douglas classic western Posse are raised here. Remember what Kirk's deputies were like and the liberties they took with the citizens they were sworn to protect. These guys act like a conquering army, the cure maybe worse than the disease.

I thought this story was not well constructed and the ending rather lame, especially what they seemed to be building up to. Not one of the better Big Valley stories.