User Reviews

Bart is holding 4 aces when the sheriff runs him out of town. Nobody likes to be called a "tinhorn." A diverse group of passengers rides the stagecoach to a station run by Buddy Ebsen. It turns out that Buddy is a thief and a murderer. "You're what I call a thinking man, Mr. Maverick." The woman on the stage is Suzanne Lloyd, and she is looking for her husband. When the kid slaps her, Bart tosses him out of the moving coach. "Let's play cards!" When the undertaker disappears, Bart puts two and two together. It gets him and Suzanne tied up, but resourceful Bart breaks a bottle and cuts his ropes. By 1961, I was beginning to drift from the series. A mistake!

This is one of the best Bart Maverick / Jack Kelly episodes. A scary Western tale of being hold up with people you don't know at Stagecoach transfer stations, and not knowing who to trust. It unwinds from the start when they all get on the stagecoach and we think we know who are and are not the baddies. But when it comes to greed in the old west it's every man for themselves.

Great cast with another episode with Buddy Ebsen playing a similar Jed Clampett hillbilly character, except unfortunately an evil version we find out; as the leader of the family of robbers and killers. A great heart pounder with twists and turns and a high body count.

Strangely unsatisfying episode and conclusion. Normally I am all in favour of endings to family shows, even in the late 50s, early 60s that does not entail dead bodies littering up the scenery. But, in this episode it seemed that all the decent folk (bar Jack Kelly and Suzanne Lloyd) were bumped off quite callously, while a whole number of despicable types survived even if they were all arrested in the end.

Even the villains with a milligram of compassion or gallantry like Rayford Barnes and Donald Barry did not survive when much worse desperadoes did. To be fair, credit for character performance must go to Buddy Ebsen playing against type as nothing like his soon to be Jed Clampett. But top honours has to go to his screen wife, Virginia Christine. Her capability to change instantly from a kindly, dear matriarch to murderous conniving pitiless horror was more than a match for Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck. Christine's character was so evil, I could not believe she lived to face justice.

4 stars awarded just for her performance.