User Reviews

HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL "Winchester Quarantine" 1957

HAVE GUN – WILL TRAVEL was a Western series that ran on television between 1957 and 1963. The series was very popular and was always in the top ten of the television ratings. The series ran for a total of 225 episodes. Richard Boone headlines as "Paladin", a gun for hire, if the cause is right. Working out of San Francisco, Boone places ads in newspapers offering his services. $1,000 and he is your man. While handy with a gun or fists, he tries to settle the problem without violence. (Not very successfully as a general rule)

In this episode, the fourth of the series, Boone arrives in a small town and sees a man, Anthony Caruso, catching a beating from a group of cowhands. Caruso is a Cherokee Indian who has a ranch in the area. The main ranch owner in the district, Leo Gordon, hates Indians. He has arranged a boycott of the local business owners against Caruso.

Needless to say this goes against Boone's sense of fair play. He inserts himself into the dispute. It seems that the cattle on Caruso's ranch are sick and dying. The locals are sure it is some sort of bovine disease and are keeping Caruso bottled up.

Boone though has seen something similar and does some digging on his own. He has the soil tested and finds that there is a metal element in the soil. This is what is causing the cattle to get sick.

In order to help out Caruso and his wife, Carol Thurston, Boone arranges a sale of the ranch to big wig Leo Gordon. He of course does not tell Gordon about the heavy metal problem with the soil. That is at least until the sale has been made.

This is an interesting episode with the entire cast and crew all doing good work.

"Never draw in anger, Mr. McNally, it slows the hand."

Racism is the topic in this episode of "Have Gun-Will Travel" as Paladin (at first looking like a riverboat gambler when getting off his stage out of interest in a brawl he notices in the little town of Bridesville) offers his services to a Cherokee, hated and "quarantined" by the nearby town and its citizenry, warned to move his "diseased" cattle out the territory or else. Joseph Whitehorse is "an educated Indian", rejected by his own kind and treated worse by the whites, Paladin perhaps the only humane white man who has come in contact with him in quite some time, for the exception of a chemist (who considers the attitudes and beliefs of the town as backwards and uneducated). While Paladin puts on a poker face, confusing Mr. Whitehorse (Anthony Caruso) and his fiery, opinionated wife, Martha (Carol Thurston) into thinking he has sided with bitter racist (and ranch owner, as well as, the central voice of Bridesville), Clyde McNally (Leo Gordon, his performance charged with an open detest and revulsion of anyone remotely "Injun") over the loss of their land to him. But Paladin, after having tested the land's soil of Whitehorse thanks to the town chemist, knows a secret—the ace in his hand, so to speak—and needs to conceal it from Whitehorse in order for the land trade to go through. The result of all this has Paladin having to draw his gun as a heated, very steamed McNally instigates a showdown within the cabin of Whitehorse. This episode, "Winchester Quarantine", takes a sympathetic view of the mistreated Indian, in this case the Cherokee just trying to carve out a meager existence with his mission wife through toil and sweat on his own little piece of land, with the obstacles of intolerance, living in the past, and blinded pride standing in the way of such desires. Here Boone is more intense, with a face and tone that successfully contradicts his usual character, important if Paladin is to complete a transaction, earn his own fee, and help a good, honest couple receive better than they have at the present. Fascinating is how it appears as if Paladin's motives are based purely on greed and pleasant living, the reasons he's motivated to "take Whitehorse's land from him." I think that only makes the end result far more satisfying.

Paladin's stories can sometimes be a little bit too well-meaning and preachy, like in this episode where he defends a thoroughly decent mission-educated Indian farmer against the bigoted intolerance of his white neighbor, on occasion of a suspected epizootic his cattle may be responsible for. The ever knowledgeable Paladin confirms with the aid of the local pharmacist that it is not an epizootic but animal food poisoning from toxic molybdenum in excess in the ground - but not before he has tricked the bigoted neighbor into buying back for a hefty sum the actually worthless land. Good trick indeed, and in the happy end finale, another white farmer becomes at last friendly towards the very civil Indian and his wife. But the most interesting angle is that the Indian farmer starts doubting whether having exchanged the wild manners of his ancestors for the mild, polished ones of Whites he was taught at the mission, has not been a curse in disguise : it hampers him replying with violence to violence made to him, and it leaves him and his wife exposed to harassment.

This one begins with dude-dressed Paladin disembarking from a stagecoach in a town where two men are fighting in the dirt. We learn the man being beaten is an Indian, Joseph Whitehorse. His horse has been shot and killed by Joe Peavy. Paladin bumps past Mr Whitehorse and slips his business card into the man's vest.

Paladin befriends Mr Whitehorse as he's cleaning up at a spring. Paladin offers him a ride on his spare mount. Mr and Mrs Whitehorse's cattle are dying. Why? Paladin solves the mystery with science and cleverly arranges to have his fee paid.

The true focus of this tale is bigotry and hatred. The evil rancher is McNally who hates every Indian he sees because his father and brother were murdered by the Sioux 25 years previously. Mr Whitehorse and his wife are Cherokee and have nothing to do with McNally or his tragic past. Nevertheless, he still blames every Indian he meets for what happened so long ago.

Paladin's Horse: Dappled with a straight white blaze and white stockings on all legs. Since he came into town on the stage, it must be a rental.

Paladin's Gear: Concha black hat, black Western button down shirt, white tie, black pants, black holster with colt, derringer, regular Western saddle...no spurs.

Paladin Shoots: At Billy Joe Kane and his posse, McNally

Forgot To Duck: Shoulder hit by Holt

Paladin Shoots: Holt

Paladin Kills: No one in this episode

Total Accumulated Kills: 1

Paladin Disarmed: 2

Palladin comes to the aid of a Cherokee rancher in trouble. His cattle are dying for unknown reasons and local racist ranchers led by Clyde McNally (Leo Gordon) are trying to force him off his land and kill any of his animals found off his land in fears they will affect the rest of the local animals. Palladin turns to science with the help of local pharmacist Rheinhardt (Vic Perrin) to find the answer--and as a result gyp McNally with a land swindle.

Palladin';s solution to the problem is a little sketchy in this one. Yes, the racist rancher gets his--but even Joseph Whitehorse declares he doesn't want to get the money the way Palladin arranges it.

In what seems like an endless string of Italians playing Native Americans, Anthony Carusco plays Joseph Whitehorse. He's probably best remembered as Bella Oxmix in the "Star Trek" gangster episode. Let's just say he was better cast in that. Leo Gordon is good as the hard headed rancher, but other than showing off Palladin's belief in racial equality and knowledge in science, not one of the top episodes.