When Doc Murchison is shot and killed when he happens upon two local ranchers robbing the Wells Fargo office of $10,000 late one evening, Jim Hardie is sent in to investigate. After a frustrating start to the investigation with no leads, Hardie gets a break in the case when a young boy reveals that he witnessed the murder and can identify the killers.
ToWF had a lot of these types of episodes, where Hardie uses whatever means at his disposal to solve a case. He would use guile, misdirection, and deception frequently in these instances. He also deduced that the killers most likely knew Doc Murchison, and would've been afraid that he could either recognized their faces, voices, or horses.
The local sheriff was elderly, and Hardie didn't feel he had done a lot to solve the crime. Hardie typically is careful not to overstep his authority in relation to the local law, but in this case he forgoes stepping on the Sheriff's toes and pushes forward in the investigation aggressively.
The young witness, Billy Burns, and his older sister Sharon had lost their parents in an Indian raid, and were squatting on a piece of land they wanted to homestead. Billy is working hard to earn enough money to buy the land, but the price is high...$1000.
Hardie displays considerable guile in this one, first questioning the local population with much suspicion using a special horseshoe, hoping someone would give themself away somehow. When this method seems ineffective, he decides to post a $1000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the killers. But Hardie's efforts have born fruit, and later young Billy announces he witnessed the murder and can identify the killers. But after realizing that anyone he identified would hang, Billy can't go through with it and confesses he actually did not witness the murder. He only wanted the reward to buy his piece of land. At this point Hardie sees his opportunity, and he spreads the word that the witness is staying at the jailhouse and can ID the killers. He camps out secretly in the jailhouse and waits for the inevitable.
I won't deny I was disappointed with the conclusion when the killers - who had taken considerable care planning their crime - were extremely sloppy when attempting to eliminate the witness. Oh well, those half-hour shows sometimes conclude swiftly.
The cast wasn't particularly epic, but it did include a couple familiar faces. Paul Engle makes the first of his two appearances as young Billy Burns. He would appear once more in S2 a few months later. Gloria Henry appears as his older sister, Susan. She appeared in mostly B pictures and later television, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Will Wright appears as elderly Sheriff Clements, and with 240 screen credits was likely the most familiar member of the cast. He appeared in more than 100 pictures, including Adam's Rib, The Wild One, and Rhapsody in Blue, and had even more appearance on TV. William Henry would be the final mention here, and had experienced a good deal of success in pictures in previous decades. He had 243 credits and had appeared in scores of pictures, but by the time of this episode he had moved into TV and his career was in decline.
A decent enough episode I suppose, but not overly memorable.