In one of the final scenes, when their Uncle Bart questions the women about continuing on to Porterville with him, his nieces tell him that “We can take care of ourselves, we learned something since yesterday,” thus not only changing, per Huggins’s directive, but following along in the tradition of Alias Smith and Jones women. Females in the series generally serve one of three purposes as far as plot devices: they are enlightened about life; they take advantage of either friendship with the boys or the fact that they are wanted men; or they fall in love with them. Besides Mary and Ellie who come away from their experience wiser and stronger, Louise Carson learns from her mistake of loving a married man in “Everything Else You Can Steal”; Heyes teaches Lucy Fielding about her own husband in “Six Strangers in Apache Springs”; and Amy Martin in “The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry” learns she can fall in love.
In case the audience hasn’t gleaned the ramification, when Chuck announces his plan, Curry cynically, and rather unnecessarily, remarks to Heyes that if Lom is dead, so is their amnesty. No one else in the small room seems to hear the comment. The selfish attitude is unbecoming but demonstrates a side to Curry that is present however much it appears to be out of character. In most instances, his portrayal as a compassionate gunman endears the audience to him. In “Wrong Train to Brimstone,” he worries about the Devil’s Hole Gang being slaughtered by the Bannerman men and would overrule Heyes if it came to their amnesty versus the gang’s safety. In other previous episodes, he has convinced his partner to stay to help Mary in Wickenburg and, over Heyes’s objections, interferes even though it may lead to trouble when Janet is bothered by a man in “How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson.” Nevertheless, his disregard for the Lamberts’ secret room in “The Girl in Boxcar #3” also clearly demonstrates a single-mindedness. Though in this episode he appears to be only pointing out an obvious fact to Heyes, his unconcern for Lom is a reflection of the inherently human “me first” attitude and one consistent with Heyes and Curry’s characters.
The Bounty Hunter
“It may be just my imagination, but I don’t think we’re doing too well.”
Hannibal Heyes
STORY: JOHN THOMAS JAMES
TELEPLAY: NICHOLAS E. BAEHR
DIRECTOR: BARRY SHEAR
SHOOTING DATES: OCTOBER 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 1971
ORIGINAL US AIR DATE: DECEMBER 9, 1971
ORIGINAL UK AIR DATE: JANUARY 17, 1972
Hannibal Heyes tries his best to divert Kid Curry’s attention from the sad state of their finances to the beauty of the day. Curry refuses to be swayed and stubbornly repeats “How much?” until Heyes admits they have $2.16 between them. With a sigh Curry wonders whatever happened to Heyes’s nimble brain and silver tongue. A voice interrupts his grumbling, demanding they stop and raise their hands.
Heyes and Curry follow the unseen man’s instructions, throwing away their guns, dismounting and lying on their bellies next to the trail. When they’re properly subdued, a black man rides out from behind the rocks, his rifle aimed unwaveringly at them, and introduces himself as Joe Sims. He’s a bounty hunter — professional — and they’re under arrest.
Joe orders Heyes to tie Curry’s hands behind his back, then ties Heyes’s wrists together himself. Back on their horses, Joe announces his intention to turn them in at Carbondale. It’s a long ride but Joe is hoping the sheriff there will be more cooperative about the reward than the sheriff in Hartsville, who doesn’t like black folks.
The three men trek to Carbondale. All the while Heyes tries to convince Joe he’s mistaken about them, but Joe is a professional. He’s memorized the descriptions of all outlaws worth more than $2,000 and he compares descriptions from different sources. He knows they’re Heyes and Curry.
As they travel, Heyes wonders how Joe came to be a bounty hunter. Joe was a slave before the Civil War; afterwards he drifted west. Facing the reality that no one would pay a black man more than room and board, if he could find work at all, Joe decided the best way to make money was to become a bounty hunter.
A rattlesnake strikes out. Joe’s horse rears in fright, throwing him, and the boys don’t waste the opportunity — they spur their horses and gallop off. Joe takes out after them. He carefully shoots over their heads, but his bullet hits a horse belonging to a passing rancher. Six angry ranch hands quickly surround him. Grayson, the spokesman of the group, doesn’t believe Joe is a bounty hunter and isn’t mollified by his apology for accidentally killing the horse. The men decide to lynch him.
Heyes and Curry stop in the shelter of some trees and free themselves from their bonds. They spot the lynch party from the crest of the hill and Heyes offhandedly notes, “There’s an end to a budding career.” Curry doesn’t answer and Heyes is dismayed to see him reloading his gun. Curry reminds him Joe could have killed them, so they should stop the lynching. Heyes reluctantly reloads his own gun, insisting that twelve quick shots had better be enough to scare off the lynchers because that’s all they’re going to do.
The men scatter when the shooting starts, leaving Joe behind. He struggles free of the rope, then rides off in a different direction.
Curry is pleased with himself. “You know what we just did, Heyes? A good deed.” Heyes doesn’t want to make it a habit.
They ride along and this time Curry waxes poetic over the beauty of the day. A familiar voice commands them to stop. “Joe, it’s us,” Heyes calls out. Curry points out that they were the ones who scared off the lynch mob, but Joe knew that and figured they were still nearby. They go through the now-familiar routine of being tied up, astonished by Joe’s ingratitude. For his part, Joe is only puzzled by their actions. He doesn’t know why they’d save his skin instead of their own. It seems kind of stupid to him.
The men ride single file, Heyes needling Curry about their good deed while Joe chuckles at their frustrated squabbling. Three men — Nate, Jesse and Hank — approach them on the trail and Nate asks what’s going on. Joe explains, but Heyes offers a different version of events. Joe thinks they’re outlaws, but he’s mistaken. In reality, he’s Joshua Smith, on his way home to his wife and baby boy, while his friend Thaddeus is going to get married next week. To Heyes’s dismay, Nate wishes Joe luck, then he and his friends go on their way. Joe is still suspicious, though, and keeps a sharp eye out on the trail.
Nate, Jesse and Hank turn to watch Joe and his prisoners ride off. When they’re out of sight, the men double back.
As Joe and the boys approach, Nate steps out from behind a tree and fires a warning shot. Joe told too good a story. If he really has got Curry and Heyes, Nate and his friends figure they’ll turn them in. He relieves Joe of his horse and his gun, telling him to go back to where he came from. Heyes and Curry watch with mixed feelings as Joe trudges away through the trees.
As Nate’s prisoner, Heyes expands upon his story about the wife, baby boy and forthcoming wedding in an attempt to convince him they’re not outlaws. He throws in a complaint about being the victims of a terrible injustice, and wonders what the country is coming to when honest, hard-working American citizens can be manhandled by anyone who comes along. Nate is unmoved, so Heyes demonstrates their respectability by describing Curry’s erstwhile fiancée as the daughter of the mayor of St. Louis, even inviting Nate and his buddies to come to the wedding. Nate takes it as long as he can, then finally blurts out, “Will you shut up?”
As the procession crosses a river, shots ring out. Joe has returned with a new horse and gun. He wounds Jesse and Hank, but Nate escapes. Heyes asks in awe, “How did you do that?” It was easy. Joe walked to a nearby ranch and bought what he needed. Heyes and Curry are once again Joe’s prisoners, as are Jesse and Hank.
When they settle down for the night, Heyes reasons with Joe. Nate is sure to come back for his friends. Joe disagrees, saying Nate hasn’t got the guts. Curry complains of hunger, but Joe brushes him off; they’re no hungrier than he is. Jesse then speaks up, insisting he’s in pain and needs a doctor. Joe points out
that if he’s able to complain, he’s not too bad off. “I just love the way he gets rid of problems,” Curry remarks to Heyes.
As Heyes argues with Joe, Curry focuses on freeing his hands, straining at the rawhide until his wrists are bloody. He’s making progress when Nate reappears, gun in hand.
Nate orders Joe to throw away his gun and forces him to walk toward the river, where he plans to shoot him. Heyes and Curry work feverishly on their bonds. Wrenching his hands free, Curry grabs Joe’s gun and shoots the pistol out of Nate’s hand. Joe turns to stare at Curry in amazement. “My God, you didn’t go and do it again?!” Curry grins and shrugs.
Joe kneels to check on Nate, ignoring the gun in Curry’s hand. When Curry orders Joe to untie Heyes, he refuses. He knows Curry can’t shoot him — he just used the last bullet. Curry pulls the trigger. Sure enough, the hammer clicks on an empty chamber. Joe’s been so busy he just plumb forgot to reload.
Joe reties Curry. By now Heyes has freed himself, but the ever-watchful Joe orders him to put his hands on his head. Joe decides to leave the three wounded men tied up on the outskirts of town where someone will find them. Then he and the boys will ride south towards Briartown.
Joe leaves Heyes and Curry securely bound hand and foot, back to back. They struggle to get free, but finally concede it’s hopeless. Curry still has faith in Heyes’s ability to get them out of this predicament, but Heyes himself isn’t so sure.
Joe returns and relates his real plan. They’ll head north to Big Butte, a direction no one will expect. Heyes tries his silver tongue once more. Joe has thought of everything, but he’s still mistaken about them being Curry and Heyes. Joe’s taken Thaddeus’s gun away from him twice and tied them up four times. They fired twelve shots at the lynching party and didn’t hit anyone. The real Kid Curry would have left dead bodies strewn in his wake. Curry jumps in, pointing out that Heyes is supposed to be able to talk himself out of a tiger’s belly, but Joshua hasn’t been able to talk anybody out of anything. Joe listens thoughtfully, then admits he has been bothered by all this, but he finally figured it out. “Even Curry and Heyes can have an off day.”
The next morning, on the way to Big Butte, they find themselves approaching a group of white men. Heyes urges Joe to untie them so they’ll look like three friends riding together, but Joe decides to take a chance — white folks aren’t all bad.
Max, the leader, listens to Joe’s story, then to Heyes’s rebuttal. He orders two of his men to untie the boys, then take them into town and turn them over to the sheriff. Joe is angry — Max just cost him $20,000. It’s not your place to arrest white folks, Max informs him, and orders him back to where he came from — South. Joe gallops off, but before he’s gone far Max shoots him in the back.
Heyes and Curry overthrow their latest captors and race to where Joe has fallen.
Blood bubbling from his lips, Joe asks what they’re doing there. Heyes and Curry try to figure out how best to get Joe some help, but it’s no use. Curry asks him if he would really have turned them in. “Sho’ would,” Joe gasps with a pained smile and dies.
The partners debate the wisdom of reporting Joe’s murder to the sheriff. Taking one last look at Joe’s grave, Curry asks Heyes if he thinks Joe meant it, that he would really have turned them in. With a rueful smile Heyes replies, “Sho’ would.”
GUEST CAST
LOU GOSSETT — JOE SIMS
ROBERT MIDDLETON — GRAYSON
ROBERT DONNER — NATE
R.G. ARMSTRONG — MAX
JAMES MCCALLION — JESSE
GEOFFREY LEWIS — AL
ROBERT EASTON — HANK
As the Associate Executive Producer, Jo Swerling was in charge of many of the day-to-day details of the production, from making sure the sets were built on time to riding herd on the actors. Swerling faced a challenging issue during the “Bounty Hunter” shoot. The production was on location in Malibu Ranch and the first couple of days Ben, Peter and guest star Lou Gossett all had early calls. Peter kept coming in half an hour late, so Swerling had a chat with him. “He got a little bit defensive and he didn’t have any particular excuse,” Swerling recalls. “I said, ‘Peter, you know, everybody else has to be here on time and when they’re ready to go, and I’m including Lou Gossett, who’s an actor of some stature, and your co-star, and the cameraman and the crew, it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to figure out that they can come to resent the fact that they’re here and you’re not.’” Peter was surprised because actually it hadn’t occurred to him he could be causing resentment. He agreed to be punctual from then on.
Swerling next found himself dealing with Ben, who also started coming in late, but this time his chat brought an unexpected response. “Well, I kind of have to do it,” Ben told him. “Because Peter’s going to come in late and if I come in on time I start resenting Peter.” This was exactly what Swerling had warned Peter about, but Ben had more to say in his own defense. “If that begins to fester, I’m not a good enough actor to be able to turn that off when the camera rolls. And my fear is that if I’m mad at Peter, it’s going to come across on screen and it’s going to screw up this wonderful thing we have going and it’ll hurt the show. So I figure out how late he’s going to be and I’ll come in ten minutes before he does, but I’ll still be late.”
Swerling was stopped dead in his tracks. Having already chastised Peter for the very issue Ben was now coping with in his own inventive way, he didn’t have a response to Ben’s excuse. Acknowledging Ben’s point, Swerling told him nevertheless that he needed to come in on time and Swerling would see to it that Peter was on time as well. “But, you know, that was one of the smartest excuses I ever got,” Swerling laughs. “I had nowhere to go.” [42]
Serious social issues are not often dealt with in Alias Smith and Jones. This is mostly because Roy Huggins preferred to focus on strictly entertaining stories in westerns. “It’s very difficult to have social overtones with a western…I never tried it because those were usually moralistic and dull. I like to make social comments that are very specific.” [43] In “The Bounty Hunter,” Huggins and Baehr managed to tackle a serious, and specific, social problem in a manner that is far from being moralistic and dull.
While the Civil War abolished slavery, it did not change the long-established racist attitudes among the population. Even ardent abolitionists, while abhorring slavery, did not always regard blacks as equal to whites. In 1971, as it still is today, racism was a hot topic offering Roy Huggins a rare chance to explore a contemporary social problem in a western.
He told the story to Nick Baehr on June 1, 1971, incorporating specific notes as to how the ex-outlaws respond to Joe. He noted “Heyes and Curry have no prejudice. They were both born and raised in Kansas — and Heyes should make a point of that.” In Baehr’s first draft script, Heyes points out that Joe would probably have an easier time in Oregon or Montana, areas that aren’t full of former Confederates who dislike black folks. “That go for you, too?” Joe asks. Heyes responds, “Hell, we’re from Kansas. If you run into people from Kansas it’s a different story…” Heyes and Curry are the only men who accept Joe as an equal, and “in the course of our story, our boys and Joe [Sims] develop a grudging affection for each other.” Indeed, it’s obvious that if not for the $20,000 bounty, Joe and the boys could become good friends. But Joe is a bounty hunter — professional — and not about to let friendship get in the way of his bank account. In fact, Joe comes across as much more competent than Heyes and Curry in this story, which is demonstrated not only by his ability to continually outwit them, but also by his reappearance, fully outfitted, after being set afoot by Nate. While Heyes and Curry started out lamenting that they have just $2.16 between them, Joe is able to get $110 worth of equipment for only $221, a rip-off Joe accepts with only a wry comment about free American enterprise, but an indication of just how successful he is in his profession.
As Joe leads his prisoners to the sheriff, it becomes apparent that the white men they
meet are more outraged by the idea of a black man arresting white men than they are about Heyes’s and Curry’s crimes. The first group of ranchers care only that a horse has been killed; Nate and his friends believe Joe’s story, but decide that they should get the reward, not a black man; and Max, while willing to turn in Heyes and Curry, is really most interested in punishing this uppity black man for daring to arrest them.
Joe is a sympathetic, likeable character whom Heyes and Curry defend, despite the danger to themselves. He is smart and professional, and despite his past as a slave, holds no grudge against white people. He is easy to identify with and, as a result, the audience is asked to face their own attitudes toward other races. Huggins and Baehr manage to slip in a message about the evils of racism by using a fast paced story, a serious dilemma for our boys and clever dialogue. The combination results in a powerful story that is arguably the best in the series.
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