User Reviews

Aside from John McIntire's opening narration, the first 25 minutes of the episode are handed over to guest star Jack Kelly. He plays a man named Fenton Canaby, the wagon master of a doomed train. People have been dying, a horse has to be shot, and there's not enough water to last the desert heat. Soon a group of men have decided to mutiny and one of them is writing it all down for posterity. After Fenton's kicked off his own train and left to die in the middle of nowhere, he is found and rescued by two saddle tramps.

In the next part Fenton Canaby is nursed back to health by a doctor in a nearby town, but it is learned that the folks from his train deviated off the main trail and were massacred. All of them. The only thing that survived is the journal with the incriminating accounts of how bleak their situation had become under his guidance. In order to avoid a public lynching, Fenton Canaby runs off, back into the desert where he winds up living as a hermit.

That's roughly the first half hour of the episode. Then we see Chris Hale's train coming through the same area, about a year later. People are still talking about Fenton Canaby, and he's practically become a mythic character, sort of like a bogeyman. One legend is that he turned to cannibalism to survive in the desert. Everyone is afraid they might meet up with Fenton Canaby on the way to California and suffer a tragic fate.

Chris admonishes young Barney (Michael Burns) and tells him to refrain from bringing up old Fenton's name, since it's making everyone jittery. Meanwhile there's a woman named Grace Lowe, played by character actress Virginia Gregg; and we learn she is the widow of the man who wrote the book about Canaby. Mrs. Lowe is taking the trip she was supposed to take a short time after her husband had gone to the coast, but obviously delayed doing it because of what happened to him and the others. She tells Chris if she ever runs into Fenton Canaby she'll kill him. And Chris can see by the look in her eyes she's deadly serious. Of course with foreshadowing like that, we know Canaby will soon turn up and join Chris' group, which is exactly what happens.

At first the people on the train don't know the strange man who joined them is Fenton Canaby. But Chris knows, and he tries to keep it from the others. However, these concerns are trivial compared to a bigger problem Chris faces when there is suddenly a shortage of water. Chris now needs Canaby's help since this journey is encountering some of the same perils his group experienced. Because he's been out in the desert all this time and learned the climate and terrain so well, Canaby proves invaluable in saving everyone.

It's an interesting way to depict the redemption of a man, by having him deal with all the same demons again. And it's just as interesting watching this play off Chris Hale. What makes the story work so well is how much research went into writing the actual conditions pioneers dealt with going west. The scenes at the beginning of the episode with the doomed train convey a feeling of hopelessness and defeat. That early grimness makes the later sequence where Chris' train survives seem even more uplifting.