The Deputy

In the premiere episode, titled "The Deputy," Fry selects Silver City, Arizona, as the spot to head off two men he suspects of carrying supplies to a holdup gang led by Ace Gentry (Robert J. Wilke). After arresting the supply drivers, Fry tricks Clay McCord into joining him in delivering the foodstuffs to Gentry. When McCord realizes he has been duped into raiding an outlaw camp, he turns back toward Silver City, leaving Fry to face the outlaws alone.

Charlotte Nelson tells Clay McCord of her concern for her younger brother, Trooper, who has fallen into a gang headed by the evil Bull Ward. McCord then arranges for Trooper to get an honest job as messenger for a mining company, transporting shipments of gold. This pleases Ward who assumes that Trooper will turn the gold over to him, but Trooper has mended his ways and when confronted and threatened by Ward while delivering the gold, shoots him. Having proven his worth, Trooper now gets his friend, Tommy -- another former member of Ward's gang -- hired to assist him in his job as messenger.

Three bank robbers come across a traveling-players' caravan. They shoot the actor-manager and two of them then kidnap Angela, one of the actresses. The third robber, Cowan, stays with the other actress, Lily, and is arrested by Simon Fry. Cowan winds up in the Silver City jail but escapes, steals a horse, and knocks down Fran McCord as he flees. Clay McCord and Herk Lamson track Cowan to a cabin where his two cronies are holed up with Angela. (One of these cronies is dying from a knife wound sustained when he and the other robber fought over Angela.) Clay and Herk arrest Cowan and Clay kills the other robber in a gunfight. Angela is then reunited with Lily.

Simon Fry arrests a ""Drifter"" for shooting a man, stealing his wife, and then shooting her. He takes the Drifter to a jail in the nearby town but, when a lynch-mob gathers, moves him on to Silver City. Following him is a landowner named Akins and several of Akins' cronies who are anxious for some quick ""justice."" Fran McCord believes the Drifter's pleas of innocence and persuades brother Clay to help Fry transport the prisoner to a trial in Prescott. Before this happens, Akins tricks the Drifter into making a jailbreak but this plan fails. On the trail to Prescott, Akins again makes a move against the Drifter which Fry and Clay thwart. Fry then reveals to Clay evidence of the Drifter's guilt.

supplying gunpowder to the Apaches. Herk's journey to Prescott with his prisoner is endangered when a garrulous telegrapher spreads the word of Deaver's capture - word that reaches the prisoner's Indian allies.

While Chesley Vantage eagerly greets the arrival in Silver City of his son, Brad, who's been studying in Kansas to be a veterinarian, word reaches Deputy McCord that a gunfighter is also on the way from Kansas, apparently to settle a score. McCord soon learns that Brad acquired his vet training while serving time in a Kansas prison. He also learns that the gunfighter, Jim Stanton, wants to kill Brad because he mistakenly believes Brad warned authorities about a planned prison escape. McCord spares Brad from Stanton's wrath by coming up with a ruse to put Brad in jail. Then McCord kills Stanton in a barroom shootout. Brad's now free to set up his practice and his father, himself a reformed outlaw, is none the wiser about his son's criminal past.

Clay is curious and concerned when Chief Marshal Fry insists on personally handling the investigation into the activities of a pair of swindlers, one of whom happens to be a beautiful young blonde. Clay learns that the young woman is the daughter of woman who spurned his love more than twenty years ago and the deputy fears that Simon may be allowing his personal feelings to cloud his professional judgment.

Clay tries to help a two-fisted but gullible sergeant recover two thousand dollars of Army funds stolen by a beautiful blonde saloon hostess and her two card sharp confederates.

Simon Fry arrests Jason Harris, the marshall of Hondo, for complicity in some robberies. Harris could clear himself but remains silent to protect his guilty wife, Laurie. Laurie's fallen for a man named Johnny Dustin and together they plan to get rid of Harris. Dustin betrays Laurie, however, and Fry and Clay McCord then see to it that the guilty are caught and punished. Fry then offers the exonerated Harris a job in the new town of Yorba Linda.

Well-to-do Elmer Jackson is murdered and evidence points to his nephew, Phil, who has fled town. Clay McCord suspects Phil's sister, Martha, knows his whereabouts though she denies this. Clay secretly follows Martha out of town but she knocks him out with a rock to the head and rides on to a cabin where she meets her lover, outlaw Tweed Younger. Tweed killed Elmer Jackson but made it look as if Phil had. Phil's now a prisoner in the cabin. Double-crossing Martha shoots Tweed and is about to kill Phil when McCord arrives on the scene.

Fry has his hands full with a jailed outlaw, and the man's mother, who knows nothing about her son's life of crime. Stanhope: James Franciscus. Mrs. Stanhope: Josephine Hutchinson. Fry: Henry Fonda. McCord: Allen Case.

In an isolated shack, a lonely woman harbors a wounded killer on the run. Fry: Henry Fonda. McCord: Allen Case. Sarge: Read Morgan. Hester: Virginia Gregg.