Alias Smith and Jones

Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, two of the most wanted outlaws in the history of the West, are popular "with everyone except the railroads and the banks".

Genre: Western

Cast:Ben Murphy , Roger Davis , Pete Duel , Walt Davis , Dennis Fimple , J.D. Cannon , Ford Rainey , Bill Fletcher , Burl Ives , Jon Lormer , Monty Laird , Slim Pickens , Mills Watson , John Russell , Bill McKinney , Steve Gravers , Gary Van Ormand , Clarke Gordon

1Season 1

S1.E1 ∙ Alias Smith and Jones

Tue, Jan 5, 1971

A pair of outlaws seeking amnesty from the Governor must stay incognito and out of trouble in a town while a friend pleads their case. The wait is complicated by a lovely bank manager and the arrival of members of their former gang.

2Season 1

S1.E2 ∙ The McCreedy Bust

Thu, Jan 21, 1971

A wealthy art collector, McCreedy, hires the duo to procure a bust of Caesar that, unfortunately, the current owner doesn't want to part with. Of course he will want it back. But while we're waiting, let's see if McCreedy or Hannibal will out-con the other at cards.

3Season 1

S1.E3 ∙ Exit from Wickenburg

Thu, Jan 28, 1971

Hannibal and the Kid have finally found good jobs in a town where they can really fit in. So why is everyone trying to convince them to get out of town? And more to the point; why are they being so polite about it? And why can't our heroes take some good advice just once?

4Season 1

S1.E4 ∙ Wrong Train to Brimstone

Thu, Feb 4, 1971

Desperate to leave a town where the sheriff knows them on sight, Hayes and Curry steal train tickets and board a sold-out train bound for Brimstone. They discover the men they're impersonating are Bannerman detectives, hired to destroy their old gang.

5Season 1

S1.E5 ∙ The Girl in Boxcar #3

Thu, Feb 11, 1971

Decoys, misdirections and deceptions are the order of the day as Hannibal and the Kid get a taste of the other side of the robbery business when they are hired to transport $50,000. To add to the confusion, throw in a very naive, idealistic young woman as a love interest and possible thief.

6Season 1

S1.E6 ∙ The Great Shell Game

Thu, Feb 18, 1971

Hannibal has finally met up with a nice girl he can take home to mother. She's refined and proper and, wait a minute, a money hungry gold digger! And wait another minute, Hannibal is working a horse racing con on her. Has Hannibal given up bank robbery for the confidence game? There has to be another story behind this story.

7Season 1

S1.E7 ∙ Return to Devil's Hole

Thu, Feb 25, 1971

A lovely lady hires Hannibal to help her find her husband who joined the Devil's Hole Gang to escape an errant murder change. At least that's her story, or rather one of her stories. Her supposed husband has a different story. Their relationship turns out to be not so loving and bullets fly, quite literally.

8Season 1

S1.E8 ∙ A Fistful of Diamonds

Thu, Mar 4, 1971

A crooked banker robs his own bank to cover his embezzlement and pins the crime on Heyes and Curry. In order to clear their name, they'll con the banker into investing in a fake diamond mine that is too good to be true.

9Season 1

S1.E9 ∙ Stagecoach Seven

Thu, Mar 11, 1971

A stagecoach is held up and the outlaws later realize that Hayes and Curry were on it. Hoping to collect on their reward money, they surround them at a way station - will one of the passengers collaborate for a share of the reward?

10Season 1

S1.E10 ∙ The Man Who Murdered Himself

Thu, Mar 18, 1971

Hannibal and Kid Curry get two jobs; one dangerous the other, who knows. Kid loses the coin toss, and is to deliver a wagon-load of high explosives to a mining operation. Hannibal gets to play tour guide for a group of archaeologists looking for a long lost tribe of 7ft tall red-haired Indians.

11Season 1

S1.E11 ∙ The Root of It All

Thu, Mar 25, 1971

On a stagecoach Heyes and Curry meet two lovely ladies who carry a note supposedly showing the location of a buried fortune, but may - or may not - be worthless Confederate money.

12Season 1

S1.E12 ∙ The 5th Victim

Thu, Apr 1, 1971

A killer's picking off participants in a poker game one by one, including the attempted murders of Hayes and Curry, to conceal the real target.

13Season 1

S1.E13 ∙ Journey from San Juan

Thu, Apr 8, 1971

In Mexico Heyes and Curry meet two American women, one a singer, the other a casino owner. The four join together to drive a herd of maverick cattle to the States, hoping to sell them, but also for one of them to complete a secret agenda.

14Season 1

S1.E14 ∙ Never Trust an Honest Man

Thu, Apr 15, 1971

Accidentally grabbing the wrong bag on a train leaves the boys holding 5 million in jewels. Naturally they return them to the owner, but that only puts them in a deeper hole, as the owner claims they switched the real ones for fakes.

15Season 1

S1.E15 ∙ The Legacy of Charlie O'Rourke

Thu, Apr 22, 1971

A $100,000 in stolen gold is buried somewhere in the desert and everyone wants to recover it. A saloon singer knows where it is and gets the boys to help her. Harry Briscoe is also around and seems to have a scheme of his own.

1Season 2

S2.E1 ∙ The Day They Hanged Kid Curry

Thu, Sep 16, 1971

Hayes visits con-artist Silky O'Sullivan at his San Francisco mansion and discovers that Kid Curry is on trial for murder in Colorado. Heyes rushes to the town and sees Curry in the audience; the man on trial is an impostor who didn't commit the murder he's accused of.

2Season 2

S2.E2 ∙ How to Rob a Bank in One Hard Lesson

Thu, Sep 23, 1971

Three ne'er-do-wells - a man and two women - hold Curry hostage. The price for his safe return is for Hayes to go through a step-by-step instruction to the man of how to blow up a unique bank safe. Hayes suspects they will kill him and Curry afterwards, and has to think fast to trick the group.

3Season 2

S2.E3 ∙ Jailbreak at Junction City

Thu, Sep 30, 1971

Heyes and Curry are deputized by the sheriff of Big Bend, to take some outlaws to Junction City. The sheriff there knows them by sight, but a local judge may save them from the law.

4Season 2

S2.E4 ∙ Smiler with a Gun

Thu, Oct 7, 1971

During a poker game the guys meet an old timer along with a sharp-shooter and they decide to mine an unknown vein of gold. But things turn ugly when one of them decides he's unwilling to share the gold strike with the others.

5Season 2

S2.E5 ∙ The Posse That Wouldn't Quit

Thu, Oct 14, 1971

Unable to shake a trailing posse the guys shelter in the remote Jordan family cabin. Their teenage daughters are so taken with them, that when the posse takes them away, they spring them. But then the mother faces prison for what they did.

6Season 2

S2.E6 ∙ Something to Get Hung About

Thu, Oct 21, 1971

Hank Henderson has hired Heyes and Curry to find his runaway wife and bring her home. She agrees, but her friend Jim tries to stop her. When Hank is killed, and Jim arrested, they try to prove he's innocent with an unheard of technique.

7Season 2

S2.E7 ∙ Six Strangers at Apache Springs

Thu, Oct 28, 1971

Apache Springs is where the guys meet a troubled traveling minister, a government envoy and his disillusioned wife, and a widow desperate to recover the gold she had buried in a place now controlled by marauding Indians.

8Season 2

S2.E8 ∙ Night of the Red Dog

Thu, Nov 4, 1971

After meeting an old miner, he gives the guys and four other men a map to his mine. All goes well with the mining until an unexpected blizzard snows them all inside their cabin for the winter, and somebody steals Heyes' and Curry's gold.

9Season 2

S2.E9 ∙ The Reformation of Harry Briscoe

Thu, Nov 11, 1971

Heyes and Curry agree to help two traveling nuns, not realizing that one of them has stolen $30,000 and is being chased by Harry Briscoe, who hopes her capture will get his job back with the Bannerman Detective Agency.

10Season 2

S2.E10 ∙ Dreadful Sorry Clementine

Thu, Nov 18, 1971

Once again, Clementine asks the guys to help get the money which had been stolen returned, and have a crook who'd stolen it (and framed her father) arrested.

11Season 2

S2.E11 ∙ Shootout at Diablo Station

Thu, Dec 2, 1971

Heyes and Curry are among seven people ambushed by outlaws and held hostage in a way station. The leader of the gang, knowing Heyes are Curry are in touch with Sheriff Lom Trevors, politely outlines his plan to assassinate the sheriff when he comes looking for our heroes, in revenge for the death of his brother by Lom (actually, one of his deputies). The gang is prepared to wait a day and a night for Lom, forcing the group to do the same and try to think of ways to warn Lom before he gets bushwhacked. The mercurial leader (Neville Brand) is the biggest threat. The American flag outside the way station plays a key part in the plot.

12Season 2

S2.E12 ∙ The Bounty Hunter

Thu, Dec 9, 1971

Ex-slave Joe Sims has a cheerful demeanor that masks intensive hatred for the white racists who have dogged him all his life. He has an uncanny ability to track down Heyes and Curry wherever they go and trap them, planning to turn them in for the reward money and methodically ignoring their pleas that they have reformed. After witnessing some of Sims' confrontations with vicious whites, Heyes and Curry are sympathetic to his plight and try to help him, but Sims won't let them go.

13Season 2

S2.E13 ∙ Everything Else You Can Steal

Thu, Dec 16, 1971

Two guys, passing themselves off as Heyes and Curry, rob a bank. The real Heyes and Curry, concerned about losing their amnesty, arrive in town to find out what really happened and who's behind the scheme.

14Season 2

S2.E14 ∙ Miracle at Santa Marta

Thu, Dec 30, 1971

It will take a Miracle at Santa Marta for Curry to escape a firing squad after a wealthy visitor to a Mexican resort town's murdered. Heyes discovers a case of identity theft, in which 2 women claim to be the same socialite, but how, or why this is relevant to the murder, as well as who can save Curry from death takes some time.

15Season 2

S2.E15 ∙ 21 Days to Tenstrike

Thu, Jan 6, 1972

Unable to find work , Heyes and Curry accept a rancher's offer of pay if they can help herd cattle to a Colorado town. Soon, one of the cattle hands is dead - and suspicion falls upon Curry. The next night, it happens again. Then again. Someone isn't who - or what - they pretend to be

16Season 2

S2.E16 ∙ The McCreedy Bust: Going, Going, Gone

Thu, Jan 13, 1972

'Big Mac' MacCreedy hires Smith and Jones to steal it (again ) -the Cesar's bust from Arminderez but Heyes refuses (but agrees to teach one of MacCreedy's men how to do it , instead.) Heyes and Curry agree to escort the bust from a pre-arranged going spite too San Fransisco, where is to be auctioned. Whilst Heyes and Curry wait at the town near three deep-spot, they meet the town bully. Though they keep backing down, the bully keeps pushing, and Curry starts losing his temper.

17Season 2

S2.E17 ∙ The Man Who Broke the Bank at Red Gap

Thu, Jan 20, 1972

While playing cards on a train with banker Chester Powers, our heroes are recognized by another banker, Winford Fletcher (the villain of "Dreadful Sorry, Clementine," Fletcher pulls a gun on the group and says the 2 cost him a great deal of money to get out of trouble (apparently, he bought his way out of prison time on top of being swindled for $50,000). Powers bluffs Fletcher with a hidden "gun" and Fletcher backs down. That gives Powers an idea. He has speculated with and lost all the securities and bonds in his bank. The cash is still there, but there will be a run on the bank if word of his other losses gets out. So he robs the bank himself and ... you got it ... pins it on Heyes and Curry, giving them a chunk of the money to buy their silence. The boys pretend to accept, but scheme to pit Powers and Fletcher - who have reached a secret deal to jointly testify against Heyes and Curry - against each other. They take their share of the stolen money and give it to Fletcher in return for his testimony that they DIDN'T rob the bank when it was knocked over a second time (which is exactly what they do). Now to get Powers and Fletcher, along with U.S. Treasury agents, into the fray with one another ...

18Season 2

S2.E18 ∙ The Men That Corrupted Hadleyburg

Thu, Jan 27, 1972

Heyes and Curry are captured by a farm family and brought into Hadleyburg. The farmer wants the bounty money, but has a change of heart and helps them escape. That puts the farmer and his wife into very hot water and make Heyes and Curry very ashamed. Help comes from detective Harry Briscoe, who's investigating a crooked gambling house in another town. Heyes goes to the house and plays blackjack, notices a marked deck at the start of the card game, and gets it replaced with an unmarked deck. He counts the cards in the old sharpie's trick and only making big bets when the deck is near the bottom and he can tell what he's likely to get on the last few hands. Briscoe watches incognito as Heyes wins $32,000. After realizing that Heyes is counting cards, the casino manager orders regular shuffles of the deck, at which time Heyes stops playing and reveals a collection of marked decks that the casino has hidden. Briscoe steps forward and busts the casino owner and dealer. With the money, Heyes and Curry go on a spending spree all over Hadleyburg, making so many civic improvements to the town that it's impossible to field a jury that hasn't been touched by their generosity (smooth lawyer Adam West helps out as well). When Briscoe is called to the stand, he testifies that Heyes and Curry came by the money honestly and are doing all this just to be nice. The judge does not direct an acquittal, rather, the farmer and his wife are pronounced "not guilty" by the jury.

19Season 2

S2.E19 ∙ The Biggest Game in the West

Thu, Feb 3, 1972

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, Curry and Heyes (now played by Roger Davis) relax in a gully when a satchel of money literally lands in their laps, thrown from a passing carriage. Heyes opens it and finds $200,000 -- every bill of it a bad counterfeit. Heyes thinks it over for a few seconds and then comes up with a brilliant plan. After shaving off his mustache (Roger Davis had one in real life; after the first day of filming, Universal executives told Davis the mustache looked "sinister" and Roy Huggins wrote the comment into a scene where Heyes shaves), Joshua Smith goes to a bank and asks to put the satchel in a safety-deposit box for the time being. He and Thaddeus Jones are wealthy land buyers, he says, and he wants people to know he has enough money to buy his way into anything. That includes a famous weekly poker game where all the big ranchers join once a week. The banker spreads the word, and Smith is quickly invited to the game, where he soon wins $35,000. But that's when two members of the Devil's Hole Gang (Kyle McMurtry and a masked, non-speaking extra filling in as Wheat Carlson) raid the game and clear the table. That's bad enough, but the banker has also looked inside the safe deposit box and found the money. He threatens to denounce Smith and Jones to the ranchers, and meanwhile the local sheriff has picked up on the name "Wheat" and is looking for the other members of the Devil's Hole Gang, which of course include Heyes and Curry. Our heroes' only chance is for Curry to ride ninety to nothing to Devil's Hole and get the other ranchers' share -- which also equals $200,000 -- back while leaving them the amount Heyes won before the robbery. Then Heyes opens the banker's safe, takes out the counterfeit money and replaces it with the real stuff, which a U.S. Treasury agent verifies. As soon as the Treasury agent leaves, Heyes rushes the $200,000 back to the poker table (minus a $100 bill he dropped and stuck in his pocket), sticks the bad money in the Treasury agent's satchel, and hightails it with Curry to a freight train just before the sheriff figures things out. About two-thirds of this episode was re-shot over four and a half days of filming to replace Pete Deuel's scenes (Davis had to exactly mimic him); a few new scenes include the opening titles and a still picture of Smith and Jones getting off a stagecoach.

20Season 2

S2.E20 ∙ Which Way to the O.K. Corral?

Thu, Feb 10, 1972

To stop the MacCreedy-Armindariz feud from coming to a rope's end, Heyes and Curry ride to the aid of their former employer Patrick "Big Mac" MacCreedy, who is accused of murdering the foreman of his across-the-Rio-Grande neighbor Armindariz's ranch. In fact, MacCreedy only witnessed the shooting and has no idea who the killer is (viewers don't either; the killer is never revealed). While hurrying to help the dying man, MacCreedy saw a neer-do-well drifter (Neville Brand) swipe the man's rifle and take off with it. Heyes and Curry find that the drifter has gone to Tombstone, Arizona -- home to Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, who both play major roles in the story. They acquire a warrant for the drifter's arrest as a material witness, but it's not an extradition warrant. Thus they need to lure or trick the drifter back to Texas. To do so, they ask a lady friend named Georgette Sinclair who is what would later be called a nightclub singer, meeting her in Tombstone and letting her "woo" the drifter while they watch and play poker. The idea is to get the drifter to fall in love with the singer, agree to go to Colorado with her -- stopping for half a minute in Texas along the way.

21Season 2

S2.E21 ∙ Don't Get Mad, Get Even

Thu, Feb 17, 1972

Heyes is cheated at poker by big, obnoxious Wheelwright. Georgette Sinclair, in the second of three appearances, is hired to help Heyes carry out the title phrase, which Heyes utters while leaving. "Wheelwrong" also cheats George and gives her a literal horselaugh when she tries to bewitch him with a string of pearls. The group goes to Silky O'Sullivan, who lent them the necklace to begin with, and after enduring his rage talk him into lending them money to "ransom" the necklace.

22Season 2

S2.E22 ∙ What's in It for Mia?

Thu, Feb 24, 1972

Mia Bronson doesn't like being accused of crooked gambling and has the guys beaten up. They're rescued by George Austin and his daughter, another victim of Mia's, and he's discovered a way to copy any printed material - including money.

23Season 2

S2.E23 ∙ Bad Night in Big Butte

Thu, Mar 2, 1972

Georgette Sinclair hooks the guys into a plan to find a hidden diamond worth a small fortune. Watching them is the town's sheriff and a mystery man hoping to collect the reward if it's found and returned to the rightful owner.

1Season 3

S3.E1 ∙ The Long Chase

Sat, Sep 16, 1972

While evading a posse, the boys run into their old friend, Harry Briscoe (J.D. Cannon in his last appearance on this show), who's been fired by the Bannerman Detective Agency and is now a derelict. They sympathize with him and convince him to use his old credentials to fool the smart sheriff and his dumb deputy by "arresting" them before the posse does. The sheriff lets Briscoe go with Heyes and Curry, but sends the deputy along on the stagecoach to Wyoming. Now to fool the deputy, which is fairly easily done, and to fool the sheriff a second time, which is much harder. Fortunately, they happen upon a pair of bank-robbing killers whom only Briscoe recognizes, and he uses trickery to catch them and get back into the Bannerman Agency's good graces. The ending of this show, as the boys ride through the Utah countryside and chat, was recycled for all subsequent episodes (the boys are filmed in long shot and their dialog was changed for each show). This show and parts of several others were subsequently syndicated under the title "The Long Chase," shown as a TV-movie separate from the series episodes.

2Season 3

S3.E2 ∙ High Lonesome Country

Sat, Sep 23, 1972

The boys are bushwhacked while accompanying Phil Archer and his wife through the desert.

3Season 3

S3.E3 ∙ The McCreedy Feud

Sat, Sep 30, 1972

Patrick "Big Mac" MacCreedy is tired of years of feuding with the neighboring Amandariz family, whose land abuts his own and is occasionally shaped by the Rio Grande. So he hires Heyes and Curry to try to negotiate a settlement. They put on their game faces and have their hats in hand as they visit the Armaendariz mansion, and get the expected rebuff. But there is a new player in the game -- Armandariz's spinster sister, who is even less friendly than he but who has a deeply religious streak. Heyes and Curry play on that, telling her that MacCreedy is a Catholic widower and piling on the soft soap (some of which is actually true). Carlotta, the sister, decides to investigate MacCreedy herself. There may be a way out of the feud after all. This was the writing debut of Juanita Bartlett for Roy Huggins, who brought her over to "The Rockford Files" a couple of years later; he soon left but she stayed for the whole run and worked extensively with Huggins protégé' Stephen J. Cannell before starting her own company as a producer.

4Season 3

S3.E4 ∙ The Clementine Ingredient

Sat, Oct 7, 1972

Heyes (aka Smith) has a plan, that, if he & Curry (aka Jones) settle in Mexico, their old friend Clementine (Sally Field) should join them. Pretending to be the wife to one of them to appear respectable.

5Season 3

S3.E5 ∙ Bushwack!

Sat, Oct 21, 1972

The first of five episodes to deal with the real-life Wyoming Stockgrower's Association (which led to the Johnson County War of 1892 and inspired the film "Heaven's Gate," which changed many details of the story): two gunmen try to bushwhack Smith and Jones for being in league with "cattle rustlers" -- which in WSGA parlance, applied to anybody who owned fewer than 300 cattle. A small cattle rancher, who has tangled with the gunmen in the past, comes up behind them, surprises them and shoots them down in their tracks. He claims self-defense, but knows people will call it murder (which it is), so asks Smith and Jones to escort him, his wife, his partner and his cattle to Montana where he will be reasonably safe. WSGA "detectives" send out an armed party dedicated to killing the whole lot. When Heyes and the gunman are both critically wounded, Curry goes berserk and blasts away at them until they turn tail. Heyes survives (his comment about being shot in the head later became a tagline for "The Rockford Files"), but the killer dies -- and Curry figures out the truth. Now everyone has a moral dilemma.

6Season 3

S3.E6 ∙ What Happened at the XST?

Sat, Oct 28, 1972

In a new town awaiting a job offer, two Sheriff deputies repeatedly order Heyes and Curry to leave town. They can't figure out why until they discover who the Sheriff is. The promised job results in $80,000 in cash and a lot more trouble.

7Season 3

S3.E7 ∙ The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry

Sat, Nov 4, 1972

The disappearance of a young heir to a fortune appears to be a kidnapping for ransom orchestrated by Kid Curry as Thaddeus Jones. At least that's what the heir would like to think. In fact he himself is the kidnapper and Curry is his hostage. The kidnapper has his eye on an eligible bachelorette, whom he plans to woo with the ransom money once it gets out of escrow and is paid. Heyes, who comes into town separately, doesn't know all the details but puts together enough to realize Curry is likely to be murdered and his body dumped in a stream until it rots once the ten days are up. So Heyes decides to woo the eligible bachelorette on his own. He meets up with Doc Holliday, whom he knows from a poker game (Holliday was a great winner at faro but not much of a poker player; Heyes had won $20,000 from him in the earlier game, only to have Wyatt Earp force him to lose it back). Heyes points out the young woman and explains that he wants to court her. He's already swiped a book of poetry and memorized it to appeal to her intellectual instincts; now he wants to prove he's a man of means. So, he proposes that he and Holliday play poker together under the woman's eye. Heyes will "win" Holliday's stash (then give it back immediately once they leave the room) and impress the woman with his money. Holliday surprisingly agrees and the plan goes off. But Heyes must still try to track the woman and her treacherous boyfriend to the hideout where Curry is being held hostage.

8Season 3

S3.E8 ∙ The Day the Amnesty Came Through

Sat, Nov 25, 1972

Had series finales been a staple in 1972, this would have been it. Heyes and Curry get a telegram from Wyoming sheriff Lom Trevors that the Governor has at long last given them amnesty, and rush to meet the sheriff (Western veteran John Russell takes over from Mike Road, who had played the role in the first two seasons and still voiced it in the opening credits). But the day the amnesty came through is also the day the Governor was removed from office (as a territorial governor, he was appointed by the President -- when the Executive Mansion was occupied by a President of a different party, in this case Grover Cleveland, he appointed one of his own party men to the post). The new Governor, George W. Baxter, is a friend of Trevors and agrees to keep the amnesty on the table, and maybe approve it if the boys will track down his missing daughter. Our heroes succeed, but return to find that Baxter has been removed from office ("Seems he fenced in some Federal land"). Trevors doesn't know the new Governor, Charles Midnight. The last words of the episode are a replay of the words spoken in the pilot (and in the opening credits) about the boys keeping their nose clean until the Governor figures they deserve amnesty. A printed crawl over the last shot records the tumultuous history of the Wyoming Territory governors during the period in question (although buffs will spot several flaws: Governor Midnight's name wasn't Charles -- Roy Huggins may have confused him with famous rancher Charles Goodnight; and the period where the gubernatorial merry-go-round took place was in the infamously deadly-cold and stormy winter of 1886-1887 rather than the summer where filming took place).

9Season 3

S3.E9 ∙ The Strange Fate of Conrad Meyer Zulick

Sat, Dec 2, 1972

Sorrell "Boss Hogg" Booke has the title role, as a mining-company executive who went from Arizona to Old Mexico to try to settle miners' grievances over unpaid wages, only to be taken hostage in his own right by the miners, who hope to use him as a bargaining chip. A mine supervisor has a particular interest in getting Zulick back to Arizona, but won't explain why. It turns out that Zulick is a lot more valuable than anyone suspected, for reasons that are hidden until nearly the last minute. Another surprise comes when the mine detective turns Heyes and Curry over to the sheriff and then refuses the reward on them in Wyoming, allowing the sheriff to set them free, because he is convinced his debt of gratitude is too great. Ironically, "Bonanza" was also floundering in the ratings in a new time slot against a Norman Lear situation comedy ("All and the Family" was "ASJ"'s nemesis; "Maude" was trouncing "Bonanza"); the two shows would end production and then leave the air less than a week apart.

10Season 3

S3.E10 ∙ McGuffin

Sat, Dec 9, 1972

While riding from one town to the next the boys answer a man's cry for help and find themselves involved with treasury department agents, counterfeiters, and stolen plates. There's also the matter of a woman who may be the man's daughter or a counterfeiter herself.

11Season 3

S3.E11 ∙ Witness to a Lynching

Sat, Dec 16, 1972

The last episode to be filmed ("Only Three to a Bed," airing four weeks later, was left over from the Utah trip at the beginning of the season) again delves into "Heaven's Gate" territory, albeit less obviously than other episodes. Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association have lynched two small ranchers they accused of rustling. Sheriff Lom Trevors hires the boys to get the two surviving witnesses out of Wyoming and into Nebraska. The WSGA sends a sheriff after them with extradition warrants as material witnesses, and offers them a fat bribe if they promise to perjure themselves and say they didn't see the accused killers. The lynching was based on the 1889 hangings of Jim Averill and Ella "Cattle Kate" Watson, whom Michael Cimino would resurrect as the leads of "Heaven's Gate" -- set three years later.

12Season 3

S3.E12 ∙ Only Three to a Bed

Sat, Jan 13, 1973

The boys hire on to cut out horses, break them and get them to market before a Big Daddy rancher nearby can claim all the mavericks running the range as his own. In a role reversal of sorts for our heroes, Heyes strikes out miserably talking the talk and playing the cards with a beautiful brunette, while Curry finds a kinship with a very young, very beautiful young blonde lady who is traveling with her very protective older brother.