Maverick

- Season 4

(1960)

Returning to America after an extended stay in England, Cousin Beau Maverick is hired to take the place of a young English nobleman. However, he soon finds himself the victim of a kidnap and ransom plot due to his assumed identity.

A vainglorious sheriff gives Bart five days to track down a supposed stagecoach robber, Cherokee Dan Evans. Evans is innocent, and Bart has to figure out a way to avoid the bounty on his head if he fails.

Beau can't win for losing - sashays up to claim a worthless mine he won, then the whole town disappears. The no-longer Silver Hill stands at the mercy of the venal Wilber Shanks, a sanctimonious railroad land buyer, whose threat to divert his rail line far from Silver Hill forces its befuddled citizens to immediately take Shanks' mare to chat up a lonely bachelor sheep rancher who's desperate for some 2-legged company for a change.

Left in the desert to die, Bart - actually just his fine mane - fascinates Red Feather who's on a walkabout of sorts. Captain/First Mate Jim of a passing prisoner wagon train saves Bart's scalp, plus the train stars luscious murderer Daphne, who's delighted with Bart as the hearty First Mate's Gilligan. But as the cruise of the Arizona Black Maria nears the penitentiary, wily crooks Dishonest Abe and Fingers Louie aren't so taken with pal Bart.

Beau & Bart fight to escape a black hole - where money and people enter, but can't leave! The cousins have to sleep sitting up in Stop Gap's only watering hole, after saving from robbers the treacherous Wembly, who promised them free, comfy hotel beds - but knew the inn was full-up. Wembly's suspiciously tight with the mining town's telegraph owner, son of a Colorado Senator. Why is the town too small to have a bank, as its population and wealth mysteriously expand to infinity - and beyond?

While visiting friends in New Orleans, Bart becomes embroiled in a battle between local businessmen and the secret Mano Nera (Black Hand), a local Italian mob.

Accused of murdering his partner in a casino, Beau tracks a saloon singer who can clear him to a small town where she's now working as a teacher--with the murdered man's trigger-happy brother and a sheriff on Beau's trail.

Bart howls like a hound dog when an alluring witch ravels him in great Smoky Mountain feud-in, fight-in and spell-in. Riding to Hound Dog, Tennessee to collect a debt from High Card Harris, Bart ignored a raven perched on a road sign, who the banshee insists is her dead Pappy. Bart shrugs off the witch's forebodings, then sees the Southern Hamlet disintegrate when he gives the raven-haired enchantress a lift in. Bart's own Pappy never told him there'd be days like this, much worse nights.

An Indian princess helps Beau out of trouble when he is framed for murder.

In Bret's last episode, the Maverick brothers (Bret and Bart) find themselves the heirs to a stagecoach line. Thinking they have struck it rich, they find instead that the stagecoach line is broke. But the railroad is coming through and the stagecoach's right of way might yet provide their fortune, or so the brothers hope.

Beau and an old man riding with him are both captured and accused of being horse thieves, in Beau's case, one Benson January. Despite the efforts of a young lawyer (who may or may not be Tom Brewster), Beau is sentenced to hang. His fate may depend on a young woman - the sister of the girl January was engaged to. But will she be willing to help?

Beau comes to the aid of an eccentric heiress, whose cousin is trying to drive her to insanity to inherit the family fortune.

On his way to the bank to collect a gambling debt, Bart rescues a petulant young woman from a runaway horse. On returning to the bank, Bart and the woman find that the bank president has absconded with all the money, including the money to pay Bart's debt and all of the woman's money from sale of her land. The woman hires Bart to get her to Dodge City with the promise that her fiancé will pay him when they arrive. So they set out essentially penniless for Dodge city, only to later find that they are being tracked by a ruthless bounty hunter because they are now wanted...

Mistaken at a convention hotel to be Beau O'Maverick, Beau is recruited by the army to infiltrate a group of Irishmen in order to find out why they are massing near the Canadian border. But if he is discovered as a spy, it could mean facing a firing squad.

Freeloading a train ride to Denver, Bart makes it as far as Crenshaw where he meets an old friend. When he finds how he figures prominently in her plans to take a lot of gold to Devil's Flats, he may wish he should have stayed on that train.

Finding himself delayed in New Mexico, Bart decides to visit a recent acquaintance at a nearby hacienda. However, the hospitality he expected quickly turns dangerous when the hacienda is placed under siege by a group of other landowners who claim they have been double-crossed in a treasonous plot.

To his chagrin, Beau repeatedly gets out-conned. First, on a bet on a stagecoach. Then, in a series of land deals. Trouble is, Beau isn't just losing his own money, but also that of his friend Jerry O'Brien. Even when he wins, Beau ends up losing and he fears that he has lost that special Maverick touch. Finally at the end, the reason becomes all too clear.

After falling prey to a con game involving a diamond necklace, Bart ends up in a jail cell with an old but treacherous outlaw. With the help of his son, the cell mate breaks out but leaves Bart behind. After being released, Bart plots to recover his loss from the con with help from the outlaw's son and friends. Bart plans to split the recovery with the son, but the elder outlaw has other plans.

Looking for a way to break even after winning half of a worthless saloon, Beau provides a stake for a miner to return to his hidden goldmine with Beau and his female saloon partner. But the gold is cursed! A notorious outlaw wants to the goldmine for himself. And Indians want the gold located in their sacred burial grounds left alone.

Bart Maverick finds a body encased in ice, but the body raises more troubles than just the usual who-dunit.

By convincing him he is doing exactly the opposite, Beau is used in an elaborate scheme to steal a valuable Kashmir diamond from a French count and his niece, and replace it with an imitation.

After being run out of town, Bart finds himself on a stagecoach with a group of passengers headed to Oblivion, a transfer station and inn run by the Lyme family. While waiting for the next stagecoach to Denver, Bart discovers that some visitors (especially those carrying large sums of money) check in but they don't necessarily check out.

On his way to Denver in an impassable snowstorm, Beau's only retreat seems to be a closed hotel. When the owner and her niece exhibit suspicious behavior, their past, present and future become very much entwined in his.

Bart was just playing poker in a sleepy town when the bank was robbed. The bandits got away with $10,000, half of which wound up in his saddlebags - and they're coming back to look for it.

Beau, looking for a place to rest, comes upon a cave with writing on the wall - This is the place J. When several famous outlaws show up looking for Jess, Beau poses as Red Dog so he can blend in, until he finds out what is really going on.

On his way to Cheyenne, Bart happens upon a man who was just in a gun battle and helps him and buries another. When the Army shows up, he's arrested and mistaken for a wanted man -- someone who the man he just befriended knows very well.

The czar of a frontier town has Bart thrashed to steal back his gambling losses, which angers even the boss' mother. Mom and Bart conspire to get Bart's money back, and teach the arrogant boss humility. As the scheme pressures the despot, he prays "Lord, give me patience, but give it to me now !" Bart enlists his dying pal, the gunfighting dentist from Philadelphia, Doc Holiday as insurance.

Brent is arrested for gambling while passing through Sunburst on the stage. When a cell mate is murdered while escaping by three masked men, he is asked to leave on the next stage before his value as an eyewitness proves useful.

A sheriff who once saved Bart's life asks Bart to pay him back by taking a job as a dealer in the local saloon and stopping the owner's scheme to kill his rival for a girl's affections.

Brent and his friends happen to witness an attempted robbery of the post office, which the sheriff stopped by shooting the thieves. They also happened to witness the sheriff helping himself to the loot.

At a remote army post, a troop of soldiers find Bart to be the only survivor of a massacre. Bart tells them the story: how he sensed he could make some money by purchasing a wagonload of merchandise from a peddler who was anxious to sell. After Bart checked inside the wagon, he understand why the man was so quick to sell--it included a shipment of illegal liquor and a kidnapped Indian girl.

Bart relates to the soldiers how, after he and the peddler were later captured by the tribe, the man tricked the Indian chief into believing that he had a magic necklace, and traded it for his freedom. The chief, now believing himself to be impervious to harm, orders his warriors to attack the fort.