Sugarfoot

- Season 3

(1959)

Tom's Aunt Nancy begs him to defend his cousin---Abram Thomas, aka The Canary Kid, who's been charged with murder. Tom is reluctant, considering his past experiences with the Canary, until Aunt Nancy tells him that Canary's gang is holding a judge hostage and threatening to kill him if their leader isn't freed. Tom agrees to defend Canary, despite the judge's bias---and Canary's further shenanigans.

Tom learns that the law clerk job he came to accept no longer exists due to shortage of funds, but he is offered another job - that of temporary schoolteacher. He accepts, even though the previous teacher was run out of town, and despite an apparently incorrigible group of students led by the son of the rancher who's been diverting water from the area homesteaders.

Tom comes to accept a job as deputy marshal, only to find that the marshal has been killed and thus he is now needed to replace him. He reluctantly agrees. But just after taking his oath three Scotsmen in kilts arrive and claim that Tom is the rightful heir and thus chief of the MacBrewster clan. Before he can decide which job to stay with Tom, and the Scotsmen, must deal with the same outlaw gang that killed the marshal.

Tom tries to defend the members of a Gypsy band from the prejudice of members of a nearby town, and particularly from one resident who seems bent on causing trouble for them, including making advances against a young Gypsy woman. When Tom's actions trying to help the girl after a fall are misunderstood by the others in the camp, her wedding to a man in her band is called off and Tom is told he must marry her instead.

Eight inmates have escaped from the prison where Tom's lookalike the Canary Kid is serving his sentence, reflecting badly on the prison's reform-minded warden. Believing that the Canary is responsible for the escapes, Christopher Colt hires Tom to go undercover in the prison, posing as a burned convict swathed in bandages.

Tom is on a train accompanying a young woman and her Arabian stallion when his car is separated from theirs and the train is held up by an outlaw gang. The leader of the gang, a slick, cunning man known as The Baron, kidnaps the girl and her horse and takes them to an island off the Gulf coast. Because the U.S. and Mexico are in an unresolved dispute over which possesses the island, it is effectively lawless and The Baron has proclaimed himself its ruler with no one to stop him. Tom makes his way to the island by posing as the horse's veterinarian whom The Baron has ...

Stopping in Virginia City, Tom sees brutal Sam Brown almost knife a man to death when the man challenges Brown's bet against celebrated actress Adah Isaacs Menken's planned ride on a black stallion. When Tom defends Brown's victim, the killer announces his intention to make Tom his next killing. Meanwhile, Tom becomes involved in the search for Miss Menken's black stallion, which has escaped from his stable---and he also gets involved with the beautiful Miss Menken herself. This story is loosely (very loosely) based on historical fact, as Miss Menken, Sam Brown, and ...

Tom helps Argentine gaucho Curro Santiago to find a bull that escaped from him on the way to being delivered to a ranch. But this causes Santiago to be late in delivering the animal, so the ranch owner stubbornly refuses to pay him but keeps the bull anyway. When the rancher is later killed in a fall from his horse, it is found that he was deeply in debt, and Santiago, as his main creditor, is appointed by the court to oversee the ranch until the estate is probated, which does not go over well with the rancher's children or his employees, particularly his foreman who ...

Tom stops in the town of Provision only to get a good night's sleep and rest his horse. But it is apparent people don't want him to stay, and when he takes a hotel room, a man comes to try to tell him something and is shot dead from outside. Seems many in town, including the mayor, sheriff, and other leading citizens, think Tom is an investigator sent by the state who may uncover unpleasant truths. While the mayor hopes to bribe Tom to keep him quiet, the sheriff wants to kill him.

Tom is hired by an elderly Chinese man to help him bring his son's cremains back to China. The leader of a San Francisco gang, however, threatens Tom's life if he continues to assist the old man. Turns out that along with his son, the old man is delivering a map which the gang is after.

A number of men have been killed by wolves, including the friend that sent for Tom to come and assist with the problem. But there is indication that more than just the wolves are involved in the killings. An area rancher who has lost several of his trail hands to the wolves suspects a trapper whom he has ordered off his land, but Tom suspects he is not the culprit.

A stone mason with no boxing experience decides to enter a boxing match to raise money to save a mission from demolition, with Tom as his trainer. But the man who plans to buy and raze the old mission has too much to lose to take even a chance that the fight not go his way, and decides to make absolutely certain that it does.

Tom's friend Ben Crain asks for his help in trying to legally stop a railroad from running its trestle through sacred Indian burial ground. Ben is the son of an Indian mother and a white rancher whom he is no longer on speaking terms with since his mother's death. The father is nevertheless not selling to the railroad so far, but another landowner, brother to the rancher's new wife, hopes to change his mind and is determined to not let Ben or Tom get in his way.

Young Jack Guild insists that he's innocent of robbing his own father's stage, and asks Tom to help him prove it by going back with him to the town. Tom goes to the judge and the sheriff to ask them to give Jack a reprieve while he searches for new evidence. The judge has become a drunk who can't stand up to anyone, but the sheriff---one Henry Plummer---agrees to give Jack one day's reprieve, during which time another stage is held up and its driver killed. Plummer was a real-life character though this episode is only very loosely based on his actual exploits.

On his way to the town of Vinegarroon to meet Judge Roy Bean, Tom finds a farmer and his wife dead at their home, and is arrested for their murders when a deputy of Bean finds him there. Brought before Bean, Tom manages to persuade the legendary hard-line judge of his innocence (in part by working on Bean's admiration for actress Lily Langtry) but he is unable to persuade him that the killings were not done by Apaches. The real leader of the killers is a ruthless half-breed who hates both whites and Indians and hopes his killings will cause war between both. But as ...

Tom comes upon a wagon team that has just been attacked by Indians. One of the wagon party is a Corsican who has brought a huge statue with him, which he intends to give to the older brother he is looking for and who has been providing for his family. The younger brother is falling for the daughter of the wagon team leader, much to her father's chagrin. Tom soon learns that the young Corsican's brother is actually the leader of the band of renegade Sioux that have attacked several wagons in the area.

Tom is left caring for a newborn baby boy after the child's mother does not return to the train they were riding on after getting off at a stop. When he returns with the baby to the town where she got off, no one will admit to having seen her. Actually, she is being held hostage by the man who bosses the town---her brother-n-law, whom she knows killed her husband.

Even though the countryside is racked by a record drought, an old rancher is obsessed with building an Ark and floating away taking Tom Brewster and pretty Anne Carmody with him.

In the town of Forty Mile, cryptic messages are being sent to five citizens which seem to indicate a plan for vengeance against them for the lynching of a young man three years ago. One of the men being threatened is the sheriff, Tom's cousin, who failed to stop the lynching. Tom, who has come to manage his cousin's election campaign, gets involved in trying to get to the bottom of what's going on.

After his knowledge of the law helps to save a local farmer from foreclosure, Tom is appointed by the town council to serve as the new county clerk. This does not please the district manager for the railroad, who has his own plans for the train's right-of-way and wants to force all the landowners out of its way.