The Tall Man

- Season 1

(1960)

Pat Garrett, Lincoln County's newest deputy sheriff, rides into a gold mining boomtown and discovers the town, including its marshal, are owned by a crooked saloon owner who can literally get away with murder. When Garrett refuses to be bribed, the saloon owner tries to hire Billy the Kid to murder the lawman, not realizing the two men are close friends.

Billy covets a handsome pair of boots in a shop window. A friend offers to buy him the boots with but one string attached - Billy must help him drive a herd of stolen cattle to market. Before Billy can decide, the owner of the cattle and his cowboys capture the pair and decide to lynch both men.

When Pat Garrett kills Johnny Nagel after a botched general store robbery, the young man's father doesn't blame the lanky lawman for his son's death - instead he blames Billy the Kid whom he saw talking to Johnny earlier in the day. Karl threatens to blast Pat with his shotgun if Billy doesn't come to the jail unarmed.

Bonney's girlfriend is murdered by ranchers who mistook the senorita for Billy. Garrett, joined by Billy, chase the two men into Mexico where the murderers shoot two young Yaqui Indians and steal their horses. While Pat and Billy close the distance on their quarries, the Indians pursue the lawman and gunslinger believing that they attacked their fellow tribesmen.

On the eve of the Lincoln County election, Sheriff Brady is murdered by one of Andy Gorman's hirelings. The town council persuades Pat Garrett to run in Brady's place, but Gorman resorts to numerous dirty tricks to make sure his candidate is victorious.

Pat Garrett is wounded trying to prevent an express office robbery. His new deputy finds evidence that the shooter was his close friend, Billy the Kid. Billy swears he's innocent of the crime and flees the posse sent to arrest him so he can find the men who are trying to frame him for the crime.

Sheriff Pat Garrett tries to calm Billy the Kid's wild ways by introducing him to John Leslie, one of Lincoln's newest citizens - a retired gunfighter and ex-convict who was recently hired as the town's minister. The preacher's new career may be short-lived, since the family of one of the men he killed arrive in Lincoln seeking revenge and Leslie refuses to defend himself.

Garrett must take Dan Rees, a convicted felon, to the New Mexico Territorial prison in Tularosa to spend ten years in prison. Friends of the man Rees killed don't believe the punishment the jury handed out was harsh enough and plan to carry out heir own brand of justice during the train ride.

Sheriff Garrett has his hands full when a gang of horse thieves starts operating in Lincoln County. He learns to his chagrin that the crooks are a pair of pretty, but devious, blondes, but is somewhat mollified when his friend Billy Bonney is victimized by their charms, as well.

Billy rides to Gunsight to collect money for cattle delivered to the ranch of Judge Roy A. Barlow. Barlow fancies himself 'The Law North of Lincoln' and throws Billy in jail for being drunk in disorderly immediately after taking possession of the bill of sale and stealing Billy's bankroll. Garrett comes searching for Billy and learns from the town drunk that Judge Barlow murdered the surveyor who discovered that Gunsight is actually within the Lincoln County limits and, as a result, within the sheriff's jurisdiction.

Pat finds Ed Corbin and his wife were murdered and their servant girl, Agatha hiding in the barn scared out of her wits. She claims a monster was trying to kill her and the Corbins got in his way. While checking the Corbin ranch for clues, Garrett discovers a fresh footprint made by an enormous boot.

Garrett plans for a pleasant visit with his girlfriend are dashed when he finds her house in flames and her father dead. Rancher Neal Bailey claims to own the land and is within his rights to burn out squatters. In the ensuing argument, Garrett shoots the rancher and Bailey swears revenge, deciding to carry it out on Garrett's wedding day.

Lt. Baxter brings Pat evidence that whiskey has been found on the local Apache reservation and demands that the sheriff put an end to the trade. When Garrett discovers a still on Pa McBean's rundown ranch and finds a crate of liquor hidden in Billy Bonney's wagon, he arrests the two men. McBean's tomboy daughters, the real culprits, decide to break Billy and their father out of jail.

Billy and Pat find an Apache tied to an anthill and rescue him. Billy feels the Indian is a kindred spirit and tries to befriend him, going so far as to get the man a job sweeping floors in a saloon. The Apache soon learns that the townspeople don't like him any better than the Indians who tried to kill him.

At a Christmas party, Billy accidentally knocks a drink from a man's hand while swinging wildly a piñata. A fight ensues and Billy winds up killing the man in self-defense. Billy flees Lincoln fearing that the local townspeople will not believe his story and stumbles upon a baby hidden near a burning cabin.

Pat enters a shooting contest whose prize is a valuable Winchester '73 rifle and wins the competition. In front of witnesses Billy Bonney jokingly tells Pat that if he won't sell him the gun, he'll steal it. When the gunsmith is killed and the rifle stolen from the man's shop, the townspeople assume Billy is the guilty of both crimes.

Hendry Grant, a notorious shootist, rides into Lincoln and challenges Billy Bonney to a gunfight to raise his reputation as a gunfighter. When Billy refuses to meet him, Grant goads one of Billy's friends into a gunfight and kills the young man.

A wild bunch of cowboys ride into Lincoln, vowing to blow the town wide open. Because of a tragedy, Pat Garrett has turned in his badge. Can Billy convince Pat of his duty in time?

Billy and Denver, another high-spirited youth, are thrown out of Lincoln for their perpetual brawling. They decide to settle their score by meeting for a shootout in a remote mountainous area and Pat Garrett threatens to hang the one who returns if the other man dies. During their maneuvers Denver breaks his leg and while trying to nurse his fellow combatant back to health, Billy discovers how much the two men have in common.

John Miller, an ex-lawman bent on taking over Lincoln County frames Garrett and Billy the Kid for cattle rustling by mixing animals from his herd with those that Pat and Billy were driving to market. To make the evidence completely convincing, Miller pays a saloon girl to plant evidence on Pat and lie under oath during the pre-trail hearing and then murders her so she can't recant her testimony.

Billy's employer, John Tundall, becomes enraged when he meets the con-man who stole his wife and $10,000 dollars from him eight years earlier. The crook is in town to steal even more money from the cattle baron and plans to use Tundall's ex-wife as bait. Meanwhile, Pat and Billy plot to force the con-man and his wife to leave Lincoln for good.

Francisco and Morton, his landlord, get into an argument over the back rent that the tenant farmer owes. In the ensuing scuffle, Francisco accidentally kills the landlord and, to make matters worse, severely injures Morton's young daughter, the only witness, when the farmer flees the house. Unable to speak, the young girl can only identify the tenant as her father's shooter.

Hannah Blossom is lured to Lincoln by a letter proposing marriage and a photograph of her supposed suitor. Hannah learns that the letters were purportedly written by Pa McBean, an illiterate farmer, and the enclosed picture was of Sheriff Pat Garrett. Garrett investigates and discovers that the letters were written by McBean's feisty daughters who want their father to marry and with the girls' help, the sheriff tries to nudge the romance along.

When Billy Bonney falls in love with Maria, the pretty daughter of a Mexican-American sheepherder, he finds himself in the middle of a quarrel between the Lincoln County ranchers and the shepherds who are flocking to the territory because of its abundant grass.

On his death bed, a wealthy rancher asks Pat to help him find his long-lost son who left Lincoln County with his mother when he was eight years old. A series of impostors answer Pat's posters, but only one can answer Pat's questions and has the proper scar he received from a branding iron years earlier. Everyone is pleased until Billy bumps into the young man and remembers him using a different name when the two men were drinking heavily in an El Paso saloon.

During a gunfight, Billy kills an innocent by-stander, the daughter of a U.S. Marshal. The marshal rides into Lincoln and demands that Pat Garrett serve the warrant for Billy's arrest and process the extradition papers so he can be transported to Arizona territory for trial - and a date with the hangman's rope.

During a murderous stagecoach robbery, Kate Elder pulls the mask off the robber and recognizes the culprit, but, when questioned by Sheriff Pat Garrett, denies ever having seen the man before. When Doc Holliday refuses to take Kate back into his life, the spurned lover testifies that Doc was the man who robbed the stage and killed the shotgun guard. Billy Bonney knows Kate was lying since he played poker all night with Holliday, but Pat refuses to believe him.

A cattle dealer, Vince Ober, has won a contract to supply beef to the army forts in New Mexico. Ober plans to increase his profit margin by stealing as many animals as possible and tries to convince Billy Bonney to lead a gang of rustlers. When Billy refuses, Ober hires gunmen to kill him.

Billy learns that his stepfather, Bill Antrim, was ambushed and murdered by three hired killers. Billy Bonney decides to take the law into his own hands when the men flee across the Lincoln County line and out of Sheriff Pat Garrett's territory despite the lawman's warning to let the sheriff's in adjacent jurisdictions arrest the perpetrators.

Over the objections of Pat Garrett and the boy's father, Billy Bonney tries to teach the son of an alcoholic ex-lawman some of the gunslinger's craft that he's learned over the years. When the youngster is wounded in a gunfight that he provoked, the boy's father goes gunning for Billy.

Desperate to get married, May and June McBean salt their father's worthless mine with gold nuggets in hopes that potential suitors will think that they're heiresses to a rich strike. The plan backfires when McBean purchases many luxuries on credit for which he won't be able to pay.

Beautfiul blonde Nita Jardine arrives in Lincoln and tries to convince Pat and Billy that her estranged husband, a former convict recently released from prison, is following her and plans to kill her the next time they meet. Billy is willing to defend the damsel in distress, but Pat learns Nita's story doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

During a severe drought, the only spring still flowing is on the Apache reservation and Mike Gray Eagle is making the most of the calamity by selling water to the white citizens at exorbitant prices. The Lincoln town council hires a pretty rainmaker to break the drought, but Gray Eagle and his men abduct the woman before she can break up their lucrative business.

When an outlaw kidnaps Lincoln's popular Catholic priest, Pat tries to organize a posse to free the padre and capture the criminal. Meanwhile, Billy decides the best way to prevent the priest from coming to harm is to pay the ransom the abductor demands, so he steals the needed funds from the town's only bank.

Jack rides into Silver Creek, a boomtown in Lincoln County, to investigate reports of lawlessness and finds Jason Creary has set himself up as the town boss who owns everything but Sal's saloon which he plans to get control of if Sal won't marry him. Meanwhile, the women's temperance movement has organized and plans to shut down all of Creary's saloons.

Garrett rides into a boomtown that a railroad considers their personal fiefdom. Not only does the company run crooked gambling houses to keep their workers broke, but they refuse to pay their taxes or even for the cattle their company has purchased. Garrett enlists Billy Bonney in his campaign to make the railroad see its civic duty.

Lincoln is happily planning for the impending visit of Lew Wallace, the governor of the New Mexico territory. Pat Garrett is concerned that while Big Mamacita's cantina is outside the town limits, its customers frequently become drunk and unruly and their behavior won't present the town in a favorable light. Meanwhile Billy learns that Mamachita's grandson is Wallace's aide and fears that he will learn that she isn't the gentlewoman as she portrayed herself in her letters.