Alias Smith and Jones

- Season 3

(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 ...

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

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 ...

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.

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...

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.

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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.