The Restless Gun

- Season 1

(1957)

While visiting the town of Lockwood, Vint Bonner is forced into a standoff with Wes Singer, an emerging gunfighter aiming to add another name to his list of victims.

After promising a seriously wounded outlaw that he will get him to town alive to stand trial, Bonner meets five men, including a doctor, who want to bring the man in. But then Bonner learns that the five have just taken part in a lynching, and he becomes concerned that they will do the same with this prisoner.

When the man's hotheaded younger brother is killed in self defense, Vint fears that his sheriff friend is too bent on revenge to bring the man who killed him back alive.

On the trail, Bonner meets a young boy who is looking to join his father. Bonner brings the boy to town, where the bank is robbed, and the sheriff kills one of the robbers---the boy's father.

Bonner finds a wounded man on the road, and brings him to the house of a an embittered woman who lives alone. He promises her he won't tell about the man at her place, but he later learns that the man is a wanted outlaw.

Everybody in the town of Copper Springs is eager to credit Bonner with the shooting of legendary gunman Jett King - including King himself, who doesn't want his reputation destroyed by letting it be known that the real shooter was a mild-mannered bank teller.

The hotheaded son of an old friend of Bonner's doesn't realize how much trouble he's in for after he kills the son of a powerful rancher in a gunfight.

The widow of a general insists her husband is still alive, though Bonner and everyone else knows that no one survived the massacre at the fort he commanded. Believing her to be delusional, a local rancher wants to have her sent to the state hospital so he can claim her land.

Stopping in the town of Harmony to visit his old friend Doc Cross, Bonner learns that the ruthless Cotten brothers and an infamous gunfighter plan to take control of the town and intimidate anyone planning to vote against them in the coming election. Reluctantly, thanks to the Doc, Bonner is put in the position of acting as Sheriff himself.

A young killer robs the telegraph office and guns down the clerks. Why is Sheriff Lawson reluctant to get up a posse or even to interview the surviving clerk? Vint Bonner comes into town and prods the sheriff into upholding the law.

Vint Bonner reluctantly befriends Wilbur English, a sniveling coward who betrayed his outlaw gang in return for a reward and pardon. Wilbur is fearful of deadly retaliation and looks to Bonner for protection.

Bonner intercedes in a delicate family situation when a wandering gambler returns to reconcile with the young son he abandoned eight years earlier. The boy believes his daddy is dead, and Bonner believes it's best to keep it that way.

Bonner begins to suspect that the likable guitar-strumming man he met on the trail may be the same man who shot and robbed a farmer. His clue is the song "Silver Threads Among The Gold".

On Christmas Eve Bonner and the Marshal capture "El Bruto," a super-strong but mute giant of a man accused of murder. The three men seek refuge for the night in a Spanish Mission where the resident orphans are reenacting the miracle of Christmas. One orpan in particular, shows "El Bruto" love and kindness, invoking a gentler side of the giant's personality.

Bonner meets two brothers on the trail, one of whom he worked with in the past. The two claim to be with a posse that is searching for the robbers who held up a stage and killed an elderly deaf passenger. Actually, they are the ones who committed the act.

Offered a job by powerful rancher George Temple, Bonner turns the man down when he learns that he is trying to force Will Fetter to sell his small homestead. Temple and his hands regard Fetter as a coward who won't fight back, but Bonner, who knew Fetter before under another name, knows there is another reason why he refuses to fight back.

Art Hemper and George Willis, two former friends until George married Art's girl, accuse each other of the murder of Art's brother. Bonner tries to determine which of them actually did it.

A Quaker family encounters prejudice, hostility, and harassment from the residents of the closest town, who mistake their pacifism for cowardice. They also encounter it from the rancher Bonner has come to do business with, though the man's wife feels differently.

Bonner must travel through renegade Apache territory to escort a ruthless killer to another town for his hanging. Before he leaves, however, he realizes that he will face yet another danger---the man's girlfriend, who is determined to free him.

Bonner rides into Quiet City, a town that was once wild but is now peaceful. The sheriff of more than thirty years, an old friend of Bonner's, feels as if he's no longer needed and misses the wild old days when he had more to do. When the first killing in two years occurs the sheriff brings the killer in, but then imagines a lynch mob forming in the streets though no such mob exists.

Bonner has been sent to check on conditions in Hornitas, a gold mining camp which supposedly has none of the violence common to such towns. He finds that it is not so different after all, and that the sheriff is crooked and demands protection money from his citizens. Complicating matters, Bonner's only ally in town is a devout pacifist who insists that he check his gun with her and not use it as long as he's in town.

Stopping in a small town, Bonner learns that someone there using his name gunned down a harmless drunk for money. To clear his reputation, he must try to find out who the killer really was and who was really behind it.

To Bonner's astonishment, everyone in the town he is in believes he is about to be married to Helen Rockwood, including the friend of his that he thought was in love with Helen.

Bonner is suspicious of the motives of the daughter of a dying old friend when she comes to visit him, especially since she is in the company of a known outlaw. On top of this, after talking to her, the father, who hasn't seen his daughter since she was a child, insists she is not her.

The drunken escaped convict Bonner met on the trail may just be the long-lost father that the young sheriff in the nearby town is looking for.

Bonner agrees to teach young Henry Wilson how to be faster with a gun so that he can defend himself against the man he says is gunning for him. But is Wilson telling the real truth about what he intends to do with his newly acquired skill?

Emma Birch has organized the women of the town into a determined suffragette group; the men rebel and attempt to put the women in their place. Bonner becomes the reluctant mediator between the two groups.

A woman is shunned by everyone in her home town, including her own father, because she married a man who later turned outlaw and killed the town's leading citizen. Bonner tries to prevent the shunning from escalating into violence.

The citizens of a town persuade (well, not exactly just persuade) Bonner into the job of collecting money for a new church organ. Sounds too simple and safe compared to what Bonner's done before? Anything but, as he soon learns.

Bonner is wounded during a bank holdup and all his money (and only his money) is taken by the robbers. His Aunt Emma comes to take care of him during his recovery, but she refuses to let him go after the robbers, who plan to hit the bank again as they learn most of the money is still in the bank.

A band of former Confederates led by Colonel Bromley have taken over a Kansas town. But an idealistic foreign soldier who fought for the Union arrives and is immediately humiliated by Bromley's men, whereupon he challenges Bromley to a duel. Bonner hopes to prevent the duel.

The two partners in Tower Rock's bank have split and formed two rival banks across the street, both men blaming the feud on each others' wives and their rivalry over the annual strawberry jam contest. The two bankers have in turn caused the entire town to form rival sides, and officials want Bonner to mediate the feud.

Bonner and a gun salesman come across the body of a man on the trail. The main clue they find is a torn half of a Confederate flag. After bringing the dead man to town, Bonner notices the mayor's reaction upon seeing the flag. The mayor opens up to Bonner and tells him that he was part of a group that planned to resurrect the Confederacy---and that others in the group are looking for him and the gold he has hidden.

Near Clay City, Bonner stops two bullies who are trying to force an old prospector to reveal the location of the gold he believes he has found. The old man has a history of claiming to have found gold that turned out not to be, and Bonner knows that the gold once abundant around Clay City is believed to now be all gone. But the assayer thinks this time the claim might be for real.

On the very day that Sheriff Jeb Barnes retires after 40 years as sheriff and is awarded a gold star by his citizens, the town bank is robbed. As Bonner goes looking for the robbers, he wonders if it was just a coincidence.

Two friends of Bonner's, a rancher and his wife, have now become Shakespearean actors on tour. When they learn that P.T. Barnum is in town, they decide to change their plans of moving on so that the famed showman can see them perform. Bonner tries to help out.

Bonner is in the saloon in a lawless town when he sees a young drifter forced into killing one of three brothers in self defense after they had been goading him. The other brothers lead a posse to find the young man, and Bonner knows they have no plans to bring him in alive. But the closest thing to a lawman the town had is so discouraged after the killing of his own son that he has lost interest in even trying to keep the peace or law.

An old widow friend of Bonner's hires him to protect an itinerant peddler who has been harassed by thugs working for a rancher, but the man insists on going through the rancher's land alone.

Bonner leads a surveying team to lay out the boundary between Colorado and New Mexico, but he has to deal with the opposition of both a powerful rancher and a widowed homesteader and her young son.