A final season episode, "The Tarnished Badge" features long-time Western heavy Lon Chaney playing Jess Bridges, a former lawman whose deputy was Dan Troop (John Russell), now dedicated to a life of crime because he never made enough money upholding the law. Failing to rob a Laramie stagecoach with two cohorts, with Bridges wounded as a result, the trio are followed by Troop's posse, but it's his deputy, Johnny McKay (Peter Brown), who finds the bleeding Bridges, alone, armed and deadly. Only when the exhausted Bridges collapses is the young deputy able to remove the bullet from his injured shoulder, yet he still gets waylaid by Bridges, who can't understand why Johnny didn't let him die and then take him in. Keeping the deputy at bay and handcuffed, Bridges decides to head back to his hideout, where his two companions await his return. Essentially a two man show between Peter Brown and Lon Chaney, it provides the aging veteran one of the last opportunities to play a heavy on a TV Western, earning a touch of sympathy despite his misdeeds. The role is an echo of his elderly, arthritic lawman in the 1952 classic "High Noon," who refuses to help Gary Cooper's marshal because he doesn't want to be a burden, now turning against his former profession in financial desperation. John Carradine would also get his turn in a later episode, "The Actor."
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