INVESTMENT IN CHARACTER
A Treatment for a Western Story
Bill Ryan, carrying ten thousand dollars, is en route west to meet his future bride and her father. The money is to be paid for a partnership in a going business that promises well, and Bill is enthusiastic over his prospects. His girl’s father has never approved of Bill, but has resigned himself to the inevitable—but Bill must produce the ten thousand to prove he is able to care for the girl and to provide a good living for her. The money is Bill’s entire savings, combined with a small inheritance he has had since he was a child.
On the train he meets a kindly old gentleman who is both interested and sympathetic. He kids Bill about losing his freedom, and quotes frequently, among others the quote from Kipling,
“Pleasant the snaffle of courtship, improving
the manners and carriage.
But the colt who is wise will abstain from
the terrible thorn-bit of marriage.”
At the hotel Bill finds his girl and her father will not arrive until the following day and he is restless, with time on his hands. His kindly old friend introduces Bill to a tall, polished man who is “in the mining business” and the three have dinner together and Bill hears much talk of “leads,” “drifts,” and “ore bodies” and is impressed. The mining man picks up the check. Later, with time hanging heavy on their hands, the mining man suggests a poker game to the old man. Both advise Bill to stay out of it, but he decides to play a few hands. He feels that his luck is in—that he can’t lose.
And he wins, wins again—three straight pots. Then he loses, wins again, loses, and wins twice more. Now well ahead of the game, he is feeling good. He gets an excellent hand, and the betting runs high. Before he realizes it he is out of his winnings and deep into the ten thousand—and he loses. Then he wins and loses again. Soon he is winning only small, occasional pots, but losing the big ones.
Disgusted, most of his money gone, he suggests they call it off, and the others agree—though they all know he still has well over two thousand dollars.
They leave the room and he sits there, then gets up and paces around the room. Worried and restless. He drops into the chair where the mining man had been seated, starts to get up, but his fingertips brush something pushed down between the side of the chair and the cushion. He reaches back and draws out—an ace of spades! Then the ace of hearts, and then the other two aces follow!
He has been cheated!
Then it all adds up: the old man on the train, his own free talk about what he was going to do, his plans, etc. The arrival in town, introduction, and the game. He is enraged, but suddenly, he has a plan. Most of all, the old man’s continual quotations irritate him. He had believed them an amusing quirk; now that the man has been revealed as a card shark, Bill’s attitude is less tolerant.
At breakfast he meets the men, comments on the fact that he is down to his last two thousand, and says he might as well go for all or nothing.
Bill now knows their pattern. They will let him win a couple of small pots, then get into a big one—and they will see that he has what he thinks is a good hand—and then they will take him. He doubts if they will delay long.
As expected, he rakes in a couple of small pots. He has carefully watched the mining man and noticed that his hands have not been off the table. Bill Ryan is dealt two queens and two kings. He discards the fifth card and draws—another king!
A full house.
He acts—shows excitement—digs out another wad of bills (actually, it is a Kansas City bankroll: newspaper wrapped in a few bills), and gambling on their belief in his gullibility, he ups the ante until everything he has is in the pot, and all the money they have won from him. He sees the gambler’s hand drop from the table as if to ease his position a little, and Bill Ryan calls—and spreads his cards on the table: queen and four aces!
The mining man and his companion stare blankly at the aces and Bill places a pistol on the table. “Brought it along for rattlesnakes,” he comments, and rakes in the pot, stuffing the money into his pockets, and easing from the room.
The two crooks sit staring at each other, then the old man explodes with anger. “You had those aces!” he shouts. “You had them in the chair!”
The mining man springs up, and the two lift the cushion. A neat white typewritten card is in the position where they had left the cards, on it the words:
“Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster and catch him at the first attempt, but beware of an honest man!”
COMMENTS: This feels like a treatment for a half-hour TV episode, but I have no idea if it was intended for any particular show. From the late forties until the sixties, there were dozens of “anthology series” on the air, shows where every episode was a different story with different characters. Some of these were exclusively Western and many others would accept Western genre materials. In the 1950s, other short stories and treatments of Louis’s were purchased for shows like Rebound, Fireside Theater, Ford Television Theatre, Climax!, Schlitz Playhouse, and Chevron Hall of Stars. Selling quickly sketched out ideas like this one or repurposing old short stories was an additional way for Dad to scrape together some money. He also sold or created episode concepts for reoccurring character series like Tales of Wells Fargo, Maverick, The Texan, Sugarfoot, City Detective, and Cowboy G-Men.
Dad’s relationship with Hollywood was as much a relationship with the TV industry as it was with feature films. Cowboy G-Men was produced as early as 1952, and he also wrote the pilot for 1956’s Hart of Honolulu, which, if picked up, might have been TV’s first “private detective in Hawaii” crime drama.