The Concrete
Corral (Murder Arena I)
McCloud
is assigned to shepherd the cowboys at a visiting rodeo. They’re old friends,
and one of them is killed by a jealous rival over a woman, it appears.
A Woman’s
Prerogative
The two parts are connected not as a sequential structure
but as an Elizabethan mirror, the one about the blind sex murderer and the
fellow who couldn’t tell a lady’s mind. A simple case of misunderstanding, like
the one in Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, when the title
character beseeches her father with the words, “stand up for me,” and he
bravely rises to his feet at the dinner table.
Blue Roberts is a man of bravado who nonetheless can’t
impress his wife, or so he thinks. There is a question about his affair with
Billy’s mistress Iris. Billy, who isn’t a model of fidelity either, roughs him
up at a New York bar, and Iris tells Goose the rodeo clown she’d like to see
him dead.
Billy’s found dead in his hotel room, and Blue is sought
by McCloud, who finds him hiding in a freight train down at the yard. Now,
Blue’s protesting his innocence all along, so the great revelation comes to
Goose in a subsequent conversation with Iris, who tells him he’d mistaken her
meaning, it wasn’t Billy she wanted dead but cruel and heartless Blue, and
anyway...
All this is expressed with a look and a word.
|
Albert Salmi Goose Jenkins |
Story by David P. Harmon, Warren Douglas |
185A, 9.30.70
Iris McKensie is so spelled in the opening credits.
Chief Clifford is addressed as Lieutenant by McCloud (in later
episodes, he is a captain). The name on his door is Peter B. Clifford, not the
erroneous J. sometimes and perhaps humorously seen on his deskplate.
Ringo Montana, the TV Western star McCloud is charged with
protecting at the end of the episode, is played by Doug McClure of The
Virginian in a disguised and unbilled cameo.
McCLOUD: Why do I have to babysit a whole rodeo?
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: Orders, that’s why.
McCLOUD: Come on, Lieutenant. I mean, what’s fair is, uh, fair.
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: Not with me behind this desk.
(Would Sgt. Broadhurst care to take on McCloud’s assignment
for him?)
SGT. BROADHURST: (To McCloud.) How could I handle that buncha
spaced-out cowpokes?
CHIEF CLIFFORD: (To McCloud.) Now,
you’re assigned to keep your friends from the farm peaceful and quiet, and
that’s it.
IRIS McKENSIE: (After Blue and Billy mix it up in the
cocktail lounge at the hotel.) I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill
him, so help me I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill him...
(Blue’s continual goading of Billy.)
DONNA ROBERTS: Why, Blue, why? Why do you have to strip a man clean?
BLUE
ROBERTS: Billy’s not a man.
DONNA
ROBERTS: What does that make you?
BLUE
ROBERTS: A lot more than you give me credit for.
McCLOUD: (Picking up a bar tab at the hotel.) Newewew
York! That’s a couple cases o’ beer in Taos.
McCLOUD: I been walkin’ this spread for quite a while, and it’s a
lot easier for a man t’ hide in a forest than it is in a desert.
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: (To Sgt. Broadhurst.) That make sense to you?
GOOSE JENKINS: (Of Chief Clifford.) I’ve
landed on cactus softer than him.
McCLOUD: There ya
go.
(Blue Roberts is from Wyoming, “close to 1200 miles” from
New Mexico, but they’re both Westerners...)
CHIEF CLIFFORD: Now, what would you do if you were on the run in New York?
McCLOUD:
(Reflects.) Oh, I think I’d dig me a gopher hole.
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: You’d hide, of course.
McCLOUD: Yeah... then,
when I thought it was about time, I’d stick my head up kinda slow, ‘n look
around, ‘n head west.
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: And just where would you hide?
McCLOUD: Well,
that’s kinda hard t’ say, Chief. (Grinning.) A good
gopher doesn’t (Rhymes with “bunt”.) tell. (Leaves the
room.)
CHIEF CLIFFORD: (To Sgt. Broadhurst, who is about to point out the humor of
this remark.) Don’t say it. (Sgt. Broadhurst leaves the room. Chief
Clifford is alone, muttering.) A good gopher doesn’t tell. (He shakes
his head.)
McCLOUD: (Of Blue Roberts, to Donna Roberts.) They got
more cops in this town than they got people in Taos. Someone’s bound to trip
over ‘im.
(Blue Roberts is about to “head west”.)
McCLOUD: You do
and I’ll come huntin’ for ya, Blue.
BLUE
ROBERTS: Aw, it’s a big country.
McCLOUD: It’s not
that big.
(Sgt. Broadhust is ordered by Chief Clifford to stick close
to McCloud.)
McCLOUD: Care t’
make a deal?
SGT.
BROADHURST: Oh, no, none of your deals, and don’t try to corrupt me.
McCLOUD: Shoot,
Joe, you’re s’ far gone now, there’s nothin’ left t’ corrupt.
(The culprit is nabbed.)
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: This is the right man, eh?
McCLOUD: Well,
that depends, Chief, on who’s askin’ the question.