Riders of Death Valley – Chapter 14: A Fight to the Death

We’re back!

OUR STORY SO FAR:  Kirby, in an effort to prevent Jim Benton from getting his ore to the smelter, orders Davis to serve a fake warrant on Benton the moment he enters town.

Jim and Tombstone give Davis and his fake deputies a thorough beating, then head back to meet the wagons.

“The Wolf” and his pack, attempting to run down Jim and Tombstone, force them into the teeth of a terrific electrical storm in a wild mountain canyon and…

I know, I know, I’ve been away from Serial Saturdays for a long time; the last chapter was covered back in early January.  But the screen capture above kind of explains why it took me a while to get back into the spirit of these things since the Chapter 13 cliffhanger would seem to suggest that there are supernatural forces at work in the serial world; the Chapter Play Gods have been angered at how long it’s taken Riders of Death Valley (1941) to unfold, and have meted out their vengeance accordingly.  (I’ll bet they’re as sick of hearing Fingal’s Cave as I am, too.)

So after having struggled with the metaphysical implications of such a chapter ending, I have overcome my crisis of faith and am prepared to continue…because, believe me, no one is more anxious to quickly put this thing to rest than I am.  (And I’ll tell you right now: while I’m still trying to decide which serial will be the next in the spotlight—I’m torn between revisiting The Black Widow or checking out one I’ve not seen, Government Agents vs. Phantom Legion—it’s not going to be one that I have to endure for fifteen chapters.)

"Avert your eyes!"

Wolf (Charles Bickford), Butch (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and the rest of the “pack” are astonished to see the Serial Gods attempt to smite their adversaries…but of course, the resilient Jim Benton (Dick Foran) and Tombstone (Buck Jones) manage to overcome this intrusion by the cliffhanger deities and just wind up a little moist, thanks to a nearby body of water.  “Look, Wolf!  It didn’t get ‘em!  They’re in the river!” Butch alerts the gang leader, perhaps under the impression that he’s been momentarily blinded.  He then sees the rest of the Death Valley Riders approaching in the distance with their wagons filled with Lost Aztec Mine ore.  “Yeah, they got the Johnson gang with ‘em…too many for us…come on!” yells Wolf, in what some would describe as a tactical retreat.  (Others a bit meaner than I might refer to it as “tails tucked between their legs.”)

BORAX (as Jim and Tombstone emerge from the river): Ol’ lady luck was sure ridin’ on your shoulders!

PANCHO: Don’t you know the lightning come from upstairs don’t care who it hits?

JIM: I know all about that…but what I’m worried about is how we’re gonna get that ore across with the bridge out!

This does seem to present a problem.  Well, the amigos do a “let’s went” and a fade finds us back in the office of Joseph Kirby (James Blaine), the ineffectual head of operations who engages in dickish villainy because he’s so darn good at it.  He discusses his latest failed scheme with his second-in-command, the pathetic Rance Davis (Monte Blue).

DAVIS: Looks like that murder charge we trumped up against Benton isn’t going to work out…

KIRBY: No…tear up that fake warrant…if it got in the wrong hands, it’s be pretty hard for all of us… (Rance starts to look through his pockets) What’s the matter?

DAVIS: I guess I’ve lost it!

KIRBY (standing up): You sure Benton didn’t get a hold of it?

DAVIS: Well, he might have…when I was knocked out…

Well…here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.  Outside Kirby’s saloon, we observe Wolf and his gang riding up…and the six men walk into the saloon, whereupon the boss orders them to “Get yourself a drink.”  Wolf then takes Butch with him inside Kirby’s office.

KIRBY: Well?  Did you get Benton?

WOLF: No…we were right on his tail at Mud Creek when lightning wrecked the bridge and cut us off…

DAVIS: Lightning this time…eh?

WOLF: Yeah…things do happen, don’t they?

There seems to be just a soupçon of animosity between Davis and Wolf throughout this serial…and yet the filmmakers convey this ever so subtly.

KIRBY: Wolf—if you listened to me once in a while…

WOLF: Well, what have you got to offer?

KIRBY: Uh…I don’t know…

I hurt myself laughing at that exchange.  (“Ah…I got nothin’, big guy.”)  But all are in agreement that they have to do something to stop Benton.  The scene then shifts back to our heroes, who are still stymied with the dilemma of getting the ore to the smelter “without anyone getting wise.”  Providence arrives in the form of a grizzled old prospector who answers to “Cactus Pete”; Pete is played by serial stalwart Ernie Adams, whom you might know from Raiders of Ghost City (1944) (the subject of several posts at the award-winning blog of my BBFF, She Blogged by Night) as Hans Plattner (a.k.a. Bill Jasper) and also from Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945) as Charlie the Stoolie.

CACTUS: Say, Jim…I heared you struck it rich and I was thinkin’ on another grubstake…

PANCHO: Yeah…but I don’t think you get no more grubstake from Mister Jim…

JIM: I haven’t seen you for a long time, Cactus…

TOMBSTONE: Where ya been hidin’ yourself?

CACTUS: Well, I’ve been down on Flat Creek…say…I thought I’d struck it rich when I found these…

Cactus Pete pulls a sack out of his pocket and shows it to the Riders…the contents comprise some pieces of gold ore that Pete hypothesizes might have dropped by another prospector (“Found a skeleton close by, so…I reckon it was him”).

JIM: Hey, Cactus…you didn’t show those to anyone else, did you?

CACTUS: No, si-ree…I didn’t want to start no stampede where there weren’t no gold now…

PANCHO: Hey, you know I think if you started stampedes…everybody gonna leave Panamint, then we go get the gold with the wagons…

“Listen, I think you got something there, Pancho,” responds Tombstone enthusiastically.  “There’s something that comes out of that adobe brain of yours besides cucarachas.” (Oh, brother…the racism…it burns…)  So Jim, the brains of the outfit (snicker), devises a plan whereupon Cactus will mosey on into town and show the quartz to Kirby.  Benton gives Pete a note to give to Judge Knox, and emphasizes that Kirby and Kirby alone is the only one who should be made aware of the quartz…because all they need to do is make certain that Kirby and his men are the ones to ride out of town.  Pancho (Leo Carrillo) volunteers to follow Cactus into Panamint, and Jim suggests he take Borax Bill (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams) along as well.

Back in Panamint, Wolf has devised a cunning plan to rid everyone of Jim Benton and his riders once and for all…and it’s only taken him fourteen chapters to do it.

WOLF: We’ll trap ‘em at Funeral Pass…

KIRBY: We’ve got to be sure this time…if you fail again, Benton will get his gold ore into town…

WOLF: We won’t fail…Butch will take half the men, I’ll take the other…we’ll go at ‘em from both ends of the pass…where there ain’t room on the trail to turn a burro around…

There is a knock on the door, and Trigger (Jack Rockwell), one of Reade’s goons, brings Cactus in for a chinwag.

KIRBY: Whaddya want?

CACTUS: I think I hit on somethin’ big, Kirby!  And I thought maybe you’d like to grubstake me…

KIRBY: Get out…you think I have nothing to do but finance you desert rats?

WOLF: Waitaminnit…see what he’s got…

So Cactus pulls out the quartz and shows it to Kirby, who takes the bait like a mouse with a Gouda addiction.  He reveals the “location” to Kirby, and Kirby promises him a stake of $100 plus fifty percent of what they dig out…providing he keeps everything on the Q.T.  Another moment of unintentional hilarity occurs when Kirby threatens Pete: “If you do…you’ll never prospect again.”

“Trigger,” adds Kirby, “tell the barkeep to give him all the liquor he wants.”  Okay, new plan, everybody!

DAVIS: Hey, Kirby…that’s the richest piece of quartz I’ve ever seen in Death Valley!

KIRBY: The richest I ever saw anywhere…

WOLF: We gotta move fast on this…I’ll get the boys ridin’ to Dry Creek and stake out Blue Gulch from one end to the other!

DAVIS: What about Benton?

KIRBY: Benton can wait…

WOLF: His wagons are still plenty miles from town…come on, Butch…

Shouldn’t that be “Come on, Woim”?  Knowing that the only way Benton can pay off Kirby’s note involves Jim’s ability to get advance money from Judge Knox via his ore, Kirby decides to pay the ethically-challenged magistrate a visit at the Panamint Savings and Loan.  In the meantime, Wolf and Davis gather up the crew to head for Dry Creek—and as the pack heads out of town, they are watched from a safe distance by Pancho and Borax Bill.

PANCHO: Hey…that Wolf and his men are in big hurry to get to Dry Creek, no?  I guess that joke that Cactus Pete he make worked, eh?

BORAX: Sure looks like it…we’d better hightail it out of here and tell Jim!

PANCHO: Let’s went!

Back at First Panamint Trust, Kirby enters and presents Judge Knox (James Guilfoyle) with the fruits of Cactus Pete’s labor.

KIRBY: I heard you tell Jim Benton this morning that you’d advance him the money to meet my note…

KNOX: Yep!  Jim’s got good security…and if the quartz he’s bringing in measures up to the sample he showed me…you’ll get your money, all right…

KIRBY: That’s just the point, Judge…I don’t want him to pay me yet…on account of another deal I’d like to make with him…thought I could persuade you to hold off a little…

“That’s why I came in the front door with this wheelbarrow filled with money…”

KNOX: You did, eh?  How?

KIRBY: By cutting you in on the richest strike ever made in Death Valley…look… (He pulls the sack out of his suit pocket) Did you ever see gold ore like this before?

KNOX (examining the quartz) Yep…saw some like this this morning…same ore exactly…

KIRBY: You did?  Well, who showed it to you?

KNOX: Jim Benton…this ore’s from Jim Benton’s Lost Aztec Mine…and it’s the sample on which I offered to advance him money…

Ha ha!  Ya burnt, Kirby!  To add insult to injury, Cactus Pete staggers into the bank (of course he’d be staggering—he’s no doubt drank his fill and then some at Kirby’s watering hole), wanting to cash the $100 check Kirby gave him for the grubstake.  Kirby threatens to add a few pounds of lead to the “old reprobate’s” frame but is warned off by Knox, who asks: “Did Jim Benton put one over on you?”  This is rather a curious development insomuch as earlier in Riders, Knox appeared to be siding with Kirby when he refused to lift a finger to help late bank president Lafe Hogan (Jack Clifford) hold onto his financial institution.  There are several different conclusions we might reach from this development: either Knox is several chess moves ahead of Kirby, scheming to take over the Lost Aztec Mine for his own evil judicial purposes, or he's had a Road-to-Damascus conversion and has renounced his wicked magistrate ways.  (Or maybe he just didn't like Lafe Hogan in the first place.  Which would seem to make the most sense, since he took over his friggin' bank even before the body was cold.)

Judge Knox tells Cactus that Kirby’s check is legitimate and instructs one of the bank’s underlings to get the grizzled old prospector his $100.  But also in the same breath, he advises Pete to “make yourself scarce in Panamint for a while.”  Cactus then gives Knox the note from Jim.

Kirby returns to his saloon, pissed off to the max, and spies Trigger sitting at a table.  The two men go into Kirby’s office—I’m guessing because he doesn’t want the regular barflies to hear the instructions he’s going to give Trigger.  (Which doesn’t make much sense—most of them are three sheets to the wind anyway.)

TRIGGER: Well, what’s wrong, Kirby?

KIRBY: Everything!  That strike of Cactus’ was a fake to get my men out of town!

TRIGGER: Fake?  Why, that quartz Cactus had looked real to me…

KIRBY: Aw, shut up and listen…you ride to Dry Creek…overtake Wolf and the men…tell the Wolf we’re going through with that attack at Funeral Pass as we planned!  I’ll have some men there to meet him…

TRIGGER: But they got too long a start!  Besides, that horse of mine is lame—I could never catch ‘em…

KIRBY: All right, take my horse!

“Don’t bother me with details!  Honestly!”  The scene then shifts back to Benton and his Merry Men as they join up with Pancho and Borax; Pancho is still laughing at the prank that they pulled on Kirby as if it was the greatest in the history of practical jokes.

PANCHO: It is to laugh!  That Cactus Pete, he make the trick work all right, didn’t he?

BORAX: Sure did!  We seen the Wolf and his pack hightail it out of town toward Dry Creek…

JIM: Good!  Then we can take a chance and take this stuff through Funeral Pass…

MARY: But, Jim…if that gang ever finds out that poor ol’ Cactus double crossed them his life won’t be worth an ounce of fool’s gold…

TOMBSTONE: Hey, don’t you worry about that old desert rat…he’ll be harder to find than the gold he’s huntin’ for…

Pete ought to hide in a bathhouse…they’d never think to look for him there.  So as Jim and the Riders continue into town, we shift to a scene where Wolf and his men ride into a clearing…and a split second later, Trigger comes riding up after firing off a few rounds to get their attention.  If Trigger was able to catch up to that group in such a short amount of time riding Kirby’s horse…maybe Kirby should consider entering that nag in a few races.

TRIGGER: That yarn Cactus told was a fake…a trick of Jim Benton’s to get ya out of town…

DAVIS: So he could get his wagons into the smelter!  We’d better head back to Panamint…

TRIGGER: No…Kirby says to catch ‘em at Funeral Pass…he’s sendin’ some other men to meet ya there…

WOLF: Right!

DAVIS: Well, I’ll head back to Panamint to make sure they’re on their way…

WOLF: Take care of yourself, Davis…I’ll worry about ya…

Oh, that sounded sincere.  Well, as Jim and his band of brothers head toward Funeral Pass (that cartographer had a macabre sense of humor) they discover that said pass has been blocked by some strategically-place rocks…so the wagon crew and riders get to movin’ them boulders.  No sooner has the stone excavation started when eagle-eyed Mary (Jean Brooks) spots Wolf and his homies off in the distance.  That’s the serial’s cue to do what it seemingly does best (and really, what it’s done throughout the previous thirteen chapters): feature an indeterminately long chase sequence with the two warring camps.

After a minute or two of some really smashing stock footage, Wolf and the pack take up residence at a vantage point that looks remarkably similar to the rocks they hid behind in the last chapter…

Last chapter.

This chapter.

…which would seem to suggest that the “wide open spaces” might have been a teensy exaggeration, if Riders of Death Valley is any sort of document of record.  Once Reade’s mob and the Riders have established their positions, then the shooting-and-missing starts.

PANCHO: Hey—the Wolf pack is come from both sides…I wish I was twins!

BORAX: I don’t…one of you’s enough!

Pancho then gives him a few choice words in Spanish, and though my college Español is a little rusty, I translated it as “You always hurt the one you love.”  Surveying the fine kettle of fish they’re in, Jim feverishly formulates a plan:

JIM: Hey, Tomb…they’re too well-covered…suppose I go up in those rocks and smoke ‘em out for ya…

TOMBSTONE: What you’ll miss I’ll get!

Can you smell what the rocks are cookin’?  Must be the testosterone.  Naturally, Jim’s retreat to the rocks does not go unnoticed by the Wolf man:

WOLF: Benton’s headed for that ledge…he’ll pick us off like a lot of blackbirds…follow me, Trigger…

More shooting follows, but I did want to point out this poignant scene…

…yes, despite no longer possessing a corporeal form, Ghost Smokey (Noah Beery, Jr.) continues to assist his comrades.  What a great guy.

Okay, most of the remainder of the running time in this thing is shooting and Jim’s scrambling to get a better position so that he can go blackbird hunting.  Wolf follows him, and they eventually engage in a mano-a-mano struggle that leads to this cliff…

…which presents Trigger with an ethical dilemma.  What if he hits Wolf by mistake?

Well…Trigger never was really good at ethical dilemmas.