A Love To Remember (Episode 8.07)

Executive Producer Norman Macdonnell
Produced by Paul Freeman
Written by Ben Masselink
Directed by Joseph Pevney

We get some long winters out here.

Episode scene:

The Virginian is smitten by the Graingers' houseguest, an artist-reporter from the east. He comments that Sitting Bull was an artist-reporter and published under a pen name in Harper’s. When Mrs. Grainger remarks that the Virginian likes to keep up on his reading, he jokes that it is because the winters are long.

Quotation from the book (Chapter 23):

Love had been snowbound for many weeks....Then, where winter barred his visits to Bear Creek, and there was for the while no ranch work or responsibility to fill his thoughts and blood with action, he set himself a task much lighter. Often, instead of Shakespeare and fiction, school books lay open on his cabin table; and penmanship and spelling helped the hours to pass. Many sheets of paper did he fill with various exercises, and Mrs. Henry gave him her assistance in advice and corrections....So the snow fell, the world froze, and the spelling-books and exercises went on.

He's still out there...listen...hisssssss!

Episode scene:

While sitting around a campfire with the other hands, Trampas tells a tall tale about being followed in the desert by an 8 foot “hoopsnake”. The snake saved Trampas’ life because he wanted his hat.

Quotation from the book (Chapter 16):

“...I was diggin’ in a hole I’d seen an owl run down. And that’s what I got.” He held up his thumb again.
“The Snake!” I exclaimed. “Yes, sir. Mr. Rattler was keepin’ house that day. Took me right there. I hauled him out of the hole hangin’ to me. Eight rattles...Yes, sir. Thought I was dead. But the woman...she acted better than the man...she just clawed his pocket and burrowed and kep’ yelling Give him the stone, Augustus! And she whipped out one of them Injun medicine-stones, - first one I ever seen, - and she clapped it on to my thumb, and it started in right away.” “What did it do?” said I. “Sucked. Like blotting-paper does....And when it had sucked the poison out of the wound, off it falls off my thumb by itself! And I thanked the woman for saving my life that capable and keeping her head that cool. I never knowed how excited she had been till afterward. She was awful shocked...when her next child was born, it had eight rattles.”

Additional comments:

1. Also in Chapter 16, a taller tale is told by the Virginian to his men and the other passengers on a stranded train, when he spins a story about the competition of two famous restaurants for frogs. Just as soon as sees that Trampas believes him, he lets go with the punchline “And if ever yu’ see a man that hides his feet an’ won’t take off his socks in company, he has worked in them Tulare swamps an’ got the disease. Catch him wadin’, and yu’ll find he’s webfooted. Frawgs are dead, Trampas, and so are you.” It diminishes Trampas in the eyes of the other men, who meekly return to the train and to the Sunk Creek ranch, instead of deserting for the gold fields of Rawhide.
2. In this episode, the Virginian spots the Graingers’s houseguest fly-fishing and stops to visit with her. He takes a turn with the rod and reel and proudly shows her what he’s caught. In Chapter 21 of the book (In A State of Sin) the Virginian is “deputed” to take Molly fishing.