Maverick

Bret Maverick takes down a money-hungry gambler in the town of Echo Springs. He befriends an old drunk, who turns out to be a successful judge. Maverick strikes a deal with the gambler, Phineas King, to merge the ""silver lady"" mine with ""the new hope"" mine.

Bret meets a delightful and cunning girl (Karen Steele). Within minutes, she makes plans for his future — a permanent plot on boot hill.

Samantha Crawford is a con artist employed by George Cross. Cross once lost $50,000 to Bret Maverick and is determined to get it back. Two riverboat owners staked Maverick $5,000 which he promptly loses to Samantha. Samantha claims Cross is her father and needs the money to get out of jail. Maverick forms a partnership with Samantha and purchases gambling equipment in a scheme to put Joe Riggs, a crooked game room owner, out of business. Samantha and Cross doublecross Maverick by selling the equipment to Riggs.

Bret attends a hanging under very uncomfortable conditions: he's the intended victim.

Bret falls for the tempting trickery of a pretty woman (Joanna Barnes) — and finds himself helplessly involved in a swindle.

Bart meets a gentleman after his own heart — who skips town with his money, and leaves him to face a murder rap and a man-hungry female (Arlene Howell).

Beau Maverick (played by James Garner), father of Bret and Bart announces that he is getting married. The Maverick boys discover that the marriage is a business arrangement, not a love commitment. The young girl, Josephine St. Cloud is being forced by her father to marry the older Beau Maverick. The brothers set out to sabotage the wedding plans, not knowing that Beau Maverick already had a plan.

Bart double-crosses a double-crosser — and winds up hogtied and kidnapped, with only his wits as a weapon with which to save his neck.

Sheriff Bret astounds himself as well as the townspeople by taming the trail herders who have been devastating the town, beats a gang of bank robbers at their own game, but has to summon the aid of brother Bart when his eye for a woman's beauty lands him in his own lockup.

This is the episode that introduces Roger Moore as Cousin Beauregard Maverick. Beau is considered the ""white sheep"" of the family because he had the misfortune of earning a medal in the Civil War. (He had won the medal purely by accident.) Pappy had banished him to England for five years because no Maverick had ever been a hero. Bart Mavrick greets Beau upon his return to America and enlists his cousin to impersonate the son of the Marquis of Bognor, who had been indentured to work on a ranch in Wyoming for six months. The Maverick cousins stand to earn $4,000, but the play goes awry when Beau is kidnapped by a man who wants to settle a grudge with the Marquis.

Bart meets a comical sheriff (Edgar Buchanan) who is dead serious about killing him.

Beau Maverick wins ownership of the Silver Hill, a worthless ore mine. A crooked railroad agent named Shanks tries to cheat the townspeople out of their land by offering them a price that is well below market value. Beau convinces the town to relocate Silver Hill to a sheep ranch twenty miles away. The plan backfires when a new vein of silver is discovered in the supposedly worthless Silver Hill mine, thus enabling Shanks to claim the land without cost. The only hope is for the town to relocate back to Silver Hill before the railroad takes over the land.

Bart tries to track down Pearly Gates, a smooth con man who cheated him out of $5000.

When investors put the squeeze on railroad owner Paul Sutton, Bart tries to help by dealing with them directly — in a friendly card game.

Bart forsakes the poker table for the stock market — and finds himself trying to bluff wealthy Loftus Jaggers and his glamorous daughter (Paula Raymond).