Bitter Vengeance: Have Gun, Will Travel (December 6, 1959)

“Bitter Vengeance” is an episode of Have Gun, Will Travel, the old-time radio show, first broadcast December 6, 1959. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Paladin agrees to escort a dying woman named Janet Stalker back to her birthplace, but the journey into the desert becomes a trap. Janet and her companion Doke reveal themselves as the widow and brother of Byron Cully, a man Paladin shot in self-defense two years earlier in Virginia City. They plan to leave Paladin to die slowly of thirst in the Mojave Desert as revenge for the death.

San Francisco and the Mojave Desert, 1875

Characters: Paladin, Janet Stalker Cully, Doke Cully, Hey Boy (hotel clerk)

Listen for: The tense confrontation in the desert as Paladin discovers the elaborate trap set for him, and Janet's bitter recollections of her dead husband Byron Cully.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.