What happens
Ken Thurston, a man called X, looks into the troubled construction of a new sawmill and timber plant in the Oregon town of Telosa. Forest Service official Hubert Mitchell comes to him because the government backs the project, and the deadline is three months away. Ranger Ray Brown had reported strange delays and was found dead in a cabin, apparently from a careless cigarette, though Thurston's old friend insists Brown never smoked anything but a pipe. Thurston arrives in town, meets the local storekeeper Howard Crumb and an eccentric salesman named Pagon Zelschmit, and is soon drawn into a brush fire, a shooting in the night and a series of suspicious accidents. The story is set in a remote logging community where timber owners, contractors and the McDermott family all have something to gain or lose.
Telosa, Oregon, a small logging town in the timber country, with a general store, a hotel, a sawmill construction site, and the surrounding forest and river
Characters: Ken Thurston, Hubert Mitchell, Ray Brown, Howard Crumb, Pagon Zelschmit, Gene Fox, Bill McDermott, Elaine McDermott
Listen for: Listen for the shooting in the night outside the hotel, the timber slide scene over the ravine, and Thurston's questions about the railroad route and the private timber tract on the map.
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.