The Talisman

Walker, who played a character called Cheyenne Bodie on TV, starred as Rafe Ellis (the Retired Sheriff Who Must Strap on His Guns One Last Time). Inger Stevens had been originally slated to play the part of the Dance Hall Girl with Willing Arms and a Heart of Gold, but Miss Stevens had come down with a bad case of bronchitis and Lily Cavanaugh had stepped into the part. It was of a sort she could have done competently in a coma. Once, when his parents thought he was asleep and were talking in the living room downstairs, Jack overheard his mother say something striking as he padded barefoot to the bathroom to get a glass of water . . . it was striking enough, at any rate, so that Jack never forgot it. ‘All the women I played knew how to fuck, but not one of them knew how to fart,’ she told Phil.
    Will Hutchins, who starred in another Warner Brothers program (this one was called Sugarfoot ), had also been in the film. Last Train to Hangtown was Jack’s favorite chiefly because of the character Hutchins played. It was this character – Andy Ellis, by name – who came to his tired, tottering, overtaxed mind now as he watched the suits of armor marching down the dark hallway toward him.
    Andy Ellis had been the Cowardly Kid Brother Who Gets Mad in the Last Reel. After skulking and cowering through the entire movie, he had gone out to face Duggan’s evil minions after the Chief Minion (played by sinister, stubbly, wall-eyed Jack Elam, who played Chief Minions in all sorts of Warner epics, both theatrical and televisional) had shot his brother Rafe in the back.
    Hutchins had gone striding down the dusty wide-screen street, strapping on his brother’s gunbelts with clumsy fingers, shouting, ‘Come on! Come on, I’m ready for ya! You made a mistake! You shoulda killed both of the Ellis brothers!’
    Will Hutchins had not been one of the greatest actors of all time, but in that moment he had achieved – at least in Jack’s eyes – a moment of clear truth and real brilliance. There was a sense that the kid was going to his death, and knew it, but meant to go on, anyway . And although he was frightened, he was not striding up that street toward the showdown with the slightest reluctance; he went eagerly, sure of what he meant to do, even though he had to fumble again and again with the buckles of the gunbelts.
    The suits of armor came on, closing the distance, rocking from side to side like toy robots. They should have keys sticking out of their backs , Jack thought.
    He turned to face them, the yellowed pick held between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, as if to strum a tune.
    They seemed to hesitate, as if sensing his fearlessness. The hotel itself seemed to suddenly hesitate, or to open its eyes to a danger that was deeper than it had at first thought; floors groaned their boards, somewhere a series of doors clapped shut one after the other, and on the roofs, the brass ornaments ceased turning for a moment.
    Then the suits of armor clanked forward again. They now made a single moving wall of plate-and chain-mail, of greaves and helmets and sparkling gorgets. One held a spiked iron ball on a wooden haft; one a martel de fer ; the one in the center held the double-pointed sword.
    Jack suddenly began to walk toward them. His eyes lit up; he held the guitar-pick out before him. His face filled with that radiant Jason-glow. He
    sideslipped
    momentarily into
    the Territories and became Jason; here the shark’s tooth which had been a pick seemed to be aflame. As he approached the three knights, one pulled off its helmet, revealing another of those old, pale faces – this one was thick with jowls, and the neck hung with waxy wattles that looked like melting candlewax. It heaved its helmet at him. Jason dodged it easily
    and
    slipped back
    into his Jack-self as a helmet crashed off a panelled wall behind him. Standing in front of him was a headless suit of armor.
    You think that scares me? he thought contemptuously. I’ve seen that trick before. It doesn’t scare me, you don’t scare me, and I’m going to get it, that’s all .
    This time he did not just feel the hotel listening ; this time it seemed to recoil all around him, as the tissue of a digestive organ might recoil from a poisoned bit of flesh. Upstairs, in the five rooms where the five Guardian Knights had died, five windows blew out like gunshots. Jack bore down on the suits of armor.
    The Talisman sang out from somewhere above in its clear and