"Revenge of the Herd" was the ninth episode of Legend, and first aired on July 4th, 1995. It was written by Tim Burns and directed by Bob Balaban. You can watch the episode via Amazon Prime Video or DVD.
Pratt is forced by his publishing company assume the persona of Nicodemus Legend to lead Ludwig Hauptman (European publisher of the Legend books) and his son, Rolf, on a buffalo hunt. Bartok is no more thrilled by this turn of events than Pratt, citing animosity between Hungarians and Germans, but they and Ramos reluctantly join the expedition. While Pratt and Bartok attempt to dissuade their guests from pursing the wild buffalo, circumstances conspire against them as they unwittingly stumble upon an entire herd, which the Germans are all too eager to attack.
With Pratt barely able to convince the Germans to make camp first and shoot buffalo later, Bartok slips a mild sedative into their beer, knocking them out while he and Pratt attempt to frighten the herd to safety. Unfortunately, even gunfire accompanied by blasts from the electrofulminator do nothing to move the buffalo, and all this activity angers the local Arapaho tribe, who wish to protect the buffalo from white exploitation.
Towashie, the tribal spokesman, happens to be a reader of the Legend novels, and thus suggests allowing Pratt, Bartok, and Ramos to leave in safety, only killing the Germans. Pratt can’t let this happen, but also knows that, as things stand, the Germans will start shooting at buffalo sooner or later (thus condemning themselves to death at the hands of the Arapaho). Together, Ramos, Bartok, and Pratt come up with the idea of modifying one of the velocipedes with recently-developed remote control technology and the recently-cleaned “Sylvester” (the eponymous buffalo head of the Buffalo Head Saloon) to create “Thunderhooves,” a vengeful buffalo spirit designed to frighten the Germans out of their intended slaughter.
Towashie is skeptical, but agrees to the plan, and while Bartok and Ramos return to their lab to prepare, Towashie tells Hauptman and his company the Arapaho legend surrounding Thunderhooves. When Bartok’s Thunderhooves makes an appearance, the Germans are indeed frightened away, but return some time afterward with fellow buffalo hunters to go back after Thunderhooves and kill it. Although Pratt tries to tell them that he refuses to lead another expedition to Arapaho land, the hunters intend to go after Thunderhooves on their own.Although Bartok is inclined to dismiss the problem (after all, the hunters are never going to find the fictitious Thunderhooves), Towashie arrives soon after to report that the white men are shooting buffalo on Arapaho land again, and will continue doing so until Thunderhooves is found. Rather than allow the Indians to kill the buffalo hunters, Bartok suggests using their remote-controlled Thunderhooves to lead the hunters away from Arapaho land.
Pratt finds the hunters to set up Thunderhooves’ appearance, while Bartok, Ramos, and Towashie follow from above in the Legend Balloon, from which they can control Thunderhooves. Rather than being immediately frightened away, some of the hunters attack Thunderhooves, and one of their bullets damages the remote control mechanism. Now out of control, the mechanical Thunderhooves heads straight into Sheridan. Towashie suggests that the real spirit of Thunderhooves has taken control of the mechanical beast’s body.
In order to regain control of the rampaging monster, Pratt has to reach a manual override, located within Thunderhooves’ head. Pratt eventually manages the feat, and safely guides the monster out of town. With everyone in town convinced that Thunderhooves has headed out into the mountains, all of the hunters have followed, leaving the Arapaho lands (and their buffalo) safe for the time being.Some additional notes:
- It is possible that this episode represents the end of Pratt's ability to enjoy bourbon in a teacup, as Harry Parver threatens Lamar the bartender with legal action, and we subsequently see Lamar pour the bourbon out of the teapot and back into the bottle of Old Forester. While this is the last time it shows up in the series, as broadcast, this episode was filmed before “The Life, Death, and Life of Wild Bill Hickok,” which also features the ruse. That said, as noted with “Mr. Pratt Comes to Sheridan,” production order need not imply intended broadcast order, much less continuity.*
- As Hauptman notes, even by the time of this episode, buffalo (technically the American Bison) had already been hunted to near-extinction, dropping numbers from an estimated 25-30 million (I’ve seen another source say 60 million) before the 1870s to fewer than 100 in the wild by the late 1880s (just a decade after Legend). I have seen a source suggest that, if you count captive buffalo, that number rises to just over 1000, but that's a very small number either way. Thankfully, conservation efforts have brought these numbers back up to nearly 150,000, and the American Bison is no longer considered an endangered species. This comes with a caveat that this feat was accomplished through inter-breeding with other species, and only an estimated 5% of this number is considered genetically pure.
- This is E.C. Allen representative Harry Parver’s second and final appearance, having previously been in “Birth of a Legend.” Parver was played by Bob Balaban, who directed this episode.
The Memoirs of Nicodemus Legend returns in two weeks, with "Fall of a Legend"
*I should acknowledge that Pratt is seen drinking from the teacup just a few minutes after this, but I can’t be 100% certain that it’s not really tea at this point. Lamar would have had to refill the teapot with bourbon after having gone to the trouble of emptying it! That said, Lamar is seen recorking the bottle of Old Forester in this later scene, and I've used the "bourbon in a teacup" bit in my own fan fiction, which I'd always intended to take place after the episodes seen on television. This is perhaps as good an opportunity as any to provide links to those stories:
- Legend Runs for Mayor
- Legendary Competition
- Cash Flow (note that this one was never finished, but I simply shared what I'd written a quarter of a century ago. I'll leave it to you to determine what might have happened afterward.)
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