A small town in the Old West.\u00a0 A peddler named Sykes arrives and walks into the town jail and goads the prisoner named Luis Gallegos about his imminent hanging.\u00a0 Sykes revels in the strength of the five-strand hemp rope that he sold to the town for the noose.\u00a0 The Sheriff berates Sykes and tells him to stop torturing the condemned man.<\/p>\n
Sykes goes outside and watches the funeral procession for a little girl who was run down by a wagon driven by the man about to be hanged.\u00a0 As it comes out in various accounts Gallegos was depressed about his financial difficulties so he got drunk and riding home he struck the child without knowing it.<\/p>\n
Sykes loudly celebrates to the girl\u2019s parents the upcoming hanging of their daughter\u2019s killer.\u00a0 They are too devastated to pay him any attention but head to the church for the funeral.\u00a0 Another viewer of the procession is Luis\u2019s father.\u00a0 He apologizes for his son\u2019s action and says that if he could exchange his life for the little girl\u2019s he would gladly do it.\u00a0 But once again they move on thinking only of their lost daughter.<\/p>\n
Sykes sees Luis\u2019s father and has an idea.\u00a0 He sends a message to the old man saying that if he can obtain one hundred pesos then Sykes will sell him a bag of magic dust that will turn the hate in the hearts of the townspeople to love and thus save Luis\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
The old man begs and borrows the money and Sykes gives him a tobacco sack that he has filled with the dirt he found on the town\u2019s main street.\u00a0 With the hanging about to begin Mr. Gallegos runs to the gallows and pathetically casts the \u201cmagic dust\u201d into the air hoping it will sway the crowd.\u00a0 But as he does it, he hears the crack of the trap door opening and winces.\u00a0 But when he opens his eyes and turns around, he sees that the rope snapped and Luis is lying below the gallows alive.<\/p>\n
Some of the crowd call out for the hanging to be repeated.\u00a0 The Sheriff asks the girl\u2019s parents if they want it repeated.\u00a0 The father is unsure but his wife says Luis has suffered enough.\u00a0 Her husband agrees and the Sheriff releases Luis to his overjoyed father and they depart.<\/p>\n
Now Sykes is looking at the broken rope and is perplexed how a brand new five strand hemp rope could fail on its first use.\u00a0 He concludes that the dust really was magic.\u00a0 And as proof of this he gives the one hundred gold pesos to some poor children who are near him in the street.<\/p>\n
This one is a little too arch for me.\u00a0 Sykes is too creepy and Luis and his father are a little too sympathetic.\u00a0 Regardless of whether Sykes is a terrible man, Gallegos is not a blameless victim.\u00a0 Being poor and an outsider doesn\u2019t automatically mean we just sympathize with the negligent killer of a little girl.\u00a0 Serling over did it here.\u00a0 C-.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A small town in the Old West.\u00a0 A peddler named Sykes arrives and walks into the town jail and goads the prisoner named Luis Gallegos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[1766,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-dust","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n