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I recently watched season one, disc one of the Rawhide tv series. The three episodes included; Incident of the Tumbleweed Wagon, Incident at Alabaster Plain, and Incident with an Executioner. These guys sure had a lot of incidents, its amazing they ever got their cattle up the Sedalia Trail. In the show, these cattlemen are in the process of driving 3000 head of cattle from Texas to Kansas and they run into nothing but trouble along the way. In the episode of the Tumbleweed Wagon they end up having to cart a wagon full of prisoners to a distant town, because of a prison break gone wrong which involved the Marshall getting shot. In the Incident at Alabaster Plain they end up defending a Priest and others from a crazy "quick draw" lunatic. Lastly in Incident with an Executioner, Gil Favors (the trailboss) ends up in duel with a rogue executioner who is also a psychopathic killer and a bad cook.
These episodes were most definetly entertaining and they involved many scenes from the Plains, although one minute they seem to be in the Northern Plains and then the next they are in the desert portion of the Plains (like New Mexico or something). It does depict them searching for water, which I'm sure is accurate to life on the Plains during this time. Also they talked of the open range and the remuda, which I believe is the extra horses they brought along, so they could swap them out as they tired. It was enjoyable to watch how incredibly good they were with their six shooters firing from the hip (impossible I might add), one guy even shot a coin before it hit the ground (shooting from the hip). However, considering when it was produced it was actually quite good. It does give the viewer a dipiction (all-be-it somewhat inaccurate) of the life of the cattlemen on the open range and some of the challenges they dealt with.

Fred Lassonde