Leslie Howard Adams
Maybe he did or maybe he didn't in real-life, but writers Kenneth Gamet, Tom Kilpatrick and Jo Pagano wrote a Screenplay (with a "Suggested by the story "Silverado Squatters" by Robert Louis Stevenson" credit line)for Columbia for 1948's "Adventures in Silverado" that shows he did. According to their screenplay..."Into California's 1880 frontier country rides Robert Louis Stevenson, the novelist, looking for story material 'in a land of stage-drivers and highwaymen', and soon finds it when Bill Foss (William Bishop) arrives in the mining town of Silverado with a new stagecoach." Foss barely breaks the city limits before he is challenged to a race by Zeke Butler (Forrest Tucker), stage driver for the town's established stage-line operated by Jeannie Manning (Gloria Henry.) Well, the best that can happen in a stagecoach race against a character played by Forrest Tucker in 1948 is that your stagecoach will be forced off the road and your best horse will be injured, even if you are William Bishop.Doctor Henderson (Edgar Buchanan), noted for his philanthropies to the local miners, advises Foss he can't run his horse for some time to come, and Foss takes a job with Jeannie, hauling water to Squatter's Flats, a desert waste which requires irrigation.Later, Zeke, carrying gold from Last Dog Ditch Mine to Silverado is robbed by a mysterious bandit called The Monk (because he wears a monk's robe and hood while plying his trade of robbing stagecoaches),and he suspects Foss. To clear himself, Foss suggests both stages take the next gold shipment and see who gets robbed and who doesn't. (The previously-projected "sometime to come" diagnosis has come and Foss is back into the stagecoach business.) This seems to be a good idea among all the involved decision-makers, although none of them even question the thought process of loading the gold onto a stagecoach driven by a suspected gold robber, or even inquire as to what is to prevent Foss, if he is the gold robber, of making a left turn somewhere between Last Dog Ditch Mine and Silverado and driving straight south-by-southwest to Tia Juana with their gold. Plot-wise it is a good thing that wasn't asked because this who-gets-robbed-and-doesn't-get-robbed plan provides the reason that Robert Louis Stevenson ( Edgar Barrier )gets to prevent a lynching.Foss has another good idea (or what seemed to be a good idea at the time) of hiding the gold in a place known only to him and Jeannie, but The Monk sees this and takes the gold. Foss' explanation to the miners that while he was the only one (he declines to implicate Jeannie) who knew where the gold was hidden but he didn't take it rings more than a bit hollow, and it's only a few film-frames later that George Chesebro or Bud Osborne or Blackie Whiteford or one of Columbia's live-on-the-lot bit players hollers.."somebody get a rope" and a few film-frames after that Foss is close to swinging from a Joshua tree. And would have if Robert Louis Stevenson, gun-in-hand, hadn't stopped his "story material note-taking" long enough to prevent the lynching.Some more stuff happens before The Monk is identified and Foss is cleared, but you'll have to watch the film to find out who The Monk was, as I'm not one prone to disclose confidential information to those who don't like to know such things before they watch the film.
