"The Executioner" turned out to be the series' final episode, and far better than many that preceded it. Johnny Yuma comes across the remnants of a Shoshone attack on a wagon, capturing one woman, Janice Dutton (Terry Moore), and two men, Ferguson (Charles Aidman, previously seen in "Ben White") and Andrews (Ken Mayer, last of three). The Shoshone chief is called Le Blanc (Barry Atwater, previously seen in "Absolution"), so named for his albino features, who wants Yuma, a blood brother to the Kiowas, to return from town with three braves being held by the white men. The sympathetic sheriff (Arthur Peterson, previously seen in "Berserk") is unable to comply, as all three prisoners were lynched for killing a white woman during a drunken spree. Yuma figures that bringing back the three corpses will lessen the anger of Le Blanc, who now forces Johnny to choose which one of the three lives, the other two to be sacrificed. At least John Carradine's Mason City editor Elmer Dodson gets a mention in this last episode, as Johnny leaves his journal notes with the sheriff just in case he doesn't come back. THE REBEL came to an end at the same time as Steve McQueen's WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, but only lasted two seasons. Still, Nick Adams is buried in Berwick PA, his marker identifying him as the actor who played Johnny Yuma. He earned a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for the 1963 feature "Twilight of Honor," but after Melvyn Douglas won the Oscar his career took a downward slide, an accidental overdose of prescription drugs resulting in his premature death at age 36 in February 1968.
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