A little about Griff.  Tim Matheson as Griff King was introduced in the final season of Bonanza after the untimely death of Dan Blocker.  The script writers didn't give us a lot of background on Griff which gives anyone writing about him license to make up his backstory pretty much from scratch.  What we do know from the episodes in which he appeared is that when he was paroled in the custody of Ben Cartwright, he had served one year on a two to five year sentence for hammering his stepfather with a pick handle.  He admitted he might have killed him if he hadn't been pulled off.  According to Griff, his stepdad liked to beat on people.  "Beat on me until I got tired of it.  He was my legal father.  That put the law on his side.  He put me in here."  That indicates Griff was a minor when imprisoned (under 21, probably much younger because he would have run off from his stepfather otherwise.)  As a minor his stepfather had the right to "discipline" him but he had no right to fight back.   Griff was friends with Candy in Billings Montana when he was a skinny kid of fifteen.   Candy remembers him as "always laughing.  No matter how bad things got, you always saw the funny side of it."  Griff retorts, "Cause I was a kid.  Kids laugh a lot.  But when you grow up, you realize there ain't nothin' to laugh about.  And you grow up fast in prison."

 
SOME GIRLS DO
sung by Sawyer Brown

Well, good old boys don't get no breaks
And rich boys think they got what it takes
But there's someone for each of us they say

Well. I ain't first class,
But I ain't white trash
I'm wild and little crazy too
Some girls don't like boys like me,
Aw, but some girls do.

SOME GIRLS DO
by The Outrider [outrider@williamsmith.org]

        Well, Griff had felt the sting of the lash on his own back too recently to let that fool use a horse that way.  So he’d grabbed Tully’s whiphand, spun him around and let fly a fist that bloodied Tully's nose and sent him sprawling.  When he didn’t get up, Griff pulled him up and knocked him down again.  He’d have hit him a third time if Candy and Joe hadn’t come running and stopped him.

        He’d appreciated it when Candy had backed him up.  But Candy was his friend so he hadn’t been seriously surprised.  He was surprised when Joe had followed Candy’s advice and put Tully to riding fence, telling him they wouldn’t be needing him with the horses from now on.  Course, Joe had spoiled it some by looking at Griff hard, telling him “when a man goes down, you let him stay down.  No need to keep beating on him until he can’t ever get up.”

        Griff  retorted with familiar anger rising inside, “Where I come from you leave a man to get up easy from a fight and you might as well bare your neck for his knife.”

        Joe responded with some heat of his own, “You’ve no excuse to act crazy here.  You’re not in prison any more.”

        Griff had spun on his heel and walked off muttering, “Oh, ain’t I?

        So now Griff felt he and the mare both needed to run off some mistreatment.  When they came off the ridge, there was a mile of good road just made for running wild.  The mare was just getting up to a good healthy speed when Griff heard someone galloping up behind him.  Tully?  Or one of Tully’s friends?  Someone up to no good or he would have called Griff’s name to get him to slow down.  And here he was, probably the only man within a hundred miles not allowed to carry a gun.  That was thanks to the parole board and the Cartwrights who’d accepted his parole conditions without ever consulting him.  He was a sitting duck for anyone who thought the quality of the horse he was riding suggested he might be worth robbing.

        He nudged the mare up a notch and she responded.  But the other horse kept coming.  Griff turned and what he saw made him realize a gun would have done him no good.

        Behind him, but coming up fast, was a blood bay ridden by a girl with reddish gold hair streaming out behind her.  She was grinning as she pulled even with him.  But his mare wasn’t finished.  She didn’t want to be passed or even caught up to, although Griff was feeling the latter option wouldn’t be such a bad thing right now.

        They raced side by side for most of a mile.  Griff hadn’t felt such exhilaration in years.  The girl racing next to him was still grinning as she urged her horse on.  But finally he had to call it quits before his horse was overtaxed.  She was game, but she had the disadvantage of running under a heavy working saddle and a heavier rider.  At six foot two and maybe 185 pounds, he was too skinny, or so Hop Sing kept saying as he forced more food on him.  But it was still well over what that slip of a girl and her postage stamp saddle must weigh.  So he reluctantly pulled up and waved to her in a gesture that acknowledged his defeat.

        Griff expected her to ride on but she circled back to where he was letting the mare cool off at a slow walk.  The girl slowed to match his pace and stuck out her hand.  “Hi, I’m Jessie.  I’m visiting at the Tucker place for the summer.  If you’d had a racing saddle you might have almost kept up with me.”

        Griff smiled, as he extended his own hand.  “Maybe that and about eighty pounds of lead attached to your saddle,” he responded.  She laughed.  She had a musical laugh he thought.  But he hadn’t heard that many girls laugh in the past few years so he didn’t have much to compare to.  When she appeared to be expecting more, he added, “My name’s Griff.”

        “Well Griff, maybe I could find a couple of saddlebags of lead shot.  But I’d still give you a run for your money.”  Her blue eyes sparkled with anticipation at the thought.

        He expected she could.

        She was giving the mare a good examination as they rode.  “You’ve got some nice horses,” she said.

        “Horses?”

        “Yeah, I ride this time most days.  My father got in the habit of taking a nap every day at this time when we lived in Mexico for a couple of years.  He thinks I’m doing the same.  But as long as he doesn’t ask, I can just slip off to my room and then sneak out again.  He just thinks I get up a few minutes earlier than he does every afternoon.  So that’s two hours I have to myself most days.”

        Then she explained what she meant by the comment on his horses.  “I’ve watched you from the ridge several times in the last few days.  Different horse every time.”

        So, she thought maybe he was a rich boy.  Well, Griff wasn’t going to play that game.  “None of them are mine.  I just work for the Cartwrights.  Been working horses for them as part of my job.”

        She nodded, “Seems you like your job.”

        He wasn’t about to tell her he’d like it a whole lot better if he could quit it any time he wanted, so he just nodded back.

        She surprised him when she asked, “Will you be out here tomorrow?”

        “Probably.”  He tried to sound noncommittal, but in fact nothing could have kept him from coming out here if there was the slightest chance she’d be back.”

        “Good, I’ll ride here first then.  I have to get back now.  Maybe around three thirty tomorrow?  I’ll use a heavier saddle, put some lead in my boots and give you a rematch.”

        They’d reached the fork in the road.  She winked at him and cantered off on the east road while he rode west.  He looked back and she was looking at him.  She stood up in stirrups and shouted, “Hey Griff.  Don’t you be riding a ringer out here tomorrow.”  Then she waved and rode on.  He just sat and watched her until she disappeared over the rise.  Then he rode back to the ranch in a lighter mood than he’d managed in weeks.

        Ben watched Joe fiddling with his string tie until he got it just right.  He was glad to see his son returning to a semblance of a social life.  Joe’s mood had been expectedly black in the year after Alice was killed.  And while the next six months had seen him rejoin the world,  Ben had worried that he was only going through the motions.  The last few months gave Ben cause for hope.  Joe seemed to actually enjoy the company of the women he’d been seeing.  Ben wasn’t quite sure that Joe reclaiming his reputation as a lady’s man par excellence was necessarily the best way for Joe to comport himself in the long run, but it was a start.  He’d have to slow down eventually.

        “Joseph, I want you to know how much I appreciate you agreeing to keep Amy company tonight at dinner.  I know the business I’ll be discussing with Charles won’t hold any interest for her.”

        Joe grinned.  “Pa, if that was the only kind of favor you ever asked of me, I’d be a happy man.  I like her.  She’s smart, good-tempered . . . .”

        “And beautiful,” Ben finished for him.  “But she’s a little young for you.”

        “Pa, she’s twenty-three.  Are you thinking that now I’ve hit thirty I’m only fit for the company of dowagers and rich widows?”

        Ben smiled at that.  No, regardless of their ages, women would probably continue to think of his handsome son as the best catch in the state and he wasn’t thinking of trying to limit the field.  He’d like to see his son truly happy again.  Not that Amy was going to be the one to accomplish that.  She and her father would be gone in a couple of weeks.  But she could provide him with some pleasant evenings and every happiness that came Joe’s way lightened Ben’s heart.

        And the evening was successful.  After a topnotch meal at the Comstock Hotel, Ben and Charles got down to business, while Joe escorted Amy on an evening stroll.  Ben marveled at the maturity of this extraordinarily well-mannered young women.  She displayed a dignity and elegance well beyond her years.  It really was a shame Charles’ business would take them away so soon.

        Griff figured he was probably early getting out to the ridge road.  He didn’t own a watch but he’d asked Candy the time before he left, and given himself plenty of leeway.  He wanted to be able to watch the road she’d be riding in on so he’d see her first.  The last thing he wanted her to know was that he’d been waiting.  Waiting since she’d ridden off the day before if he was honest about it.

        And finally, there she was in the distance, riding the same blood bay gelding she’d ridden the day before.  When she got closer, he couldn’t help smiling at more than her easy manner of handling the spirited horse.  She’d saddled the gelding with a ridiculously large western roping saddle.   If she hadn’t been tall for a woman, five foot six at least, she wouldn’t have been able to shorten the stirrup leathers enough to use it.

        By silent agreement, they lined up next to each other on the road where it first flattened out.  The starting line so to speak.  She looked over the horse he was on.  “That horse has ringer written all over him,” she said accusingly.

        “Just the next horse up in the rotation to be worked, “ he protested.  In fact, he had chosen the fastest one in the string he was working and put the lightest saddle he could find on him.  But even with her bulky saddle, her horse would be carrying lighter weight.

         She pointed ahead.  “Where’s the finish line?”

        “What’s the difference?  There’s no money on this.”

        “If we don’t know where the finish line is, we won’t know when I beat you,” she said smugly.

        So they decided on the distance treeline and took off at the count of three.  And Griff only cared that he kept up with her.  That was winning enough.  Afterwards they had over an hour to ride over the hills until she had to head home.  And again when she got just far enough away to have to shout, she turned in his direction stood up in her stirrups.   “Tomorrow I’ll bring some food so don’t eat too much before.

        So Wednesday they rode to a pretty little place by a creek that he’d discovered on one of his training rides.  A nice place to eat chicken in some kind of wine sauce he wasn’t too sure of.   He’d decided early on that if the Ponderosa was going to be his prison, he’d at least know places in it that he could escape to when he needed to be alone.  Of course, those places couldn’t be to too far from the ranch house or they’d probably send a posse out after him, or at least Candy.  But right now that was okay because Jessie had her own restrictions in the form of a strict father.

        Thursday they rode out to the lake.  It was a good place to talk and they did.  But he never asked Jessie about her current situation because he didn’t want to tell her about his.  They talked about horses, the places she’d been, the places he’d like to go and even their childhoods.  Griff didn’t think she’d noticed he had nothing to talk about past his tenth year when his father died and his life started going to hell.

        By Friday they were aching to race again.  So they took the supply road that lead out to one of the closed out mining camps.   Jessie was a little ahead of him as they rounded a blind curve.  And there stretched across the entire road was a fallen tree.  She was going too fast to avoid it.  Griff saw with relief that at it’s highest point it was probably no more than three feet off the ground, but he didn’t know what skills she had jumping.  He watched her worriedly as her horse approached the tree.

        He immediately realized he’d had nothing to worry about.  Jessie was laughing as her horse cleared the jump with a foot to spare.  Then he realized he should have been concentrating on his own horse.  He’d done enough jumping over natural obstacles on the trail not to worry about himself.  But he was on a green horse which had never taken a jump of any height with a man on his back.  And apparently he wasn’t going to start now.  The horse balked but Griff was already committed to the jump and sailed over without the horse.  With a foot to spare.

        He landed hard.  He just lay there for a minute, his eyes closed, trying to figure before he moved what might be broken.  Jessie was off her horse and on the ground beside him in a flash.  She sounded terrified.  “Griff, oh Griff, are you all right?  Talk to me.”

        Of course he couldn’t because the breath had been knocked clean out of him.  In a few moments he could breathe again but by that time she had her hands on him and he wasn’t inclined to put a quick stop to it.  She worked her way up both his legs, checking for a break he figured.  While she worked her hands up his left arm, her eyes met his and she realized he was conscious.  She breathed a sigh of relief.

        “Are you hurt bad Griff?’

        He nodded slightly.  “Pretty bad.”

        “Where Griff?”

        “I’m not sure.  What part of my body is my pride located at?”

        It took her a moment to register what he said.  Then she smiled and stood up.  She reached down her hand to help him up.  And as he’d pretty much just admitted, he didn’t have enough pride left to refuse to let her.  He was a little stiff rising up and knew he’d be worse by that night.

        But right now things weren’t too bad, because as she pulled him up, she pulled him to her and kissed him.  It surprised him so much, he didn’t kiss back.  Not that he would have known how to anyway.  The last time he’d kissed a girl he’d been fifteen and the girl fourteen.  And as he remembered it, the girl had done the kissing that time too before going shy on him and running off.

        But Jessie was just a little more persistent than fourteen-year-old Darcy’d been.  She fixed her blue eyes on his gray ones and then lifted up on her toes to kiss him again.  And this time he responded.  His arms around her shoulders, her hand on the back of his neck, their lips slightly parted, the kiss was warm and sweet.  It lasted for a long time.  Or was it no time at all?  He wasn’t quite sure.  He did know it knocked the breath out of him almost as bad as the fall had.

        And now she realized she barely had time to make it home.  She sailed her bay over the log again, light as thistledown.  Then she caught up his horse while Griff squeezed between the side of the hill and the end of the fallen tree.

        They kept the horses to a lope which got them to the crossroads in good time but was easy enough on Griff’s stiffening muscles.  Before she went on her way, she asked him if he would be riding the next day.

        “Sure why not?”  He didn’t see why Saturday would be any different from the rest of the week.  It was still a work day.  Heck, he’d be working horses Sunday if she’d meet him out here.

        “I thought maybe they might have you working on preparations for the party.”

       “What party?”  He had no idea what she was talking about.

        “Aren’t you going?”

        “I don’t get off the ranch much,” was all he answered.

        “Good, because the party is right there.  My father’s going to bring me.  I’ll only get a short ride tomorrow.  I have to get ready for the party.  Takes a lot to get me looking respectable.”

        Griff smiled as he looked at her and doubted the truth of that.  True her red-gold hair was a wild mass of wind blown curls.  But she wore a perfectly respectable riding skirt and she seemed to keep herself mostly pretty clean.  Certainly cleaner than he was today after his skid across the road.

        She continued, “So maybe you could ride a mile or so in my direction, if you can even ride tomorrow.  You might be hurting worse than you think.”

        He shrugged.  “I’ll be fine.”

        Joe figured he could do worse than entertaining a friend of his father on a Friday night.  At least when the friend he was entertaining looked like Amy.  He’d driven his father over to their home in the buggy and then offered to take Amy for a moonlight ride while the older men talked business.  These days he had enough responsibility in handling the day to day business of the ranch.  He didn’t mind being left out of a few things when this alternative pleased both his father and himself.

        Amy was an amazingly self-possessed young woman.  Never a hair out of place or a miscue in her manners.  She seemed to be interested in everything about the ranch and the people on it.  And she never asked an inane question or tried to sound frivolous just to flatter him or make him feel smarter.

        He offered to pick them up for the party the following night but she wouldn’t hear of it.   She was training her saddle horse to harness and wanted every opportunity to practice.  Besides Joe was one of the hosts, he didn’t have time to be running off picking up the guests.  She was right of course, but he truly wouldn’t have minded.  Becky and Carla were both coming to the party with their families and both had let him know they expected to be with him after they got there.  A little too much of a good thing.  But if he was forced to escort a family friend at his father’s request . . . .  Well, neither girl could blame him for that.  And then they’d still look on him favorably when he came calling after Amy left.

        The next morning Griff was a little sore but nothing he couldn’t handle, unless of course he tried to lift anything, or ride anything or get anywhere faster than a  walk.   Candy noticed his trouble.  “You okay Griff?  You look a little creaky.”

        “Just took a little fall yesterday.  I’ll be fine.”

        Candy was concerned but Griff put him off.  He was going to go riding this afternoon no matter what.  But he let Candy go easy on him.  He spent the morning fixing and oiling harness while some of the men were stringing lanterns and putting up tables and building a wooden dance platform in the space between the house and the barn.  By the time Griff rode out to meet Jessie, the place looked ready for a party for half the county.

        He’d ridden a couple of miles toward the Tucker place on the road she usually took when he saw her racing up the road.   “How you feeling Griff?” was the first thing she said as she drew up beside him.

        “No problem” he lied.

        “Well, lets take it easy anyway.  I want to make sure you can dance with me at the party.”

        Griff was a little taken aback at that.  “I don’t dance.”

        She was shocked.  “Not at all?”

        “Well, when I was ten my father bought my mother a music box that played a waltz.  They used to waltz around the parlor.  She taught me, sort of.  As much as a ten year old can learn.”  Griff was quiet a minute thinking that was the last good memory he had of his parents.  Almost the last good memory he’d had of anything until Jessie had kissed him the day before.  Nine years between good memories was a long time.

        “Good” Jessie said firmly, “you’ll remember once we get out on the dance floor.  And the reel is easy.  I can teach you that.”

        Griff looked dubious.  And then he remembered the real reason he wouldn’t be dancing with her.  “Jessie, your father isn’t going to let you dance with me.”

        “For heaven’s sakes, why not?”

        So he told her what he’d been avoiding all week.  But if he hadn’t told, she would have found out soon enough.  It was no secret among the men who worked for the Cartwrights that he was on parole and they’d all be at the party.

        She didn’t look as shocked as he’d expected.  “Did you have a good reason to do whatever they locked you up for?  You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

        But he guessed he would tell her.  “The short of it is my stepfather liked to beat on people and I was usually a convenient target, One day I took a pick handle away from him and hammered him with it.  I guess I might have killed him if his friends hadn’t pulled me off.  He turned me over to the law.  Since he was my legal father and I was a minor, the law gave him the right to beat me.  But not the other way round.   And I guess when your own father thinks you belong in prison, the court listens.  So now I’m on parole and a strict father like yours isn’t going to let me dance with you.  Even if I could dance I mean."

        “Don’t you worry Griff.  My father isn’t as strict as all that if I work him right.  Besides, the Cartwrights will vouch for you.  They wouldn’t have taken your parole if they didn’t believe in you.”

        Griff shook his head.  “It’s not as easy as that.”

        They rode slowly cross country and she somehow got him talking about his childhood, the part after those first ten good years, the part he’d avoided before.  He told her he’d run wild after his father’s death which led his mother into a second marriage to the man who had ultimately sent him to prison.  And shortly after that marriage she’d sort of wasted away, whether from missing his father or from the plain meanness of her new husband or a little of both he could never know.   His stepfather probably would have just abandoned him then, but half his father’s money was in trust for him.  Not a lot of money, but Colby figured it was worth keeping him around long enough to get his hands on it.  And besides, even as a kid Griff had been able to work enough to keep Colby in drinking money.

        They kept the ride short.  Jessie continued to insist she needed time to go home and get respectable.  Before she rode off, she leaned over and kissed him.  “Now you go home and get respectable too.  You’re not going to avoid dancing with me tonight.”

        Griff leaned against a tree, watching the partygoers from far off to the side.  Candy had saved a tub’s worth of hot water for him and lent him dress shirt and string tie.  Griff only had two sets of clothes and one pair of boots.  So he’d put on his clean pants and polished up his boots.  But watching from the dark cover of this tree was about as close as he was going to get, except maybe to get some of that food that was piled up on the table.

        Candy had tried to persuade him to come out and meet a few girls, maybe even dance a little.  But Griff knew that wouldn’t be any good.  Those girls were here with their fathers or brothers.  “Candy you remember what happened when you dragged me to that church social and I was just talking to that girl.  Her father dragged her off like I was gonna give her anthrax or typhoid or somethin’.”

        “I remember Griff, but old man Barnett, he’s a mean cuss.   Not likely to be any like that here.”

        “Don’t matter whether they’re mean or not.  Man’s got a right to be protective of his family.  And I’m just someone they’re gonna figure a girl needs protection from.”

        So he contented himself with just watching and listening to the music.  He wasn’t waiting to see if Jessie would come he told himself.  Not exactly anyway.  Wouldn’t be any use if she did, since she’d be with her father and all.  He’d just amuse himself watching how Joe was gonna maneuver those two fool girls into each believin’ he was with her.  And Candy said he had a third one on the way.  That rich boy sure thought he had what it took to grab the world by the tail.

        And when Joe’s third girl arrived, Griff had to figure maybe Joe was right.  Even looking at her from the back as she pushed an old man in a wheel chair, Griff could see she was unique.   Tall, slender, elegant, hair piled on her head and held with those mysterious things women put in their hair.  She walked confident.  The old man was a good friend of Ben Cartwright from the way he was greeted.  And the girl was a special friend of Joe from the way she was greeted.  The other two girls just melted into the background.

        Griff couldn’t take his eyes off this last girl.  Really something special.  Course he’d still take Jessie if she was his to take.  But since she wasn’t and in fact wasn’t even here, there was no reason he couldn’t enjoy watching the rich boy play his games.

        Ben shook his head as he watched Joe handling two girls, then three, then one.  He saw Amy go over to the band and whisper something in Stratton’s ear.  A minute later, Stratton was announcing to the crowd.  “The next dance is lady’s choice.  Ladies be kind to the gentlemen and don’t make ‘em beg.”

        Ben was thinking Amy better get to Joe fast before Carla or Becky realized this was their chance to get back in the game.  But then he realized that although Joe had stepped out to intercept her, she wasn’t even heading in his direction.

        Her father  was watching too.  "What happened Ben?  My Jessamy’s taking her lady’s choice over to that boy way back on the sidelines.  She’s just ignoring your Joe.  Didn’t she see him?”

        Ben could tell from the way Jessamy was walking, it was no mistake.  That girl knew exactly what she wanted and it wasn’t Joe.

        Griff watched as Joe’s girl walked in his direction.  She was only fifteen feet away before he realized the girl was Jessie, her unruly curls prisoner in that fancy hair style.  She walked right up to him and put her hand on his arm.  How come you’re way over here Griff?  Why haven’t you been dancing?”

        Griff felt himself get a little shy.  “Oh, you know how it is.  Some girls don’t like boys like me.”

        Jessie stretched up and kissed him on the cheek.  “Aw, but some girls do.”
 

SOME GIRLS DO
sung by Sawyer Brown

Well, good old boys don't get no breaks
And rich boys think they got what it takes
But there's someone for each of us they say

Well. I ain't first class,
But I ain't white trash
I'm wild and little crazy too
Some girls don't like boys like me,
Aw, but some girls do.