One of the more suspenseful Rifleman tv episodes is when Lucas, Mark and Marshall Micah Torrance were sleeping out under the stairs, along with a prisoner the Marshall was transporting. When morning broke Mark went to his father and he saw his dad sweating profusely, but not moving, eyes wide open in terror. It turns out that a rattlesnake had crawled into his bedroll during the night. Finally, after considerable discussion and planning, the prisoner agreed to help. He then issued a line that will live forever in the annals of The Rifleman series when he said “the time has come to separate the man from the snake”.
Lucas and his son, Mark, live on a ranch near the mythical town of NorthFork, NM. Lucas is famous for having created his own repeating rifle and for his extreme accuracy. The bad guys that pop up from week to week often refer to Lucas as “the sodbuster”.