“A billion years of life led to my family standing in the mountains of Montana, and only four Duttons remained on this earth to survive another generation. We were going extinct.” The disembodied voice of Elsa Dutton returns as our narrator in 1923 Episode 5 (“Ghost of Zebrina”), guiding us through a moody and mournful opening sequence that finds Emma Dutton (Marley Shelton) shooting herself rather than facing another day without her husband, John Dutton, Sr., Cara tending to Jacob’s still bleeding and painful gunshot wounds – he’s up and walking, though, so that’s a plus; “Guess I’m gonna have to learn how to shoot left-handed,” he grumbles to Jack – and Elizabeth, Jack and Cara sitting at a dining room table with noticeably empty chairs. But there is hope, and another Dutton to fill those chairs. Because before 1923 left us for its hiatus, it was with the uniting of its timelines. In Africa, Spencer Dutton had finally read the letters Cara sent from Montana, and was set to come home, his guns at the ready and Alex by his side. The question now is how best to get there.
In the 1920s, commercial air travel was just barely a thing, and anyway it didn’t exist in Kenya, which is where we join Spencer and Alex as they wind their way through the crowded seaside markets of Mombasa. There’s no direct maritime passage to the US. But you can hop a ship to London, a trip that might take a month, depending on traffic in the Suez Canal. Not only that, but the ship isn’t even leaving Africa for another three weeks. Spencer is frustrated. But he’s also resourceful, and in a low-lit bar room full of sailors and ship captains, he meets Peter Stormare’s Lucca, the skipper of a rustbucket tugboat. It’ll get them to the Suez, assuming the ailing old sea dog doesn’t cough up a lung first. And from the Suez, Spencer and Alex will look for anything going west. Montana and the festering range war with Banner Creighton awaits.
As for the sheeper, he pores over a topo map with Donald Whitfield, his slimy new benefactor. The mining baron is buying up ranch land like that of Elizabeth’s father, who died in the ambush, as well as the land others have sold, fed up with drought and economic depression. But the Yellowstone Ranch isn’t for sale, and Jacob encourages Cara to keep a vengeful Jack in line while they sell off some more heifers and hold out hope for Spencer’s arrival. Banner and Whitfield even accost Cara on the road to Livingston, grinning like buzzards circling a wounded animal. They plan to choke out the Duttons, take their land, and add it to the pile Whitfield already owns, his mining empire stretching across the entire Paradise Valley. But as Cara told them, they haven’t met her oldest nephew.
At the horrible Indian school out in the barrens, Teonna Rainwater’s farewell message has been discovered, with the sisters she killed stretched out in their beds, and Father Renaud has turned his cruelties on the remaining students. God’s own sadist fully punches Baapuxti, who he says the devil controls like a marionette. But there’s no way she’ll reveal where Teonna ran to. And out in a Badlands-like landscape of pockmarked outcroppings and gray dust, Teonna spends a desperate night on a pile of rocks just out of the reach of a wolf before she awakens to a herd of sheep and their tender, a Native American man named Hank (Michael Grayeyes). “I’m in big trouble,” she tells him. “I killed the nun who beat me. I killed the nun who raped me.” But Hank, who knows her people, pulls Teonna onto his horse and prepares to get her to safety. And she’s not in trouble. No way. “I’d say they had it comin’.”
Out on the open water of Africa’s eastern coast, Spencer and Alex get a crash course in making Lucca’s tugboat go, a process that includes sweet talking the equipment on its aging bridge easing on a northern heading. They each take a watch before Lucca stands for his, coughing up blood the whole time, and when Spencer awakens below deck, it’s to the engines cut off and the old captain lying dead. He manages to raise a mayday on the creaky old radio, but before he can sort out how far they’ve drifted, the hull of an enormous ghost ship rises off their starboard bow. The tiny tung is caught in its wake, and Alex and Spencer are both thrown mightily from their feet. Things were going so well, all things considered. Spencer had sent word ahead to Montana via wire from a passenger ship docked in Mombasa, and Lucca’s little boat was ambling its way to Suez. But now Lucca’s dead, the hunter and his bride are incapacitated, and the tug has capsized after colliding with the ghost ship. It’s not like 1923 killed these two off. But getting to Montana is going to take a little more time.
Inside all of the mourning, the threats from Banner and Whitfield, and Jacob continuing to mend, there is at least some reason for joy. After Jack pledged himself to Elizabeth, right there in the giant expanse of the Paradise Valley, they considered themselves married – isn’t it funny how the Duttons seem to make their own rules for everything? – and consummated the union. Elizabeth is pregnant, and Cara is overjoyed. A small wedding for the young couple will be planned. And Cara has also finally received the message she’d been hoping for, with Spencer’s homeward bound cable arriving at the post office in Livingston. Of course, while we’re seeing that, we’re also seeing the underside of the tugboat as it languishes in the Arabian Sea, so however Spencer and Alex manage to get out of their latest predicament, it’s going to be a doozie.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges