James Stacy told me, "Whatever happened to Johnny's mother? They never told me, but for the character I made up a story to live by."

"My mother was a beautiful, dark, black-haired young woman when Murdoch was drunk that night as a kid and my mom was serving breakfast at a restaurant in El Paso, Texas where Murdoch ended up on a cattle drive and later she showed up on the ranch where Murdoch worked in Colorado and she showed him Scott who was 1 year old - Me I came later." He continues, "But after me, she decided she didn't like Murdoch anymore and took me with her and left Scott with him. My mom was lonely - like the actress in a western called 'Duel in the Sun' with Gregory Peck.

There are only hints about what Maria Lancer was really like in the show, and from those small bits of information we each build our own concept of this fictional woman's character. James Stacy theorized that Johnny's mother could have been a drinker, a sad woman who left her husband. Perhaps she even regretted running off.

Murdoch said this to his sons on their first reunion meeting - to Scott: "You were born. She died. I left you in their hands. Period." He then looked at Johnny and said, "Couple of years later I met your mother down at Matamoros..."

Johnny referred to himself as an orphan in Jelly, so it is possible his mother died when he was young. It's also possible, but less likely, that she abandoned him as a child or as a young teen. In either case, Johnny certainly exhibited his love by his defense of her when Teresa told him that Maria had run off with a gambler and taken little Johnny with her. Johnny, as an adult, might have stood up for her no matter what, but Maria had to have had some redeeming qualities for Murdoch to marry her in the first place.

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In a recently discovered script of BMB (Blind Man's Bluff) Johnny says:
You know it's funny. . . all my life I been kinda walkin' through tears. . . my old lady cryin' about what was goin' to become of me. . . and then a lotta girls cryin' over me along the way and then cryin' after me because I was a no-account fiddlefoot. . . but all these years, nobody ever cried for Johnny Madrid. .

To me this suggests that Maria was around long enough to see her son getting into some serious trouble and worrying over him. In Scarecrow at Hackett's, there is a reference to Johnny being involved in a gunfight - at age fourteen, so the inference is that he was on his own by then. Maria must have been alive long enough to convince Johnny that Murdoch had tossed them out years earlier. If she dies at all - there is no evidence she died.

Yet Johnny had no apparent hate for his father when he first meets him in The High Riders. He seems more curious than angry. His anger was apparent later on when he met Scott and Teresa by the river and had a scuffle with his new stepbrother. Teresa sets Johnny straight and tells him what really happened over twenty years earlier, according to what her father, the foreman O'Brian, related to her. The truth was that Maria had left of her own choice, running off with a man.

Or was it the truth? Could Murdoch have rejected his wife and child? This seems very unlikely, considering the honorable man that he has shown himself to be. Even if that honor was the reason he married a possibly pregnant Mexican girl, he wouldn't turn around and tell them to get out no matter what.

Murdoch has no animosity towards his wife that we are aware of. Is he a widower or could they have divorced? Murdoch would never want his wife to take his child away, yet he had allowed Scott to remain in the care of his grandfather, Harlan Garrett because that seemed to be better for the child. Could he have felt that Johnny would be better off with Maria? He did try to find Johnny - note he didn't try to find Maria as well as far as we know. When Teresa told Johnny that Maria had left with a gambler, Johnny rejected it immediately as being untrue. Obviously he'd never heard that story from the look on his face. He believed that Murdoch was somehow responsible for his mother fleeing.

Johnny retorts that Murdoch told her to hit the road and to take "Buster" along. We don't know who told him this or even if he overheard it and didn't know the whole story.

Johnny says with intensity, "Why do you think I came?" Scott turns back, and Johnny continues, "For loyalty or love for Murdoch Lancer? You want to know what he did to my mother? He gave her the keys to the road one day and said, 'What's your hurry?' and 'Just a minute, don't forget Buster here.'"

Teresa protested, "That's not true!"

Johnny spurs his horse past Scott, but Teresa runs after him. She called out, "That's not true about Mr. Lancer and your mother! Well, he never made her leave.
She left of her own free will."

"Now look, you don't know what you're-," Johnny dismisses.

"She ran off with somebody!"

Johnny glares at her, saying nothing as he urges his horse past the girl.

Scott, donning his jacket, stops to watch the scene with concern.

Teresa places her hands on her hips and calls out after Johnny, "He was some kind
of a gambler or something. She just packed up and left with him."

Johnny halts at her words and angrily looks back at her. "Now, did he tell you that?"

"No, my father told me! And it's true!" Teresa takes the opportunity to catch up with
the mounted man. "If anybody was done a wrong, Johnny, well, it was Murdoch
Lancer!" Teresa stands close to Barranca and looks up at Johnny. Placing a sympathetic
hand on his leg she says, "And there's something else you ought to know -"

Johnny shouts, "All right," as he urges his horse forward. He doesn't want to hear
any more, and he seems to be escaping.

Teresa prevents him from leaving by blocking the way. She says passionately, "No, no, listen! When your father wasn't sure whether he'd live or die, I sat with him. And he kept saying your mother's name, Johnny, asking for her! So if you want to hate him because he's stubborn or wrong-headed lots of the times, or proud, well, they're. . .they're faults. But don't hate him for your mother, Johnny, because he loved her!"

Johnny lets the girl's words sink in. He starts to reply but hesitates as a rider shouts
in alarm from a distance.

---

There is the canon and the fiction about Maria. Because there is so little to go on, many writers write full backgrounds and invent new stories about what happened to Maria, Johnny's mother. There are basically two camps: the virgin versus whore.

Some people feel that Maria was a young woman with little money and a bleak future back in Matamoros, in eastern Mexico. When the big rancher Murdoch Lancer fell for her, she grabbed the opportunity to go with him to California - as his wife.

After she had their child, she succumbed to boredom or loneliness and escaped an unhappy marriage by leaving with the first man who was willing to take her - and her little boy, Johnny- back to Mexico.

She may have felt isolated at Lancer, or perhaps craved excitement that she couldn't get with a workaholic husband. But perhaps she was a conniving woman who grabbed Murdoch by having sex with him and coercing him into marriage. She may have pictured life on a grand rancho in California to be far more glamorous or easy than it turned out to be. She could have been too young to deal with the life and labor that was demanded of her. The ranch was being built up at that time, and there would have been danger from Indians as well as a hardscrabble and unappealing lifestyle.

And what happened to Maria in the end? Illness could have claimed her life; an accident or a violent death is a possibility. Some feel that she was killed by the last man in a long line of lovers. For all we know, she lived a good life in a decent home until the day she died. There is nothing to suggest that she was a bad woman, or even a bad mother. How she and Johnny were seperated is unknown, but it is clear that he never hated his mother.

When Maria Lancer ran off, she could have easily left her small child behind if she had only been thinking about herself. Was she selfish in taking the two year- old with her? Could he have had a fuller, richer and safer life if he'd stayed at Lancer? If Johnny had grown up on the ranch, he might have held it against Mudoch for driving his mother away.

At some point Maria settled down with another man because Johnny mentions a step-father (although technically Maria was still married to Murdoch.) Johnny hints that life growing up wasn't all that good for him. The stepfather had hit Johnny and the inference was it wasn't a one-time incident, yet he didn't seem to hate the man- it appears that Johnny was whipped because he deserved it. At some point he's on his own, no matter what the cause was, and he fell into the world of a gunfighter. . . and eventually made the right choice and made that fateful trip to Lancer to see his father- and meet his brother.

---

Johnny, pacing around, asks his father, "Can I ask you somethin'?"
 
Murdoch replies, "Standing up or sitting down?" He has seen Johnny's fidgety nervousness and indicates a place on the bed near his chair.
 
Johnny sits. "It's personal"
 
Murdoch replies easily, "I haven't any secrets from you."
 
"How long did you know my mother before you married her?"
 
Murdoch takes his finger out of the book and gives his full attention to Johnny.

There's candor and its corollary, respect, between father and son in this moment. "Not very long," he says. "A very short time."
 
"A few weeks," asks Johnny, eager for more information.
 
"No, more like days," Murdoch replies slowly.
 
"Even hours?"

Murdoch grants that with slight nod of his head. "It was I think the description is 'a whirlwind courtship.'"