TIMELINE: Saturday, July 8 – Tuesday, July 23, 1878

A long time before: Bret Maverick meets Donna Seely in Clovis,[1] Arizona Territory.[2]

Almost a year before: Donna Seely moves from Clovis to Silver Springs, New Mexico Territory.[2]

Sometime before: Carl Jimson is elected mayor of Silver Springs.[2]

Sometime before: Donna Seely becomes engaged to Carl Jimson.[2]

Shortly before: Mandy Packer[1] tells Bret Maverick about Carl Jimson and his brace joint, the Square Deal Saloon in Silver Springs.[2]

Monday, July 8, 1878:[1] Bret wins an "Arabian mount," Fatima, from Mr. Brimmer in a poker game in Clayville, New Mexico Territory.[2]

Tuesday, July 9, 1878:[1] Bret tries to sell Fatima.[2]

Wednesday, July 10, 1878:[1] Bret and Fatima ride the trail to Silver Springs, New Mexico Territory.[2]

Thursday, July 11, 1878:[1] Still on the trail to Silver Springs, Bret realizes Fatima had fallen in love with him.[2]

Friday, July 12, 1878:[1] While on the trail to Silver Springs, Bret pays Mr. Johnson $100 to take Fatima.[2]

Saturday, July 13, 1878:[1] Bret rides the trail to Silver Springs.[2]

Sunday, July 14, 1878:[1] Bret arrives in Silver Springs, New Mexico Territory and reunites with Donna Seely. She introduces him to her fiancé, Carl Jimson. That night, Bret plays poker with two of Jimson's brace men, Connors and Ferguson. When Jimson discovers they are losing to Bret, he sits in to play and stop Bret from exposing his saloon, the Square Deal, of being a brace joint. When Bret reaches for a match to light his cigar, Jimson shoots him in the shoulder with a holdout derringer.[2]

Monday, July 15 – Saturday, July 20, 1878:[1] Bret recuperates from his gunshot wound and lets the word get out that he intends to finish his gunfight with Jimson once he's back on his feet.[2]

Sunday, July 21, 1878:[1] Fatima finds Bret in his hotel room.[2]

Monday, July 22, 1878:[1] Drake arrives in Silver Springs. Donna is shot by Jimson in the crossfire of a gunfight with Bret. Bret is jailed for the shooting while Donna lies unconscious, unable to tell who shot her. Howard Harris tells Bret that Jimson has left Silver Springs to bring another doctor from Crown City back to town. Bret breaks out of jail and takes Howard's horse to trail Jimson across the desert.[2]

Tuesday, July 23, 1878:[1] Still trailing Jimson across the desert, Bret's horse collapses from lack of water. Fatima appears and carries Bret onward. Jimson's horse collapses and Bret capture him. Bret knocks Jimson out in a fistfight and carries him back to Silver Springs on Fatima's back. Bret turns Jimson in to the sheriff and rides out of Silver Springs, bound for Texas.[2]

RATIONALE

Independence Day Matinee poster. The appearance of the bill posted on a Silver Springs wall suggests the story takes place some time around the 4th of July.[2]

Week of July 1, 1878. The same poster appeared on the marquee of the Colony Opera House in Providence, Rhode Island, in the Warner Bros. 1942 film "Yankee Doodle Dandy."[3] Even though the dated header has been removed for the Maverick episode, it is unmistakably the same poster, and can be used to establish the year as 1878.[1]

June 14 and June 20, 1878. Specific dates given in "The Strange Journey of Jenny Hill" inform the timing of "Relic of Fort Tejon." The date of June 14, 1878, appeared on a telegram from Big Mike McComb to Bret Maverick, received at the Southern Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, and a marquee with the date of June 20 appeared at Hammerstein's in St. Joseph, Missouri.[3] The "week of July 1, 1871" is too soon after the events of the Strange Journey to allow Bret time to travel from St. Joseph to Sweetwater, Arizona Territory, where he heard about Carl Jimson's brace joint, and then on to Clayville and Silver Springs. It seems reasonable that he arrived in Silver Springs shortly after the week of July 1 to find the Independence Day matinee posters still hanging.[1]

Donna Seely passes an Independence Day matinee poster in Silver Springs, New Mexico Territory.[2]

The same poster seen at the Colony Opera House in Providence, Rhode Island.[3]