To see the world
Just saw this episode again the other day. This is the episode when Mr Edwards fills Johnny Johnson’s head full of tall tales, so he quits school, and decides to see the world. Mr Johnson is somewhat pissed, not surprisingly. But Chuck assures him that Edwards will make it right. Which is about as reassuring as saying that you don’t have to worry about your liquor cabinet while Edwards is house sitting, but you’d better put your soap supply under lock and key (Yeah, you’d have to flip that around in order for it to make sense, in case you didn’t get it :D )
That evening at the Ingalls supper table:
Carolyn: I can’t believe that a man like Mr Johnson would let a boy Johnny’s age leave school, and head out on his own.
Chuck: Well, Johnny is 20 years old Carolyn, and that’s middle aged for the time we’re living in (No, Chuck didn’t say that, but he should have :D )
Now it’s up to Edwards to convince Johnny, who’s first stop is Mankato, that it’s a bad idea. Edwards is also heading in that direction, to purchase that Winchester rifle, that he’s been saving for, for 3 months. Edwards employs a few different strategies, from setting up a fake poker game in which Johnny is supposed to lose all of his money, to convincing a saloon girl to help fleece him out of it (That Edwards is a lot of things, but a poor example is the one that he excels at :D ) They all fail. Finally, he doubles down on his plans, and they accidentally work, and in the end, Johnny goes home with Edwards.
Edwards ended up having to use the money that he was going to spend on his Winchester, to set up the second mock poker game (In which Johnny wins again). Though presumably, Edwards does get that Winchester at a later date, since it looks like the same model that we see in a later episode, when Edwards is feeling like a failure, is suicidal, and attempts to ventilate the back of his skull with said gun.
This is also the second, and last time that we ever see Johnny Johnson. That same actor (Mitch Vogel) also appeared in Bonanza, so it appears that maybe ML was throwing him a bone, as I don’t believe that he had a career much beyond this point. This was another character that the TV series took liberties with. In the books, he was a little blond kid, no older than Laura and Mary. He also did not speak English, as Laura mentions in the books, “that the only words that he knew were Norwegian”. All in all, not a bad episode. Never saw that girl that played the saloon girl before, but she was quite cute!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0633148/