Good set-up and story. Pretty boy Brett Halsey enters the Long Branch one step ahead of a lynch-minded Texas trail crew. Kitty's immediately sympathetic and hides Halsey in her room while she fetches Matt who fends off the crew. Seems the kid's father turned abusive after being roughed up by a Texas trail-hands years earlier. Now the kid wants to retaliate by stealing from a Texas herd. Matt's sympathetic and tells the kid to find a job in Dodge. Meanwhile, Doc suspects the kid is just using his boyish looks to exploit people. So which is he-- victim or abuser? Or does he just need a helping hand.
Halsey (a Farley Granger look-alike) shines as the troubled kid, as does Ken L. Smith as the angry trail foreman. Though used sparingly after the first year, Matt's little contemplative tour of Boot Hill often set a subdued, thoughtful tone, as it does here. Also, the quietly effective harmonica score (low-key and mournful) provided just the right emotional pitch to story lines that often mirrored those same qualities. In part, I think, Gunsmoke's early success came from those fleeting moments when the stories and characters became quietly reflective of something deeper than just effective plot-lines and ornery cowpokes.