User Reviews

Marshal Matt Dillon and Deputy Newly O'Brien are in Windrock, Kansas, which is approximately three days ride from Dodge City. The Sheriff of Windrock asks Matt to go with him to Hillsdale to try to stop a riot there. Matt tells Newly to go back to Dodge to help Festus.

As he is traveling back to Dodge, Newly stops at a restaurant in the town of Silver Lode. The Deputy does not realize a gunfighter with a $5,000 bounty on his head is also eating in the restaurant.

Three bounty hunters named Lon, Angus, and Hickory ride into the town. They know Larkin is in the restaurant. Hickory and Tucker go into the restaurant and sit at a table. Lon, who is the leader of the trio, makes his way around to a back entrance. Larkin is too shrewd to be captured this easily, however. When Lon tries to sneak in, Larkin grabs him, points a gun to his head, and tells the others to drop their guns.

Newly sees all of this go down. He draws his gun, announces he is a Deputy U. S. Marshal from Dodge City, and takes Larkin into custody, much to the chagrin of the bounty hunters. Larkin warns Newly that the bounty hunters will come after them, but Newly is duty-bound to take Larkin back to Dodge.

These circumstances establish a familiar cat-and-mouse storyline with Newly attempting to take the sneaky, shrewd Larkin to Dodge while being pursued by the incorrigible bounty hunter trio.

Along the way, Newly is shot, and he and Larkin take refuge in a farmhouse occupied by a young woman named Melissa and her younger brother Jess. Newly is bleeding badly and needs a doctor, but the nearest doctor is twenty miles away.

A trend in this last season of Gunsmoke is relying on familiar Westerns themes -- in this case a lawman escorting a prisoner under difficult circumstances -- and relying on strong acting performances by notable guests to improve the episode. That tactic is employed here.

Prolific actor Richard Jaeckel portrays Clay Larkin in this story. Jaeckel appeared in many dissimilar roles as diverse character types throughout his extensive acting career, but he often played villain roles. He took on both film parts and television roles and provided standout performances. He is excellent in this story as the sly, smooth-talking Larkin. Larkin is not an amoral character, though. He has some kind of "code" and does not simply kill for the sake of killing. He even tells Newly at one point he is not in the habit of killing people that do not deserve killing, although he is willing to protect himself. (The story never fully reveals the nature of the killings Larkin has perpetrated.) This is Jaeckel's last appearance in a Gunsmoke episode. He also had a significant role as one of the gang that plans to rob the Dodge City bank in the two-part "The Raid" in Season 11, and a feuding Irishman in the less serious "Two of a Kind" in Season 8.

Included among the bounty hunter characters are two familiar Gunsmoke actors. Anthony Caruso plays Lon, the de-facto leader of the group. Like Jaeckel, Caruso makes his last Gunsmoke appearance in this story. In total, he appeared in fourteen different episodes over the run of the series. In earlier seasons of the series, Caruso often played more benevolent types of characters, but in the later seasons, every role was as a villain.

Actor Robert Sorrells appears in several notable episodes of the series. He makes his final appearance in the series with this story as one of the bounty hunters named Hickory.

Actor Jack Rader plays the other bounty hunter, Angus. This is Rader's only Gunsmoke appearance. It occurs early in his acting career. He would go on to appear in dozens of television shows and films, always in relatively minor roles.

Actress Kathleen Cody is another thespian making their final series appearance in this episode. She plays Melissa, the young woman who lives in the farmhouse where Larkin and Newly stop. She had previously appeared in the Season 19 episodes "Women for Sale" and "To Ride a Yeller Horse." Actor Michael LeClair plays Melissa's brother, Jess, in his only Gunsmoke role.

This is one of the last credited performances for Gilman Rankin, and his tenth as part of a Gunsmoke episode. He often played waiters, as he does in this episode.

This is another entertaining, albeit unoriginal, story. It is unusual because Buck Taylor's Newly O'Brien character is the only regular cast member involved. James Arness makes his requisite appearance early in the story but is not seen again.

As entertaining as the story is, it still includes a few head-scratching plot elements:

• Larkin chooses to eat in a public restaurant knowing bounty hunters are on his trail. An outlaw on the run would be unlikely to expose himself in this manner.

• Bounty hunters in the Old West did not work as portrayed in this story. (This is not unique to this story. It is fairly common in the Westerns genre.) Bounty hunters typically killed "dead or alive" bounties using any method available because it was easier and safer than trying to take someone prisoner and transport them alive. At the beginning of this story, a young man confronts Larkin and orders him to disarm. That would never happen. The young man would have chosen a place where he had the advantage and gunned Larkin down without warning.

• Newly taking Larkin from the bounty hunters and leaving them with nothing is inconsistent with other episodes of Gunsmoke where Matt pays someone a reward for actions that lead to the capture of a wanted person. It would have made more sense for the Deputy to tell the three men they could come to Dodge and claim the reward. That would have eliminated their need to try to gain custody of Larkin. (Of course, it would also have removed a major part of the plot!)
• Newly insists on taking Larkin to Dodge, but he was presumably closer to Windrock than Dodge when he took Larkin into custody. (Larkin mentions at one point they are still two days away from Dodge, and it was stated earlier that Dodge was three day's ride from Windrock.)
• During a confrontation with the bounty hunters, Newly takes their horses, but then inexplicably releases them for the bounty hunters to find. This enabled the bounty hunters to quickly find the farmhouse where Newly and Larkin had stopped.

• Newly's insistence on continuing to try to keep Larkin in his custody, although Newly is in dire physical condition and risks dying from his wound. It would have made much more sense for Newly to allow Larkin to go free and let Melissa get a doctor, or take Newly to a doctor.

• Newly choosing to put Melissa and Jess in extreme danger by taking refuge with Larkin in their house.

• Larkin's sudden transformation at the end of the story from adversary to compliant prisoner is astounding and extremely out of keeping with everything we have learned about the character up to that point. Newly considers Larkin so dangerous he is willing to risk his life to make sure Larkin gets to Dodge, but later he tells Melissa that Larkin might get a lighter sentence because the people he killed all had it coming. (Newly doesn't put it quite that bluntly, but that is the gist of his statement.)