Around Dodge City and in the territory on West, there's just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers,
and that's with a U.S. Marshal and the smell of gun smoke.
Music
Gun Smoke, starring William Conrad, the story of violence that moved west with young America,
the story of a man who moved with it, Matt Dillon, United States Marshal.
Music
Howdy, Marshal.
Hello, Mr. Biggs. Can I give you a hand?
No, no. This is the last batch here.
Hey, wait till the flies get to these buffalo hides in the morning and there'll be enough vultures overhead to keep the place in the shade for a week.
Yeah.
You know, you sure have your hands full by tomorrow night.
Yeah, it looks that way.
When these boys turn them hides into cash, they'll bite the corks out of every bottle in town.
And some of them look mean enough sober.
Yeah. Well, you better bed down and get some sleep, Mr. Biggs.
Where are your boys?
I don't know. Jeff had some trouble with a dry axle up near Pawnee Rock and Boaz stopped to help him fix it.
But they shouldn't be this long behind me.
Well, if I see them, I'll tell them where to find them.
You can tell Jeff, but Boaz ain't even going to hear you.
Why? What's the matter with him?
Oh, he's riding higher than an eagle. You know that white buffalo you've been hearing about?
The albino?
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's just Indian talk.
Oh, you think so, huh? Well, if it is, Boaz sure shot himself a mighty scared buffalo.
White as borax.
That ought to fetch a price.
Hey, anybody seen Marshall Dillon?
Over here, Chester.
You better saddle up, Mr. Dillon.
What's the matter, Chester?
Indian trouble. Two men dead and a couple of wagons burned up out there. I found this.
A war rattle made out of buffalo toes. Arapaho.
Well, they haven't been making any trouble.
Well, these did. I was popping a hill when I saw the wagons go up in fire.
It was Indians, all right? I saw one ride off.
That's funny. I never heard of arapahos attacking at night. How far out, Chester?
Ten mile, maybe, toward Pawnee Rock.
Pawnee Rock? Marshall, my sensors coming from there.
Easy, Mr. Dillon. Lots of wagons in the turn.
Marshall, I didn't see another wagon between here and Pawnee, except the ones we had, but the Indians killed my boys.
There's only one way to make sure, Mr. Biggs. Saddle up and ride over to my office. I'll be with you as soon as I can get my horse.
I cut back through those buckwhellers over there when I spotted the wagons being fired.
We must be close to it, then.
Just over there.
Right down yonder. See them?
Yeah. I see them.
We rode up and dismounted. The last glint of hope and Mr. Biggs' eyes died.
His boys were there, all right. And it wasn't nice to see.
I'll kill them. I'll get them, please. I'll murder every redskin in the territory.
We gotta bring your sons in, Mr. Biggs. You know what the morning's gonna be like.
You don't want to leave them out here. Now, come on.
Hey, look. Down there by the stream.
My boys.
Yeah, four of them. They're not saddle horses.
Mr. Biggs. Mr. Biggs.
You recognize those horses down there?
Yeah. I know them. Teams. Belong to Boaz and Jeff.
The Indians must have cut them loose from the wagons before they fired.
Doesn't that seem curious to you, Chester?
In what way, Mr. Dillon?
Why didn't they take the horses with them?
Yeah. What do you think, Marshal?
No burned hides in those wagons.
So they stole them.
Yeah, they stole them. But Boaz and Jeff both have their rifles there beside them, and the horses are left behind, too.
Horses and guns are the first things Indians would go for.
What are you looking for, Mr. Dillon?
Those buffalo hides weren't carried off without wagons.
Here. Marks the two other wagons here, and they're fresh.
I didn't see any other wagons. Only these.
Well, they'd finished and gone before you got here, Chester.
Well, yeah, but I'd have caught up to any wagons on the trail to dodge.
Did you go by regular trail?
Well, no. I figured the Indian I saw wasn't alone. I didn't want to get bushwhacked further on.
You didn't see any Indians, Chester.
But Mr. Dillon just as plain as...
No Indian would leave guns and horses.
This job was done by white men. It didn't take anything that could be recognized or identified.
You mean somebody's in dodge by now with the hides my boys worked and sweated to get?
I'm afraid so, Mr. Biggs.
There'd be more than 300 buffalo hunters there by morning. It could be any of them.
We'll find the right ones.
Oh, how?
The albino. Whoever killed your sons will have that white buffalo hide.
It was almost sunup when we got back to town, and more wagons had jammed the main street lining up for the unloading barns.
I rode down the line, looking them over one by one.
Howdy, Marshal.
Some of the men would take their money, drink it up, and drift away.
Few would stay long enough to be buried on Boot Hill.
Then suddenly a wagon driver up ahead pulled out a line.
Hey, wait a minute.
Hold it there. Take your hands off that key.
I'll take my hands off since you get back to your place.
All right, I'll wait and I'll let go of that bit, Mr. Dillon.
You, that stranger.
Get your hand away from that gun.
Well, now.
Who knows any law around here?
There is, so don't try making your own.
You got no right grabbing my team.
I got plenty right when it's right in front of me, Marshal.
That's a lie, Marshal. He cut your rod.
Never mind.
You both want to cool your heads out in jail?
Now, what's your name?
Tennessee is good enough.
A lot of people from Tennessee coming into the territory.
Most of them are pretty peaceful.
That sounds like you're saying I'm not.
You move pretty fast for that gun.
A man can lose his temper.
You lost yours four times according to the notches you've carved into that gun butt.
But don't try for number five, not here.
How about you? What do you call?
Charlie Kell.
Charlie Kell, huh?
Did they ever call you Chuck?
No.
Heard of a Chuck Kell a couple of years back come from Kentucky.
Not me.
The man I heard about was a gunfighter, so he never wore gloves.
See, you don't either.
It's pretty rough on the hands.
Thanks, Marshal.
I'll make sure to take better care of him.
Yeah, do that.
I'll be around a while, Marshal.
Maybe we can have another talk.
Anytime.
They'd need watching.
But what I wanted now was a white buffalo hide.
Searching the wagons wouldn't do.
There wasn't time, and the search would let the killers know that something in the hides they'd stolen could be identified.
The time to find out would be when the buyers checked them.
I got Biggs and Chester to cover two of the unloading barns, and I covered the third one.
Then finally daylight came, and the haggling started.
You want to sell all those hides?
Better learn how to handle these skin and knife little better.
They're as good as any.
That's full of holes, they ain't.
Maybe you have four dollars a hide for the bunch.
You gave me that last call I ate.
He looked tougher than you.
Six. I'll take six.
Four. Take it or leave it.
You think you can rob me, mister?
Shut your mouth, boy.
Here, none of that.
Let me go!
Easy, son.
Let me have that gun just so you won't be tempted.
Here, that's better.
Give me that. Give it back.
You can pick it up at my office whenever you're ready to leave town.
You look like a city boy to me. Where you from? St. Louis?
None of your business.
Your mom's got you beat, son. There's no shame to admitting it and going home.
Sometimes that takes a real man.
Don't tell me what to do.
Why don't you watch your own job? Why don't you leave me alone, Marshal?
I ain't got a white buffalo hide.
What'd you say, boy?
You heard me.
What do you know about a white buffalo hide?
What everybody else knows. That you're looking for one. Everybody in town knows it.
How?
A little man whose sons were bushwhacks all licked up over at the other barn, shooting off his mouth.
Don't go away mad, Marshal.
Ha ha!
Mr. Biggs wasn't at the barn where I'd left him.
I cut through an alley to Front Street and headed for the saloons.
I never got to him.
Mr. Dillon? Mr. Dillon?
What's the matter, Chester?
Old man Biggs.
Where is he? I'm looking for him.
He was over by the barn. I was watching, drunk, going through the wagon.
Yeah, I know about that.
I was trying to get him to go back to his own barn, but all of a sudden he took off.
For where?
I don't know. But there was one wagon he was watching in particular.
The driver walked away from it with a package of some kind.
That white hide?
It could have been. I don't know. But Biggs sure thought so.
He lit out after a fellow with blood in his eye.
Which way?
Down there, where the boy's been hitching the empty wagon.
Let's go.
The old boy's drunk enough to make trouble, he's liable to kill somebody.
Or get killed.
Too late, Mr. Dillon.
Yeah.
It came from there, behind that row of wagons.
You stay here, Chester.
Be careful, Mr. Dillon.
When I rounded the corner wagon, Mr. Biggs was sprawled across a wagon tongue, his eyes dead and open, staring at the ground.
And standing over him was Tennessee, a smile on his face.
And his gun extended to me butt first.
Looks like I'm in the might of trouble, Marshal.
He's dead, Tennessee. That's more than a mite.
You take my gun for a while.
You mean until after you hang?
Wasn't figuring to be that serious.
Not when a drunk follows me out here and throws down on me.
If you're figuring on self-defense, forget it. Look at his gun. It isn't even caught.
Well, it's out of his holster, Marshal. That's enough.
Law don't say I have to wait till he kills me.
You'll have to make a jury believe that.
Well, I shouldn't have much trouble doing that, Marshal.
What are you doing here, Mr. Kell?
Oh, I just happened to follow Tennessee out here.
Why?
Well, you broke up our little argument in town.
Thought I'd get him alone here.
See if maybe he was still nursing a grudge he wanted to settle.
But the old man beat me to it.
Now, Tennessee here ain't exactly a friend of mine, as you know, but...
I hate to see any man hang when he ain't guilty.
Is that your personal verdict, Mr. Kell?
That's right, Marshal.
The old man threw down on him and Tennessee had to kill him in self-defense.
Chester.
Yes, sir, Mr. Dillon?
Which one of them had the package?
This one.
This is the fellow the old man was after.
All right, Tennessee, where is it?
I don't know anything about a package.
Look in the wagon, Chester.
See anything?
Nothing here.
I reckon you can give my gun back to me now.
All right, Tennessee.
Here.
Thanks, but if you decide to use it again while you're in Dodge or any place else in Kansas...
I hope I'm there when you do.
Why not don't you fret, Marshal?
I'm sure you will be.
We will return for the second act of gun smoke in just a moment.
But first, action excitement thrills.
That's gangbusters.
Gangbusters helps to fight crime by fearlessly naming the criminals.
Listen for it later this evening on CBS Radio.
Now, the second act of gun smoke.
Just before sundown, we buried old man Biggs and his two sons up on Boot Hill.
By the time the service was over and I rode down, darkness had fallen.
And everything was going full blast.
The town was roaring.
Seemed like a good man, old Biggs.
He was, Chester.
So were his boys.
But there are too many men like Tennessee and Cal coming in, Mr. Dillon.
They won't last, Chester.
They'll keep coming, but they won't last.
They'll take a gun and go against a man, but they won't sweat.
They won't take root and build.
We still going to look for that hide?
Yeah.
Well, just what do you want me to do, Mr. Dillon?
Tennessee and Cal will be in town, but their wagons are back there with the other empties.
Ride back and look them over.
Well, they might have had somebody carry that package off for them.
They might be, but they don't seem like partners, Mr. Dillon.
From what I heard, you stopped them from gunfighting.
It took more than one man to kill the Biggs boys,
and more than one man and more than one wagon to cart the hides in.
Were you mean they staged that trouble just for you?
Just for me.
After they heard, I was looking for that white hide.
Well, why do you figure that, Mr. Dillon?
When gunfighters start for their guns, nothing stops them, Chester.
They both started, but they both stopped.
I reckon you better take a look through those wagons.
Yes, Mr. Dillon.
Well, I meet you.
I'll be checking the saloons.
One by one, I made the stops.
The Long Branch, the Alapragansa, the Texas Trail.
And one by one, they got quieter as I went in,
as though each place was holding its breath,
waiting for something to happen.
The last place was a Mexican hangout, a long, dark walk.
Hello, Marshal.
Can't see me, can you, Marshal?
No.
No, I can't see you, son.
Too bad, because I got another gun.
They sell them around here.
And I ain't going back to St. Louis.
You'll fire once, son, and if you don't kill me with that,
then I'll kill you.
I'll gamble on that, Marshal.
You, Marshal!
He lurched from the shadows into the street,
staggered and fell.
Then he rolled over on his back, and his eyes struggled for a minute,
like they were trying to remember something.
Then they went blank.
Well, he's right about one thing.
He wasn't going back to St. Louis.
Well, what do you know?
The Marshal's real handy with a gun.
Stay out of this, Kel.
But I may have something to talk over with you later.
Meaning what?
If you don't know it, then you got nothing to worry about.
I've been hearing a lot about how fast you are with a gun, Dillon.
Anything to it?
I'm still alive.
Yeah.
Is this your hobby, shooting kids?
He was old enough to try to kill me.
I don't like it, Marshal.
That's too bad, Mr. Kel.
The Chuck Kel I heard about would have loved it.
They said he'd killed two kids under 16, one of them his own brother.
You didn't hear the whole story, Marshal.
The Kel you heard about killed a Marshal, too.
Let's get out of here and go on a roll.
You made the bid, Mr. Kel.
And you got a gun.
Use it or I'll take it away from you.
Come and get it.
Anytime.
Here it is.
How are you feeling, Mr. Dillon?
I'm all right, Chester.
Doc fixed your head.
Wasn't much he could do for Kel, though.
I hit him?
If you didn't, he sure died for nothing.
He was fast, all right.
Boys say you made him look like a sleepy bird.
Never even cleared his holster.
And my head says different.
You didn't get that from Kel.
What do you mean?
Tennessee was up the street with a rifle.
He creased you.
Huh.
Where is he now?
I don't know, Mr. Dillon.
He rode out of town before I could stop him.
I was the only one who saw him.
I was coming up street to find you.
All right.
Let's get out of here.
Did you find anything in the wagons?
No, sir.
But I found Tennessee's wife.
Wife?
That's right, Mr. Dillon.
In a small wagon next to his.
He's a squaw man.
His wife's an Indian girl.
I'm going to send her.
All right, Chester.
Which way?
Edge of town, Mr. Dillon.
Well, let's go.
You talked to the wife?
Yes, sir.
I found out Tennessee and Kel were friends, all right.
They left her here the night before last
and arranged to meet her here today.
She said they were driving empty wagons
when they left her.
Ask her what tribe she belonged to.
Didn't have to ask, Mr. Dillon.
I could tell by her beads.
She's an Arapaho.
She was there, all right.
Crouched by the wheel of a wagon.
Her face was bloody.
And she stared into a small campfire.
Rocking back and forth without a sound.
She wasn't beat up when I left her, Mr. Dillon.
Where's your husband?
He's gone.
Gone where?
He's gone.
Tell me which way he went.
I'll bring him back to you.
No.
You're a long man.
Your husband had a white buffalo
in his hand.
Your husband had a white buffalo
hide, didn't he?
Tell me.
No.
Other man.
Tell white buffalo.
Then your husband took the hide away from him?
He buy.
He buy hide.
He didn't buy him. He killed two men to get him.
He killed with Indian paint on his face.
He left in Arapaho war rattle.
He wants the blame to
come to your people.
If the white men think the Arapaho's
on the war path, the soldiers
will come.
No. Arapaho
peaceful.
Where's the white hide?
What'd your husband do with it?
He tell me.
Buried.
Where? Where is it buried?
There. Back there.
By tree.
Go take it up, Chester.
And stay with her till I get back.
Are you going after him, Mr. Dillon?
As soon as she tells me which way.
Alright, Mr. Dillon.
You're
white man.
No good.
Now tell me which way he went.
You let him go.
He not come back.
I can't let him go.
If I do, the soldiers will come
after your people.
He beat you
and he ran away from you.
Now he'll bring death to your tribe
unless I get him.
Where did he go?
He... he ride to
where moon sleep.
I rode east.
Tennessee had had about an hour
start, but I figured to make up most
of that before sunrise.
The prairie was open and flat
except for an occasional roll.
And the Arkansas River
would keep him from cutting south.
His best bet for a fresh horse
would be Kensley and I rode hard
for it. It was just
turning daylight when I rode in.
Well, howdy, Marshall.
Morning. Good morning.
Got a place I can water my horse.
Draw off right there.
Just let him loose. He'll find it.
Thank you.
Looks like you come
a long way.
Dodge.
Now the fella here just a few minutes ago
been riding hard too. He come
from up on Eway though.
Tall, dark, riding
a vinegar roll.
Yeah, that's right. You get a fresh horse here?
I had to send my boy out to Corral
to get one for him.
He'll be back soon.
You mean he's still here in town?
Yeah. Asked about breakfast
so I sent him over to the Winter Hilliards place.
Right over there across the road.
Thank you.
I'll be back.
Hey,
you after that fella, Marshall?
Yes?
Understand you're serving breakfast, man.
Why, sure thing, Marshall.
Dylan!
That's right.
Give me a clear way out the door.
Or I'll kill you.
Come by me, Tennessee.
I'll come shooting.
That's all right.
But just be sure you get me this time.
Why, you...
You hurt man?
No, I...
I'm all right, Marshall.
He looks...
kind of dead.
Yeah.
Bad one, huh?
Yes, I'm...
gunfighter, thief,
killer.
What's your name, Marshall?
Dylan, ma'am. Matt Dylan.
I...
I'm sorry about...
Marshall, when my husband
brought me out here fifteen years ago,
Indians burned this place down
three times.
I'm used to killing.
You want to carry him out?
I'll go fix you that breakfast.
Thank you, ma'am.
I'll be right back.
Featured in tonight's cast were
Stan Waxman, John Dana, and Larry Dobkin
with Sam Edwards, Julian Bayoch,
Tom Holland, and Mary Lansing.
Marlee Bayer is Chester.
Join us again next week as Matt Dylan, U.S. Marshall,
fights to bring law and order out of the wild
violence of the West in
Gunsmoke.
Something new in CBS Radio Newsroom
coverage, World News with Robert
Trout presents as a special weekly feature
an interview with the crack CBS
Radio News correspondent. This
correspondent flies in from his post overseas
to give you his authoritative eyewitness
viewpoint on latest developments.
Tomorrow afternoon on most of these same stations,
World News with Robert Trout.
This is Clarence Cassell speaking.
And remember, from now to November
you'll find intensive, impartial campaign
coverage on the CBS Radio
Network.
Thank you.