This story opens inside a saloon in a town that is not Dodge City. A slimy character named Harvey Cagle, who lives in Dodge, owes a gambler a lot of money. The gambler gives Cagle a month to pay the debt.
Dave Reeves is a gunfighter, and he is in the town Cagle is visiting to complete a job. Reeves makes his living traveling around and enticing men he has been paid to kill to draw on him. Fortunately for Reeves, he has not yet encountered anyone in his work faster on the draw than he is.
Cagle sees Reeves kill a man, learns that Reeves is a professional gunfighter, and is told Reeves will kill someone for as little as $100. Cagle sees Reeves as a solution to his cashflow problem. Cagle invites the gunfighter to come to Dodge City and kill Carl Anderson. Anderson is Cagle's partner in a freight business, and Cagle thinks if Reeves kills Anderson, Cagle will get full ownership of the business. With full ownership of the business, Cagle will have the means to obtain the funds he needs to pay his gambling debt.
(One wonders why an astute businessman, as Anderson seems to be, would partner with someone so clearly untrustworthy as Cagle.)
What Cagle does not know until later is that Reeves has an ex-wife and son in Dodge. In a stroke of astounding coincidence, Cagle's business partner happens to be in a relationship with Anne Madison, who is -- you guessed it -- the former spouse of Reeves.
After spending time with the son he has never known, Reeves begins to imagine a future with Anne and his son, Billy. Thus, we have the primary points of tension in this story. Will Reeves entice Anderson into a gunfight? If he does, will Anne be willing to rekindle their relationship? Is a future with Reeves as a father in the best interest of Billy? Will Cagle obtain the money he needs to pay Reeves and pay off his gambling debt?
Pernell Roberts, who by this time had left his role as Adam Cartwright on Bonanza, is Dave Reeves. It would have been interesting to know how the viewers in 1967, when this episode first aired, viewed Roberts as a heavy. Fifty-plus years later, Roberts certainly plays the part with enough expressionless, cold-blooded demeanor to be convincing. Prior to his Bonanza days, Roberts had played another heavy way back in Season 3's "How to Kill a Woman" Gunsmoke episode.
Jacqueline Scott appeared in eight different Gunsmoke episodes, and she plays the role of Anne Madison in this story. She had played another wife faced with the return of a man in her life in Season 12's "The Whispering Tree" as the wife of the character played by John Saxon.
The great R. G. Armstrong is another familiar face to any fan of the Westerns genre. Here he is Carl Anderson. In many ways, Carl Anderson in this story is the same character as Jud Briar in Season 10's "The Lady."
Henry Jones often played shady -- or even dark -- characters. Here he fills the Henry Cagle role with the appropriate level of cowardly deceit.
Eric Shea plays Billy Madison in this episode. He played the same sort of cute, inquisitive kid in three different Gunsmoke episodes. Shea was one of those child actors whose success did not follow them into adulthood.
I will not give away the resolution to this story, but it is odd and unexpected...and not necessarily in an effective way. There is a certain stoic nature to Reeves's actions in the end, but I find them implausible given Reeves's chosen profession.