Noah Beal is a man who spends most of his time either drinking or attempting to find some money to buy a drink. He mostly hangs around the streets of Dodge City carrying packages for people for small sums.
A shady businessman named Jess Bradman is looking to buy land from farmers around Dodge City, but he wants to drive the price down. His henchmen convince Beal to claim some land near Dodge that contains a water source. By damming the water source, the value of the surrounding farms can be reduced. They promise to pay Beal for the land, and they give him several cases of whiskey to keep him drunk.
Things do not go as Bradman plans, however. Beal meets a young boy named Colby Eaton. Colby lives with his father, Hugh, on a farm adjacent to the property Beal has claimed.
Actor Ron Moody makes his only Gunsmoke appearance as the Noah Beal character. Moody was most famous for his role as the character Fagin in the Broadway play and 1968 film Oliver! He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the film. There is a lot of Fagin to be found in the Noah Beal character here.
Vincent Van Patten had previously appeared in the Season 18 "Bohannon" episode. He portrays Colby Eaton in this story, which is his only additional Gunsmoke role. Moody and Van Patten are great together.
Venerable character actor Ken Lynch plays the part of Jess Bradman. Anyone that watched television in the 1960s and 1970s is likely to recognize Lynch. He often played authority figures or villains in television dramas, but he did a surprising number of comedies, too. This performance is the last of twelve he did for Gunsmoke.
Warren Vanders also makes the last of twelve appearances in a Gunsmoke episode with this installment. He usually played villains, and he portrays one of Bradman's thugs in this story. Gunsmoke veteran Read Morgan plays the other tough guy in one of his ten Gunsmoke roles.
Actor John Crawford is another familiar face that appears in this story. Here he plays Hugh Eaton, Colby's father. Crawford has parts in fourteen episodes of the series. Hal Baylor and Florida Friebus each appear briefly. Victor Izay appears once again as Bull, the owner of the Bull's Head Saloon.
There is a definite heartwarming element to this story. Colby's persistent encouragement helps Beal redirect his life from living moment-to-moment for the next drink to a sober life with a meaningful relationship. Bradman intends to use Beal for his nefarious purposes, but it leads to Beal finding a reason for living. (Beal even acknowledges this fact to Matt Dillon.)
In Beal, Colby finds someone that shows him more compassion and respect than his own dour, dismissive father. Colby's father treats his son as an untrustworthy subordinate when there appears to be little reason to do so. Beal, on the other hand, considers Colby his "partner."
This is the fourth episode broadcast in Season 19, and there has yet to be an installment that prominently features any of the series regulars other than the Matt Dillon character. Such episodes are common, but to have this many shown sequentially is unusual. This episode is set in Dodge City, but there is otherwise nothing about it to make it unique to the series. Even the Matt Dillon character appears in only a few brief scenes.
Although the pacing of the episode is slower than some others, there is never a sense of merely filling time. The development of the relationship between Colby and Beal necessitates the measured approach.
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