Joseph Calleia plays judgmental Sheriff Sam Truitt in this episode. When Paladin brings the dead body of a wanted man to his home town, he tells Sheriff Truitt that he knows he is a good man, and respects him. Truitt immediately responds by saying that Paladin murdered Dawes for money, that the sight of him sickens Truitt, and to get out of town immediately before he is killed off.
Truitt does not want to have to watch vermin like Paladin killed in the town limits. He is confident that Dawes three brothers will hunt him down. He also takes Paladin's gun and holds him over for an inquest, even though Truitt knows that Dawes had a warrant out for him "Dead or Alive." The Judge acquits Paladin due to the warrant, but that does not stop Truitt from continuing pile on more insults in every scene he is in with Paladin.
Eventually the Dawes brothers show up, and Paladin still has no gun. As he tries to get on the stage out of town (he has no horse), the Dawes brothers confront him and force him to stay in town to fight them.
While all the nastiness of the town Sheriff and the townfolks should have led to an awesome gunfight, it did not. Nobody deserved more to get his ticket punched than Sheriff Truitt, but Paladin just keeps turning the other cheek. He also beats the Dawes brothers with his brain, and not his gun, and teaches all of the people of this nasty town that he is a better man than all of them.
While I understand the greater moral lesson of this episode, every time I see it, I wish he had at least given Sheriff Truitt and the Dawes brothers the standard Western ending for villains.
I also want to point out that at the beginning of the episode, Truitt asks Paladin who paid him to bring in Dawes. Paladin says it is the family of Dawes' victim. It seems logical to me that since they paid Paladin to bring in Dawes, then he should have taken the dead body to them, and let them bury the guy, or take him into town. Paldin had no reason or requirement to bring Dawes to his home town.