User Reviews

This whole episode is GREAT! This episode is about a personal trauma that happens to Hoby Gilman when he shoots a 16 year old kid by mistake. Hoby is distraught, and the whole town can do nothing but criticize him. Hoby is questioned by the town, but his biggest question is with himself. In this episode, Hoby has a few emotional moments. He yells at Henrietta, something we never see Hoby do; and he cries.

In the end, there is no answer to his guilt or innocence. After finding out the truth, the town is ready to forgive him in hopes that he will stay, but Hoby announces he cannot live with the guilt. He must leave and try to find some way to put the incident behind him.

Henrietta is her usual charming self. She wants Hoby to stay, telling him it would be soon forgotten. "In a month, who will remember, hm?" Hoby gets emotional again and states, "Me."

Someone has been robbing hotel rooms, and one victim was pistol whipped. Hoby and the hotel manager are on stake-out at night. A person leaves a room and is ordered to stop. He takes off and Hoby orders for him to stop again, or Hoby will shoot. Given no other choice, Hoby shoots and the alleged burglar is dead. It's a 16-year-old boy.

Suddenly everyone is asking, why did Hoby shoot. Why didn't he wait. Hoby tells Doc Calhoun that he can show him the headstones of Texas Rangers who waited. At the inquest, Hoby is cleared but still damned as an officer with "the badge of a lawman with the heart of a gunman." Hoby has his own guilt that he's dealing with; but he's devastated at how the town has turned on him. When he goes to the boy's home, he finds the evidence that proves the boy was the thief. But he is surprised by Milo York, the boy's father. But it wasn't the boy who was the thief; his father was the thief, and the boy was there looking for his father. Summer York, the boy's mother, overhears her husband confess to being the thief. She blames her husband for killing her son, not Hoby. In the end, she shoots her husband dead claiming he's responsible for the death of her son, the only person she loved with her heart.

She tells Hoby it wasn't his fault for shooting her son. It ended the way it had to end, it was God's plan. If God wanted her son to live, he would have caused Hoby to miss. The town now has a "change-of-heart" learning the truth, and Hoby is forgiven for doing his job. Hoby leaves the town, Henrietta Porter tells Hoby he doesn't have to leave, the town has forgiven him. In two weeks, maybe a month, and no one will even remember the incident, she says. As Hoby mounts the saddle, he looks at Henrietta and says she's wrong. Two people will always remember, Mrs. York, and himself.

It has been almost 60 years since this episode aired in 1958, and nothing has changed. We still have officers ordering alleged wrongdoers to halt, and they're still getting shot for failure to obey. Yes, there are some abusive police out there, but the huge majority are doing their best to hold society together. We really need to figure out what we want, a country ruled by the law of the jungle, or a country ruled by the law. And we are still blaming the police for our shortcomings as a society.