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 the U.S. Marshal and the smell of gun smoke.
Gun Smoke, starring William Conrad. The story of the violence that moved west with young America. The story of a man who moved with it. Matt Dillon, United States Marshal.
Cigar, Miss Kitty? You know I don't smoke in public, Chester. Excuse me, Mr. Dillon? Thanks Chester, yeah, I believe I will. You know, for a cow town restaurant, this place serves the toughest steak I ever ate.
Well, you should have had the calf fries, Kitty. Next time, I certainly will. That reminds me, when are we going fishing, Mr. Dillon? You said last week we might take a day off soon.
All right, how about now, this afternoon? You mean it? Well, sure. You want to go, Kitty? Thanks, Matt, but there's a new girl at the Texas Trail. I told her I'd help her make a dress today. I'm late now.
Well, I'll have to drop by the office first, Chester. All right. If you want any help eating those fish, let me know. You know how to cook catfish? I bet I do. We'll be around then.
Hey, Mr. Dillon, look at those men down there by the jay. Now, what's the curious about a wagonload of buffalo hides, I wonder? Maybe they got a white one. If they have, I want it. See you later, Matt. Bye, Miss Kitty.
This your wagon, mister? No, it's Gatloff's. I skinned for him. What are you doing here? What's the crowd for? Just curious. Another skinner got hurt and we brought him into the dock.
Oh, what happens? He hurt bad? Bad enough. Gatloff didn't see any sense in bringing him into town at all. Me and the cook, we made him, though. Here's Gatloff.
Chester, go up to Doc. Maybe I can help. All right, sir. How is he? Doc will take care of everything, Toby. Never mind that. How is he? Dead. Now, let's drive these hides on down the shed. I want to get them sold and pick up our supplies. Come on.
Just a minute, Gatloff. Another time, Marshal. I'm busy. So am I. But you come into my office anyway. I want to talk to you. All this busy bothering people. That's my office right over there.
You and the cook go get them hides unloaded, Toby. I'll be right along. Yeah. Now, what do you want, Marshal? You and you around here, Gatloff? Any log in it? It depends. What happened to your skinner? Billy? He hurt himself, that's all. He's dead, isn't he? Yeah, he's dead.
Look, Gatloff, anything you don't want to tell me, I can ask Doc about. There's nothing to tell, Marshal. He got hurt and he died, that's all. When did he get hurt? Last night. And why didn't you bring him in last night?
Them other fellas, the cook and Toby, they figured he was done for anyway and didn't want to bother, I guess. Is that so? You're the boss, aren't you? Sure I am. But you know how men are when they get out in camp, Marshal. You don't want to push them too far. They get touchy kind of. What happened to him, Gatloff? How'd he get hurt? I don't rightly know, Marshal. He was alone in camp. When we got there, he'd gone and burnt himself. Burned? Burned with what?
Hot lead, Marshal. Spilt it all over him. Oh, you mean lead for bullets, huh? That's it. Cooking up lead in a fry pan. That was one of Billy's chores to make my bullets. He always was a mite clumsy. He sure messed himself up this time. There must have been a lot of lead. 50, 60 pound, I reckon. Oh, there you are, Mr. Gatloff. Doc Adams is looking for you. What does he want? Well, see, that man of yours, Doc sold through with him.
He says you can bury him now. Oh, no, I ain't paying for no burial. He's just a skinner I hired. Don't even know his last name. You're his boss, aren't you? You brought him in. And that's all I'm going to do for him. I ain't paying you a dollar, not a dollar.
Nobody's asking you to pay me. But you can't just leave the man in Doc's office. Somebody's got to bury him. He's just a bum who worked for me. He's not my father. Oh, all the stingy things I...
All right, Gatloff. We'll take care of him. You can go now. He's caused me trouble enough. I don't want to hear any more about him ever.
Well, that's about the most unfeeling man I ever did come across. What about that skinner, Chester? Tell me.
I swear it was terrible, Mr. Dillon. He was burned all over his head and his face and across his chest. Doc said he don't know how that fella lived as long as he did. Could he talk? Doc told me he couldn't say a word.
Well, how do you suppose it happened? Why, hot lead. Had a whole pan full of it, from what I hear. Yeah. 50 or 60 pounds of it. That much? Well, I can believe it.
I can't. What man's going to pick up 60 pounds of molten lead and spill it in his own face? That's the most stupid story I ever heard.
Well, say now, I hadn't thought of that. Mr. Dillon, you're right. Of course, there's another way it could have happened. What's that?
Somebody could have pushed his face down into it. Oh, my goodness. Who? I don't know. Gatloff or maybe Toby. You know where Toby went?
Well, no, I don't. But him and the cook probably went over to the Alifraganza to drink up their wages.
All right. Go do something about burying that Manchester, will you? I'll be back later. All right, sir. I'll tend to it.
I'll be back.
Where's the cook, Toby? Oh, hello, Marshal. Cook? He went to get him some boots while he still had the money.
Come on over to a table. I'll buy you a drink. You will? I mean, sure, sure, Marshal. Sam, set out a bottle of rye and another glass, will you? Yes, sir.
Come on.
Here you are. Thank you.
Well, here's to your friend, Billy. He's no friend of mine, but he died a bad death. I'll drink to him.
Tell me something, Toby. How did he and Gatloff get on? You see Gatloff's eyes, Marshal? Yeah, I did. He's got powder specks shot into them. They look like turkey eggs.
Yeah. They look like turkey eggs.
You don't get on with a man like that. Yeah. Well, why do you work for him, then? Marshal, I get 25 cents a hide and I can skin over 20 buffalo a day. But I work for hunters who couldn't kill enough to keep up with me.
Gatloff's a good hunter. He's got a good eye. He's got a good eye. He's got a good eye. He's got a good eye. He's got a good eye. He's got a good eye.
I work for hunters who couldn't kill enough to keep up with me. Gatloff's a good hunter. That's the only reason at all I work for him.
Now, if he's such a good hunter, how come I've never seen him in Dodge before?
The man's greedy, Marshal. He's downright wicked about money. He figures he can save time and make more money by selling his hides to buyer's agents on the prairie. He gets less out there, but he can kill and sell more that way. That Gatloff never stops killing buffalo.
He came in with a load of hides today. Just cause we made him come in with Billy. And another thing, we've been out four months, Marshal. He must owe Billy seven or eight hundred dollars.
Oh? Yeah. Most hunters would have split that with the crew. Not Gatloff. He liked to took my head off when I mentioned him.
Hey, want another drink? Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure.
Tell me about the accident, huh? Well, Billy was melting lead in the fry pan the way I figured he must have tripped somehow, fallen smack into it. And when we rode in, we found him rolling around on the ground. That's all I know.
When who rode in? Me and the cook. The cook skins on days Billy's making bullets.
Where was Gatloff? Oh, he went in just ahead of us.
How long ahead of you? Not long. Maybe about 20 minutes. Then he found Billy first, is that it? Yeah, so he did.
I hadn't thought of that before, Marshal. So that's why you've been asking so many questions. Well, I wasn't sure, Toby, but I expect you're telling the truth. The cook backed up your story.
Sure, I'm telling the truth. That's what happened, all right. You know, Gatloff killed him. He murdered him.
Any idea why he would? Sure I do. There's only one thing Gatloff wants, and that's money. He killed Billy just so he wouldn't have to pay him his wages due.
Yeah, maybe. Why don't you arrest him, Marshal?
There's no real evidence, Toby, none at all. It's bad for the law if I arrest a man and later he goes free. Unless he's innocent, of course.
He ain't innocent.
How come this didn't occur to you before, Toby? Why, I don't know, Marshal. I sure don't.
You going back out on the prairie with him? I ain't afraid of him. I'll be sleeping with one eye open from now on. It'd be a pleasure to kill him after what he'd done.
Self-defense, of course, Marshal. Yeah. But if you let on your suspicions, he'll sure try to kill you.
Me? He can do his killing on somebody else. The cook, maybe? I ain't even gonna tell the cook.
Yeah. You'll be leaving in the morning, I suppose. About dawn, I reckon. Soon as Gatloff hires a new skinner.
Now, the bottle's yours, Toby. Oh. And good luck.
Oh, I sure do. Thank you, Marshal.
Later in the day, Chester and a couple of other men buried Billy out on the hill.
As Toby said, he'd died a bad death. And it was made worse by the men who'd done it to him, going scot-free.
But I figured anybody as greedy as Gatloff would someday overplay his hand. And I hoped I'd be there when he did.
The next morning, Chester told me he'd heard that they'd left Dodge. That afternoon, we went off fishing.
When we got back, Kitty cooked up our catch for supper. And she did a real good job of it.
Yeah. That was fine, Miss Kitty. Just fine. Anytime, Chester. You catch them and I'll cook them.
Say, do you know how to make antelope stew? I've made it. And sardo biscuits? Of course. Oh, my goodness.
Chester, you sound like you're about to propose. Oh, my gracious, no, Mr. Dylan, my.
Why, Chester, I always kind of hoped. Oh, I didn't mean. Well, that is. I mean, well, Mercy, I.
Well, who'd marry me anyway? Ever ask anyone, too, Chester? Yes, ma'am. Once I did.
Well, what'd she say? She said she would. She said, yeah. Oh, what happened?
Marshal Dylan here. Yeah, come on in, mister. They sent me after you, Marshal, nester camp across the river.
Oh, what's the trouble? Man got knifed over there, killed. Was it just a fight or what?
They don't know who knifed him, Marshal. Come on, Chester. Thanks for the supper, Kitty. Sure, Matt.
He was knifed in the back, Mr. Dylan. Yeah, but nobody saw it happen.
No, sir. Looks like somebody got clean away with murder. Well, hello there. Marshal Dylan.
That's right. What can I do for you, son? That man that's dead. What about it?
Well, go ahead. You can tell me. I saw him get stabbed, Marshal. You did? Where were you?
I was looking for Barry's over there. I heard him arguing and I sneaked up just after he'd done it.
They were all alone. Who was the man, son? Did you know him? No, sir, but he was big and kind of dirty looking.
He had a buckskin shirt. Anything else you remember? He had funny eyes, Marshal. They had spots in them.
That's a cat look, Chester. And I declared son like him, sure enough.
Son, how come you didn't tell anybody about what you saw? I was afraid to, till you came, Marshal.
It's all right. But in case I want to find you later sometime, what's your name?
Yorkie Killey. All right. I won't forget that Yorkie. And thanks for telling me about this.
Sure, Marshal. Anytime. Well, I hope there won't be a next time, Yorkie. Goodbye.
So long, Marshal. Goodbye.
I guess it was Gatlin, all right. Yeah. He seemed like a dangerous sort of man to be running loose.
Now I got him now, Chester. Soon as I find him. I hope so, Mr. Dillon. I certainly do hope so.
We will return with a second act of Gunsmoke in just a moment.
But first, tomorrow night, Frank Lovejoy stars in the remarkable talent of Egbert Haw on CBS Radio's
Theater of Stars. Also tomorrow night, hear Lionel Barrymore on your Hall of Fame playhouse.
Now the second act of Gunsmoke.
In the last few minutes, Gadliff would figure nobody had seen him. It wasn't likely that he'd run.
And anyway, there wasn't much sense in trying to track him down in the dark.
So Chester and I didn't start out until the next morning.
Ordinarily, a man would ride into the prairie and disappear. But with Gadliff, it was a little different.
At least we knew he'd be somewhere around Buffalo. It was late afternoon before we reached good hunting grounds
and it was almost dark when we spotted the first hunter's kin.
We just going to ride right up to him, Mr. Dillon?
No, this isn't Gadliff. He had mules. This man's got horses.
Yeah, that's right.
Keep your eyes open just the same, Chester.
Oh, yes, sir.
Get down, stranger.
Thank you.
The supper will be ready. Cook, throw some more tongue in that stew pot.
If you don't like buffalo tongue, you'll go mighty hungry in this camp.
Oh, thanks, mister.
Hey, you're a lawman.
Matt Dillon. I'm a U.S. Marshal.
My name's Tom Mercer.
How are you? This is Chester Proudfoot.
How'd you do?
Mr. Mercer.
Come over by the wagon and sit down. The supper will take a little longer now.
Anyway, my skinners won't be in for a while yet.
Well, how you doing, Mr. Mercer?
Oh, fair, Marshal, fair. Had to stand about a hundred today.
Killed every one of them with a couple of old bulls.
Huh?
That's why the boys are out so late.
Have you been here long?
About a month. Move on in a couple of weeks.
I don't know, Marshal. I think this whole southern herd is going to be clean wiped out for long.
Next year, I'm going to Dakota.
Too many hunters, maybe, huh?
That's just it. That's it, exactly.
Have you seen any in the last day or two, Mr. Mercer?
Just two you're looking for, Marshal.
A man named Gadloff. Big man. Speckled eyes.
What's he done?
You know him?
No, no, I don't. Nobody's come near us in over a week.
You're not much help. Except for that stew the cook's making.
Oh, you like that. We're having dried apples, too.
I might in there could eat a buffalo raw, the entire beast.
You must be part Indian.
Well, no, sir.
I've seen one of them eat a whole liver raw.
Got propped up against a tree and ate every bit of it and then went sound asleep right there in the sun.
He was sure some sight.
Where'd you ever get that close to an Indian?
Oh, Indians ain't always bad.
Take last fall. About 20 of them rode right down into our camp.
We thought we was done for sure, but you know what happened.
They were looking for meat, that's all.
We let them take what they wanted, they rode away.
Just as peaceful like as a man could ask.
They're gonna get real hungry when the herd's gone.
That's so, Marshal. That is surely so.
That's what makes them mad.
Don't you think that's reason enough?
A fella told me a couple of weeks ago he'd run into a bunch west of here.
He was looking for scalps, all right, but good buffalo man with his old sharp sphincter can pick off Indians at 1,500 yards.
Here don't match for him at all.
Not unless they stalk him.
Oh, they've done that sure.
Hey, here come the skinners.
Let's go get outside some of that stew.
Oh, good.
Don't you ever feed this man, Marshal?
Only when he works, Mr. Mercer.
Oh, now Mr. Dillon.
We spent the night in Tom Mercer's camp.
And at dawn, just after breakfast, we said goodbye and rode on west.
There was a lot of country out there, and all we could do was ride through it till we ran into it.
In the next two days, we met plenty of hunters, but we didn't find cattle.
About noon of the third day, we cut the trail of a wagon train and figured it would be that of a hidebuyers agent who'd come into the field to do business on the spot.
And an hour or two later, we saw him.
A long string of ox-drawn wagons piled high with buffalo hides.
And there was a man on horseback leading the train.
We rode up to him.
Hello there.
Well, that's quite a load you got, mister.
Ten thousand so far.
But what are you doing way out here, Marshal?
I'm looking for a hunter named Gatliff.
You know him?
Sure I do. Just picked up a load from his wreck early this morning.
Is he in trouble?
Yeah, he sure is. Where is he?
Straight south here a couple of miles.
Can't tell you exactly, he moves around a lot.
Well, that's close enough for us.
Thanks a lot, mister.
Sure, Marshal. I never did like him anyway.
There's an empty rick over yonder. That must be it.
Yeah, but he's moved his camp.
Not far if it was just this morning.
Chester, what's that out there?
Where?
Hey, that looks like a man. Come on.
Well, Mr. Dillon, it's that skinner here.
Get some water, Chester.
Toby?
Toby, can you hear me?
He's been shot.
Here's the water.
Toby, it's Marshal Dillon.
Give me a drink.
Here you are.
He shot me, Marshal.
What happened? Where's the rest of the crew?
They ran off, took his wagon and the horses.
He went kind of crazy when he found out.
That's why he shot me.
You know where he is now?
No, I don't know, Marshal.
He shot me and then he said he was going hunting.
He's going loco.
He's going loco.
Take it easy, Toby. Take it easy.
You'll be all right.
I could hear him shooting that sharps a long time.
And then he stopped.
Where was he? Which way?
Off, behind me there.
I could hear him.
He was shooting me.
I could hear him.
Chester, you stay with him.
I'm going after Gatliff.
All right.
Off in the direction Toby had indicated
there lay a large isolated hollow
surrounded by low ridges.
When I reached it, I dismounted.
And I crawled up to where I could look down into it.
There was no sign of Gatliff.
But lying on the prairie floor were the bodies
of countless fresh-killed buffalo.
It was a strange sight.
The old bulls, the cows, the little calves
lying there blackened in the prairie grass.
I got up and stood
looking at it for a long time.
And then suddenly out in the middle
I thought I saw a slight movement.
And a second later there came the familiar boom
of a sharps 50.
And I dropped behind the ridge and waited.
And then Chester rode up.
Have you found him, Mr. Dillon?
Yeah.
I thought I'd better come along.
You see...
Toby's dead, is that it?
All right.
Gatliff's down there in the middle of the hollow.
But we can't get anywhere near him
as long as he's got that sharps rifle.
He's killed a small herd of buffalo in there
and now he's lying out in the center of them.
That's the darndest thing I ever heard of Mr. Dillon.
He must have gone crazy, just like Toby said.
Yeah.
What's he shooting at now?
Mr. Dillon, the way he's spacing them shots.
Yeah, that's a signal for help, Chester.
Come on.
Hey, maybe this is a trap.
Be ready to take cover behind one of these animals.
It might be.
Sounds like he's been hurt.
Yeah.
Keep your head up.
There he is.
Behind that big bull.
Yeah, I see him.
Why, Mr. Dillon, he...
He's all...
There have been horses in here.
Indians.
My goodness.
Come on.
Well, that was his last effort, Chester.
He's dead now.
Mr. Dillon, that's awful.
Yeah.
Come on, let's get out of here.
I don't know how the Indians caught Gatliff.
He'd gone a little mad, and maybe that made it easy for him.
But they finally got themselves a buffalo hunter.
And into their unbelievably savage torture of him
had gone all the hatred and desperation
of a race being slowly starved and driven from their homeland.
And then they'd put him there surrounded by his own bloody slaughter.
And they'd gone off with a gesture of contempt,
leaving his rifle and his ammunition by his side.
And having seen what they did to him,
I'll never know how he managed to fire even one of those shots.
For all of his evil, Gatliff had died harder than any man I'd ever seen.
Chester and I rode back to Dodge.
And it was never mentioned between us again.
Gunsmoke, under the direction of Norman McDonald,
stars William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal.
Tonight's story was especially rich in the
gunsmoke by John Meston, with music composed and conducted by Rex Corey.
Featured in the cast were Lawrence Dobkin, John Dana, Harry Bartel,
Richard Beals, and William Euler.
Harley Bear is Chester, and Georgia Ellis is Kitty.
Gunsmoke is heard by our troops overseas
through the facilities of the Armed Forces Radio Service.
Join us again next week as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal,
fights to bring law and order out of the wild violence of the West
in gunsmoke.
Monday night on CBS Radio, hear the concluded suspense production
of Shakespeare's tragic drama Othello, starring Richard Widmark,
Elliot Lewis, and Kathy Lewis.
Also Monday night, don't miss the Luxe Radio Theater's
charming excursion into fantasy, The Bishop's Wife,
starring Cary Grant and Phyllis Baxter.
George Walsh speaking, and remember there's fast,
funny quizzing on the Bob Hawke Show,
Monday evenings on the CBS Radio Network.
See the movie weekend news synchronized miracles
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