Around Dodge City and in the territory on West, there is just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers, and that's with a 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, and the story of a man who moved with it.
I'm that man, Matt Dillon, United States Marshal, the first man they look for and the last they want to meet. It's a chancey job, and it makes a man watchful, and a little lonely.
Music
He's coming out now, Mr. Jones.
Yeah.
This ain't going to be easy on her, Mr. Jones.
Facts are facts, Chester. There's nothing we can do to change them.
Yes, sir, I know.
Ah, good evening, Miss Gross.
Oh, Marshal, Chester.
Good evening, ma'am. You fetched Marvin his supper, did you?
Oh, yes. Land sakes. The hours the bank makes that poor boy work is a caution. He wouldn't hardly ever get no warm food if I didn't pack it down to him. How have you been, Marshal?
Oh, fine, Miss Gross. Just fine.
That's good. Well, you know, you gents have got things to do. Might as well pass the word with you.
Good night, ma'am.
Good night.
There's a dog on James. She's a fine woman.
Yeah.
It's just going to break her heart.
I don't like this any better than you do, Chester.
But it just don't make sense.
Marvin.
Marshal Gross is the likeable young fellow you'd ever meet. Quiet, pleasant, spoken.
I don't even ever know. Wait outside here, will you? I want to talk to him alone.
All right.
I'm sorry, the bank's closed. Oh, Michael Dillon.
Evening, Marvin. You working late again?
Sort of getting to be a habit. Mom just brought my supper. Like some coffee, Marshal?
No, thanks.
I don't really mind working late now and then. The other teller's married and got a family, and I got nothing to do with myself evenings anyhow.
You won't mind if I go ahead and eat, Marvin?
No, no, no. Go ahead, Marvin.
You wouldn't figure there'd be much book work in a bank like this, town the size of Dodge. But the dog bone sure is.
There's a lot of business going on around here. I guess it's all going to be kept straight, huh?
Yeah, that's it, all right. But it sure takes time and paperwork.
By golly, Mom fixed me chicken and dumplings tonight. Sure you won't have some?
No, no, thanks.
Now, Marvin, Mr. Bob can listen to see me today?
No. Well, I can say one thing about him. He's a fine man to work for.
Well, he was explaining the system you use here with your gold reserve, how you keep the gold in the vault and issue banknotes against it.
Yeah, it's the same system most of the banks out here use.
Well, he tells me that ordinarily the gold's only checked once a year when the bank examiner comes through.
That's right. It just gathers dust the rest of the time.
Uh-huh. Well, yesterday, Mr. Bobkin took a notion to check it himself, Marvin. There's $20,000 missing.
What?
He says that you're the only man at the bank who had any chance to take it.
No, Marshal, it must be still a mistake.
Well, I said the same thing, but Mr. Bobkin was pretty convincing.
I got a warrant here, Marvin. You're under arrest for grand larceny.
No, it's all wrong, no.
Don't be a fool, Marvin.
I'm not going to jail.
Here, give me that gun.
Drop it, drop it.
Are you all right, Mr. Newman?
Yeah, I'm all right, Chester, but go find Doc and get him over here fast.
He must be in mighty bad shape, Mr. Dillon. Doc's been in there for nearly half an hour.
Well, I guess a bank office isn't the best operating room in the world.
Marshal, when he grabbed that gun out of the drawer, was he trying to shoot you or himself?
I don't know, Mr. Bobkin. I'm not sure that he knew.
He was caught off guard and he might be active about even stopping to think.
You think somebody might go tell his mother, Mr. Dillon?
Doc said to wait. He's got a tough job to do and he figures that Miss Gross being here to just make it harder.
She's a fine woman. Waits on that boy hand and foot. It's going to be a terrible shot to her.
Yeah.
For her sake, I hated to bring charges against Marvin, but there just wasn't any choice.
Mr. Bobkin, was there any chance at all that, well, somebody else could have taken the gold out of the vault.
We went over all that when I signed the warrant.
Yeah, I know we did. The Bullion safe is inside the vault.
The other teller, Oscar Dreely, has access to the vault, but only Marvin and myself have the combination of the safe.
I wish there were some other explanation, but there just isn't.
I guess not.
This thing is just as unbelievable to me as it is to you, Marshal.
That boy's been with the bank nearly two years now. I thought I knew him. Trusted him completely.
Anybody would have, Mr. Bobkin.
Boy, that fellow like him, not gambling or hanging around the saloon, just living at home with his ma.
Well, gentlemen, your job is done.
Oh, good. Good. How soon can I go to it?
I said the job's done. I got the bullard out.
The boys did, though.
Did?
They didn't have a chance.
No.
Did he say anything, Doc?
Not a word, maybe. Didn't even come to.
Mm-hmm.
All right, Chester, let's get to work.
Well, it appears to me the job's over, Mr. Bob.
There's $20,000 worth of gold still missing.
And even worse, somebody's gotta tell his mother.
Dad?
I'm sorry, Miss Golds.
Oh, I don't believe it. Marshall, it's not true.
Well, I wish it weren't.
My son's dead? Shot to death?
Accidentally, Miss Gross.
To resist an arrest, he was shot with his own gun.
It happened about an hour ago in the bank.
Oh, no.
Here, grab her, Chester.
Easy, man.
There, now.
You just lean back a minute and catch your breath.
Marvin, Dad.
Well, you sit right there now. I'll go get you a dipper of water.
Well, it was less than two hours ago I took him in supper.
Chicken, it was.
Flour dumplings.
I told him to come right home to me, Vinnie.
I'm sorry, man.
Here, you got some gross.
You just drink this now. It'll help to settle yourself.
Oh, right.
Could you do some more?
No.
No, I'm much obliged to.
I'm mighty sorry to have to bring you the news, Miss Gross, but...
Well, what's done is done.
Well, turning away from it won't change anything.
You said Marvin was shot, resisting arrest.
Yes, ma'am.
Arrest for what? What had he done?
Well, that's the second thing I hate telling you.
Well, my son never committed a crime in his life, Marshall.
I'm afraid he didn't, Miss Gross.
There's $20,000 in gold missing from the bank vault.
Marvin's the only one who could have taken it.
Oh, it's a lie.
Well, if it were, there'd have been no reason for Marvin trying to resist arrest.
Well, I've always known everything he thought or done.
He told me everything.
I didn't know he'd have done anything like that.
Maybe this was the one thing he didn't tell you.
Did he say he'd done it?
No, ma'am.
Well, did you catch him with it? Did anybody see him take it?
No, ma'am, nobody saw him.
Now, we haven't found the gold that we...
Well, then I say it again, it's a lie.
Look, Miss Gross, I hate to do this, but we're going to have to search your house.
He's bound to have hidden it somewhere.
All right, Marshall, search it.
Get out the walls and dig up the floor if you want.
But you won't find nothing because there's nothing to find.
I know my son. I know my son.
Yes, ma'am.
All right, Chester, let's get at it.
Real nice evening for this time of year, Mr. Young.
Yeah, it sure is.
It's going to be an early spring.
I've seen a whole passel of metallarks this morning out south of town.
Oh, they probably want it here.
Oh, sure, there's two dogs on it, many of them, too.
Here comes Miss Gross, let's go across the street.
You can't dodge trouble by running from it, Chester.
Well, I know, but the way she feels about things...
Marshall.
...the old dog on it, she's sauce.
Good evening, Miss Gross.
I'm glad I run into you, Marshall. I was aiming to come by your office.
You found out yet who robbed the bank?
No, ma'am.
You found the money yet?
No, not yet.
Two weeks now. My son laying out there on Booth Hill.
Branded criminal.
But not one bit of proof to back it up.
Well, I've followed up every possibility I could think of, ma'am, but...
...only every single one of them has come to nothing.
But you keep trying.
Sure I will. I'll keep trying.
I reckon I know what you would.
It ain't you I blame, Marshall. You've only done your duty.
You've got an honest reputation.
Thank you, ma'am.
But I'll never forgive Mr. Botkin, never in this life.
He knowed, my boy, he knowed he wasn't that kind.
But he went ahead and swore that that weren't.
He caused Marvin's death just like he pulled that trigger himself.
Now, Miss Gross, that's not...
I ain't going to talk about it no more.
I already talked myself out and cried myself out.
I'm on my way to the depot, Marshall. I was coming around to tell you goodbye.
I'm leaving on an 11 o'clock train.
Oh, you are.
I'm going back east to my kinfolk for a while.
But I'll be back in a few months.
Right now...
There's just too many things in this town to remind me of my boy.
Yes, ma'am.
Well, I wish you a good trip, Miss Gross.
Marshall, I want my boy's name cleared, and I'll never rest till it's done.
I know that.
It will be. You'll see.
Well, I hope you're right.
And you'll take good care of yourself, huh?
I will. Goodbye, Marshall.
Justin.
Goodbye.
She just won't give up, will she?
She's his mother, Justin.
And even closer than most.
Or Marvin wouldn't hardly take a breath without her say so.
Yeah, I know.
Well...
Hey, how'd you like to have a drink, huh?
Well, I'm...
I'm buying. Come on.
Well, thank you.
You know, she'll feel better when she gets out of there, don't she?
Back there with her own kin.
Sure she will.
Miss Gross is a fine old lady.
It's just too bad.
Yeah.
My goodness.
Quite a crowd in the long branch tonight.
Over here, Mac!
Come on over here and join in.
There's Dr. Mr. Barton. You want to join him, Mr.?
Yeah, I might as well.
Oh, would you pardon me, please?
Hello, Mac.
Good to see you.
Hello, Kitty.
Can I get you something?
Yeah, as a matter of fact, you can. The usual, if you don't mind.
The same for me, Miss Kitty.
We'll do it at the table, Miss Doc.
All right, fine. I'll join you.
Good.
Well, up a chair, Mac. Cheers, Kitty.
Join us, solid, respectable citizens, for a change.
Well, that's something I would agree with you, Doc.
How are you, fucking?
Hi, Marshal.
Can I buy you a drink?
Well, I got one coming, thanks.
Oh, I just saw Miss Gross outside.
She tells me she's going back east.
Well, I can't say I'm sorry to hear it.
For some reason, she seems to blame me for what her son did.
Yeah. As a matter of fact, she just suggested that maybe he would rob the bank here, so...
You searched my house, Marshal. You surely don't...
No, no, of course not. She was just talking out her hurts.
She knows there's no sense to it.
Well, I hope you don't put any stock in anything, she says.
Oh, I don't. The boy was guilty, his whole reaction, going for that gun and all.
Well, it surely was. She just won't accept the fact, that's all.
Well, a mother's relation to her son gets to be a funny kind of a thing sometimes.
Especially when it's as close as that one was.
Yes, I've thought time and again how hard it was that that boy kept to himself somebody.
Well, she never gave him a chance to get out, ricks, to grow.
She ran his whole life on him. 24 hours a day.
Well, they must have found some time, Doc. He thought up that robbery and then carried it out.
Well, that's true, but I got a theory about that, man.
I think he did it to hit back at her, sort of.
It was a way to rebel.
Yeah, but Marvin wasn't ever one to rebel much.
Not against nobody.
But he finally did.
Oh, where you going, man?
Wait a minute. Maybe he didn't rebel, Doc.
What time have you got?
Let me see here. It's ten thirty-eight. According to my girl watching here.
Ten thirty-eight, Chester.
Well, here. I've got a drink order.
Later, later. Come on.
Very cute, Mr. Dunham.
Standing there with a mail sack down.
Yeah, I see it.
Things like this upset me something terrible.
I swear to goodness, one of these days I'm going to turn to Dr. Harmon to make a living.
Sure you are, Chester, when they figure some way to take the work out of you.
Ah, Miss Gross.
Oh? Oh.
Why, Marshall, it's quite a surprise.
Yeah, I imagine it is.
What?
You know, you nearly got away with it.
Another hour or so and you'd have had it safe out of town.
What are you talking about?
I'm thinking about Marvin, the kind of boy he was and how he always did what you told him to.
He was a beautiful son, Michael.
Sure.
And when I talked to the two men who carried your trunk out of the depot, they said they could hardly lift it.
What?
It's pretty heavy, I guess, with a hundred pounds of gold on the bottom of it.
That's a lie.
I just opened that trunk, Miss Gross.
You had no right to.
It was Marvin's trunk. I didn't know what was in it.
Your things are packed right in with the gold, things I saw in your house the day I searched it.
Miss Gross, you're under arrest. Accessorate at Grand Larson.
Arrest?
That's right.
That stupid young fool, getting himself shot.
He could have sworn to some story that had cleared me and took all the blame himself.
I tell you, he'd have been glad to do it for his old mama.
He died for you, didn't he?
What more do you want?
Gunsmoke, produced and directed by Norman MacDonald, stars William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal.
Featured in the cast were Parley Bear as Chester, Howard McNear as Doc, and Georgia Ellis as Kitty.
George Waltz speaking.
Join us again next week for another specially transcribed story on Gunsmoke.
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The United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.
The United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.