Gunsmoke

- Season 3

(1957)

Gunman Nate Springer arrives in Dodge with the obvious intention of committing murder, but his nervousness and unpredictability make Matt determined to find out who hired him and why he seems so different from his steel-nerved reputation.

Chester claims the new stranger in town is really there to kill him and Matt investigates, but remains skeptical even after Chester is shot in the arm by an unseen person.

When Harry Speener learns that the man who saved his life is a wanted fugitive, he kills the man for the reward, then finds out that the people of Dodge don't like those who kill for money.

While Kitty dines with Matt on the edge of town, Kitty's old beau robs the bank.

An addled and desperate prairie family lures Matt and Chester out of town as a preliminary part of their plan for attempting a violent robbery of the Dodge City bank.

Young and likable Jesse Pruett teams up with an unlikely "partner" in the person of Bill Stapp, a murderous former Quantrill raider. Stapp has promised to lead Jesse to the man who killed his father so he can avenge his death, but the young man is tragically unaware of Stapp's true intentions

On her way to Dodge to marry, Mavis McCloud sends a telegram to the Marshal of Dodge City. Chester and Doc want to know "Is she coming here to marry Matt" or is something else going on?

Joe Digger is nearly killed by two men who tried to lynch him. Now he is giving Matt until midnight the next day to bring them to jail, or he will track them down and kill them both.

In a situation much like the play referenced by the title, the children of two prominent families have fallen in love, though the patriarchs of both have forbidden they see each other. Despite the girl's father having threatened the boy with death, the two run away, and go to Dodge City for Matt's help. He reluctantly does, though the father arrives soon afterward, warning that if he doesn't turn them over to him, he and his ranch hands will tear the town apart searching for them. Matt and Chester secretly have the young couple married and sent off in a stage coach, ...

Matt sets out with a vengeance to capture two trouble-making Texas cowhands who dragged Chester and left him near death.

Losing his first wife when she disappeared, Jim Cobbett tries marriage again. All seemed fine until she turned up missing too. Did he have something to do with her absence as some think he did with his first?

Matt investigates why a gunman is harassing station master Jesse Daggett by killing his passengers in cold blood, when things reach a climax after a female passenger is shot dead.

An impoverished but hardworking woman's plans to adopt an orphan baby are jeopardized when Matt discovers that her improvident husband is involved in cattle rustling.

Doc, on his way to an accident at a local farmhouse, is confronted by a stranger barring his way. When he feels forced to shoot him, he tells Matt to arrest him for it before the marshal's reputation comes into question by everyone in town.

Kitty takes a buggy ride with a dandified stranger. When he makes a pass, her spirited rejection of it results in her being left alone on the prairie.

A feud begun between two families when they lived in the Ozarks continues with fresh bloodshed, and Matt gets caught in the middle.

Matt and Chester travel to the small town of Elkader to arrest would-be killer Carey Post, but find they must first expose a bogus U.S. Marshal in order to lure him into town.

Doc finds a half-dead man on the side of the road and tells Matt. Matt and Chester ride out to a buffalo hunter's camp but before they get far, the occupants show up not treating them much better than the man the doc found.

Kitty is taken hostage during a bank robbery and killer Jed Gunther warns everyone not to follow them, or he will use Dillon's gun to kill her.

Matt and Chester find a man shot in the back in his lonely cabin and the immediate suspects are two men who have been trying to force him to sell his land.

A strong-willed, shotgun-wielding matriarch helps her son escape from Matt's custody, but the Marshal is equally determined to see the young man tried and sentenced for killing an unarmed man.

"There's no law west of Dodge." Two writers in from New York want to see if that's true. When a Pawnee Indian uprising seems to be brewing, they may have found their story.

On the prairie, Matt meets up with a young boy who tells him that some men tied up and abducted his father the night before.

To escape a potentially lethal blizzard, Matt seeks shelter in a cabin in which two psychopathic bandits have enslaved and repeatedly molested a young woman after murdering her father.

The only man who didn't treat Beulah like dirt is marrying another woman, whose brother doesn't want him in the family. When the groom is shot leaving the church, everyone suspects the new brother-in-law.

Addled hide skinner Emmett Dooley believes that he killed a man and demands to be put in jail. Matt is convinced that Dooley was not the culprit and tries to lure the real killer into giving himself away.

A suspected horse thief is lynched by his former friends. They find out too late they may have had the wrong man. The joke may be on all of them now as someone is killing them one by one.

There's a new Faro dealer at the Long Branch. When the town drunk, the meekest man in town, tries to attack him, the dealer swears he'll kill him if he ever tries that again. But he also swears he "never seen him before in his life."

When town bully Cloud Marsh experiences public humiliation during a laughing gas show, he and his surly brothers assault proprietor Earle Stafford and attempt to molest his kind-hearted wife.

A headstrong Texas trail boss is determined to prevent Matt from learning which one of his men was responsible for murdering another by shooting him in the back.

Amy Slater gets to Dodge and tells Matt she came to die. He suggests seeing Doc Adams, she says she's not sick but that Matt could help. When asked how, she says "you're going to kill me." Learning the truth, he decides how to handle it.

Dodge would appear to be undergoing a rash of suicides--or is a murderer with a rope making the rounds?

Lou and Linda met in St. Louis and are engaged to be married. Lou is waiting in Dodge for her but a man he says he never met rides in on the stage too and makes Matt suspicious when Lou says he doesn't know him.

The Dodge City Bank's acting manager loses $20,000 of the bank's money when he imprudently makes a loan secured by a seemingly "can't lose" poker hand. Matt makes it apparent to the three "players" that he believes they actually worked together to defraud the bank, so they flee Dodge with Doc as a hostage.

Matt is strongly suspicious of the character and the intentions of gentleman gambler Leach Fields, especially when he proposes marriage to a recently-widowed woman who may know the location of $10,000 in stolen money.

When Jim Cando is thrown in jail by Matt, for a robbery and murder, he orders his partner to get him out by any means, or he will implicate him in the crime too.

When an Army payroll is stolen and two soldiers are murdered, the commanding officer of Fort Dodge threatens to put Dodge City under martial law unless Matt can capture the perpetrators within 48 hours.

After capturing suspected murderer Jim Nation, Matt has to eventually trust the suspect to help out when he and other stagecoach passengers are held at gunpoint by an outlaw.

Suave and enigmatic gambler Marcus France falls in love with Long Branch hostess Boni Damon. France is curiously unwilling to marry Boni, though he is willing to risk death to protect her from the unwanted advances of vicious Tiller Evans.