The hapless and incompetent Chester was often the cause of bad things, even though he was always trying to be helpful in his sad moronic way. In this episode, George Kennedy comes into town with Rayford Barnes, who had a scrappy personality, and usually played a villain. George Kennedy and Rayford Barnes were in a lot of Westerns, including several movies with John Wayne. Barnes was a guest on Gunsmoke eleven times. George Kennedy was on Gunsmoke seven times.
As soon as Kennedy and Barnes arrive in Dodge, they go have a drink at the Longbranch Saloon, and start fighting. Chester, played by Dennis Weaver, is sitting with Miss Kitty when all the fighting starts, and he jumps in to break things up. George Kennedy instantly punches Chester's dumb face in, and knocks him down.
Barnes and Kennedy keep fighting, and as Miss Kitty rushes over to help Chester get up off the floor, Kennedy shoots Barnes, and they exchange four gunshots. One of them hits Miss Kitty, who is shot in the ribs. Kennedy gets his money and runs away, as Barnes dies.
Soon Matt Dillon is on the trail of Kennedy, while Doc Adams does his best to keep Kitty alive. Chester is left behind to boil water.
Rayford Barnes provided the most memorable acting in this episode. His feisty argument and gun-fight with Kennedy were the highlight of the episode. The rest of it was James Arness looking kind of tired and bored as he hunted down Kennedy. I always wondered why on the many occasions that Miss Kitty or Doc Adams were attacked, Matt Dillon went out of his way to capture the criminals alive? You would think in the 1870s, out in the lonesome prairie, Matt Dillon would just ventilate the people that hurt his best friends. I guess it was part of his good-guy persona that he was not hell-bent on vengeance? I would have liked Dillon better if on some occasions, like this time, he just emptied his gun into Kennedy's guts, and left him twitching on the ground.