Could any woman live 32 years with the creepy Cyrus Tucker (played by Elisha Cook, Jr.)? Cook spent his whole career playing the kind of weird people that could make Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, and Boris Karloff feel uncomfortable. Cook had good roles in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, and more recently, just a year before this episode, in 1958, on The House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. He specialized in being creepy and dysfunctional.
So when he shows up in town to tell the Marshal his elderly wife ran off after 32 years, Dillon looks suspicious, and his reaction to Cook tips off what the conclusion will be. James Arness was not very good at misdirection, and the fact that he knew what the end of each episode would be meant that a lot of times his reaction to events gives the audience a big hint as to what is coming.
So Dillon checks around to see if anyone sold Mrs. Tucker tickets to the railroad, stage coach, etc., but nobody did. Meanwhile Cook is selling his mule team, and giving away his wife's clothes, so it becomes more and more obvious to Dillon that Cook's wife probably took her last trip in a pine box.
The best part of this episode is watching what a terrible job Cook does trying to whittle on a bumpy piece of wood when he is talking to Matt Dillon. By comparison, both Chester and Doc Adams, could sit around talking and whittle away on wood until it looked like something good.
The discussions Chester, Doc Adams, and Dillon were having about Cook were more entertaining than watching creepy Cook ambling around. One of the best things about Gunsmoke is that Doc Adams, Dillon, and Chester had very authentic and interesting discussions in almost every episode.