Oren Conrad likes to drink and gamble, and he enjoys spending time with the women that work at the Long Branch Saloon, especially a woman named Pearl. Oren owns a ranch outside Dodge City where he lives with his wife. Oren and another Long Branch customer get into an argument over one of the women that works there. When Oren draws his gun on the other patron, Matt is forced to shoot and kill him.
Matt rides to the Conrad ranch and informs Mrs. Conrad of her husband's death. Cornelia Conrad seems to know and understand her husband's nature, and she later admits she never loved him, but she firmly believes in "an eye for an eye." Out of pride, she decides she wants the Marshal killed as revenge for her husband's death.
At first, she tries to hire a couple of professional gunfighters, Pete Wellman and Jim Blake, to do the job, but they aren't interested in going against Dillon. When that idea fails, she decides to take matters into her own hands and kill Miss Kitty, but she ultimately doesn't have the nerve. Finally she meets Ben Harden. Harden isn't a professional gunfighter, but he quickly falls in love with Cornelia.
At first, Cornelia sees an opportunity to use Harden and get him to try kill the Marshal, but then she falls in love with him.
At this point, the story could have gone a couple of different ways. The rational move would have been for Ben and Cornelia to pursue a relationship and let the whole revenge thing go. But this is a John Meston story, after all.
This is yet another episode where a woman drives most of the story. It is a familiar attribute of the Season 7 episodes.
This episode features another great cast. Dianne Foster, a veteran of episodic television in the 1960s, is Cornelia Conrad. Jason Evers, another familiar face who is perhaps best known as the doctor in the B-movie horror classic "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," is Ben Harden. Tom Reese is a frequent Gunsmoke guest. Here he plays gunfighter Pete Wellman. Look for Billy Hughes, a familiar face in television westerns around this time, in a small role as Tommy. (Hughes played a much larger part as Joey in episode 9 from Season 7's "Milly.") Also look for Grace Lee Whitney, best known for her role as Janice Rand in Star Trek, in a small part as Pearl.
In the end, this story isn't especially unique or compelling, and the conclusion seems curiously unsatisfying.