2. Thirty A Month And Found,

October 7, 1974

Written by Jim Byrnes, Directed by Bernard McEveety, Guest Cast: Gerte Evans, Van Williams, Nicholas Hammond, David Brian, Ford Rainey, Kim O'Brien, Vietor Izay, Hal Baylor

Gunsmoke is now near the end of its twenty year run. It is appropriate to show the decline of the civilization in which Gunsmoke dwells. Dodge City, both historically and in Gunsmoke, is a cow town - the end of the trail for cattle drives from Texas and Oklahoma. After cattle is sold and boarded on trains, cowboys - rich from their pay and newly introduced to civilization - party hard. Dodge City, says Matt Dillon in a 1950's episode introduction, is "the Gomorrah of the plains."

As Gunsmoke fades into TV reruns, we see, in this episode, the fading of need for cowboys in the late eighteenth century West. Trains are replacing cattle drives. The story revolves around two near obsolete cowboys and how a small misdeed snowballs into an incident where pursuance by Dillon results in death for both. The choice of death for the older cowboy is beautifully ironic.