Reprisal

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.

Read user reviews and they all did a good job. Only thing i don't understand is why no one mentioned a small but imo important fact ab Ben. While playing pool the two gunmen that Cornelia failed to hire we're discussing their friend Ben. They agreed that he certainly wasn't a hired killer. They joked that he was more prone to romance the beautiful woman, that was his M.O. That little detail alerted to me that maybe handsome Ben wasn't simply falling in love as it seemed. Maybe he also had ulterior motives? Obviously the other reviewers didn't think this was an important detail to mention but it made the story more interesting and mysterious for me. So i just thought i'd toss that in, maybe someone else might like to hear that part. Wait, one more thing, completely random. i often marvel that with a friend like Chester, it's a wonder that Dillon hasn't been killed! In this episode for instance, the (as far as he knows) angry and vengeful widow rushes into the jail demanding to see the Marshal. So addle pated Chester commences to tell her EXACTLY where Matt should be. He also gleefully mentions that he also gave the same information to Ben a while earlier. HOW could it never even occur to Chester that maybe these ppl weren't planning a social call for Matt?! It's just that stuff like this happens all the time, yet Marshal Dillon lived on! Guess what i really wanna know is, did they HAVE TO write Chester to be SOO STUPID?? Well, what's done is done. Mostly i try to laugh along with it. But it's truly not funny, ya know? lol.

Oren Conrad is a man that comes into Dodge with the purpose of gambling and seeing women even though he has a wife at home. When he thinks his saloon girl is wanting to see another man, Hank Ives, he gets into a gunfight with Hank inside the Long Branch. Marshal Dillon just happens to be in the saloon while all this is going on and tells Oren to stop. But Oren draws hitting Hank which makes Matt have to shoot and kill Oren.

When Dillon goes out to tell his wife, Cornelia, about the death, she becomes enraged to the point of saying that she demands a eye-for-an-eye which means she wants Marshal Dillon dead.

She tries to hire some gunman that turn her down. She even tries herself to kill Ms Kitty, Marshal's girl, but cannot muster the courage. Then she happens to run into Ben Harden. Ben is a nice single young man that is smitten with Cornelia Conrad. At first Cornelia is just using him so that he will accept the duty to kill Matt. But later her feeling change as she begins falling for the young Ben Harden.

But with the dye already cast, will she have time to change the plan? Will she be able to halt the murder that she has been longing?

Even with the very predictable script, the show played out nicely on the screen. Not the most popular show of the season but enough to hold the viewer's interest.

There were two episodes with the title Reprisal, this one in season 7, episode 23, and one in season 14, episode 20. TV Guide sometimes gets them confused and puts the wrong summary. The season 7 one is where a woman wants to kill Matt after he shoots her husband. The season 14 one is where a man is suspected of killing Doc when Doc helps an injured killer instead of the man's wife. Also, the season 7 episode is in black and white, the season 14episode is in color. The best line in the season 7 one is when Kitty says. " Matt's a man with no strings on him. Let's just say he's more mine than anyone else's."