An ex-lawman waits for a convict, who crushed his hands with a hammer, to be released on parole in hopes that his good fast drawing son will kill him.

A group of cattle rustlers are determined to stop Amos McKee's cattle from reaching sale. Even to the point of placing a diseased animal among the herd.

Matt pursues the Rawlins gang into Mexico to the village of Zavala. Here he meets Paco and his widowed mother. Paco's father had been killed when he stood up to outlaws intimidating the people of Zavala. In his whole life, the only strong willed people Paco had ever seen were outlaws. He first thinks of Matt as such a person, until Matt tells him that he's not there to kill the Rawlins' but to arrest them. "But only outlaws ever come to Zavala." Paco is fascinated with the fact that Matt is a US Marshal. In an unusual episode of Gunsmoke an unlikely relationship develops amongst the trio, Paco, his mother, and Matt. Paul Savage later adapted this episode into made for TV movie "Cutter's Trail" where Manuel Padilla Jr. reprises his role as Paco.

When Merry Florene's brothers return to Dodge to turn in their 103 year old Uncle Finney for fifty dollars, you know some shenanigans are afoot. 

Will Geer plays an old mountain hunter that comes to Dodge to see his long time friend Matt Dillon. When the hunter is accused of attempted murder, it will be Matt that sets off to bring his friend to justice. 

In Spearville Irishman O'Quillian shoots a man for cheating in cards. The dead man's brother is set for revenge even though the Irishman was cleared of murder by the courts.

Doc helps Matt escort a wounded man to Dodge to stand trial for murder, but Matt gets word by telegram that the man's gang plans to storm the train on which the lawman and his prisoner are traveling.

The Ward gang is on the run after a bank robbery. The gang loses one of the Ward brothers, shot in the stomach, while Abelia and another gang member go to Dodge for a painkiller. While in town Festus and Newly have a run-in with the pair. Festus has a tracking job which leads him to Abelia's home where the gang has already taken off south bound. One of Abelia's children is bitten by a snake and Festus stays on to help heal the girl.

Dillon backs a citizen who refuses to sell land to a railroad builder, so the builder buys liquor for his large crews causing drunken riots in Dodge.

Bob Sullivan is a con man who tries to trick a widow with three children out of money for a fake cattle herd.

On the way back to Dodge with outlaw Waco Thompson, Matt runs into a very pregnant Indian woman. With a gang on their heels Matt finds a farm house to help the woman, but runs into bigotry with a painful past. 

Luke Brazo is on the trail of a lone wolf, nicknamed Lobo, that has been harassing farmers around Dodge. But Luke will prove to be more of a lone wolf and just as dangerous as any animal. 

Johnny Cross, though innocent, is a wanted man. Bounty hunters are after the reward. Newly finds him and intends to bring him in. Johnny has a choice to make when Newly is injured on the way back to Dodge. 

Down on his luck, a widowed farmer is unable to get a loan from his brother-in-law, a banker in Dodge City. The two briefly argue. The farmer's son and daughter, however, go back to the bank, cause a commotion and steal an envelope full of money. Marshal Matt Dillon is out of town, leaving Festus in charge of investigating the incident. The farmer is arrested for the robbery. Upon hearing from his children that they took the money, he forbids them from telling the law; he feels he'll only be using his children as scapegoats. A short time later, the children run away and encounter Matt.

On her way back to Dodge after a short trip, Kitty shares a stagecoach ride with Blaine Copperton, a gentlemanly but uncertain man who seems to be far less mature than his age. Suddenly, two armed bandits attack the stage, killing the driver and seriously wounding Copperton. Copperton manages to grab a shotgun and kill the bandits, but then collapses unconscious. Kitty drives the stage to Copperton's ranch, where she finds a family of squatters living in a shack. The squatters, who have a long-running feud with the powerful Copperton family, refuse to give any help. When Kitty gets to the ranch headquarters and finds Copperton's mother, she finds a powerful matriarch who treats her son like a child, her granddaughter (Copperton's daughter) as barely legitimate and everyone else like so many servants. The mother soon finds out about the squatters. She goes to their shack, burns it to the ground, and shoots a squatter in the leg. Kitty calls for help before things get way out of hand, but before Matt can get there, the squatters kidnap Kitty and demand that Copperton show up to rescue her and get shot in the leg himself. Copperton defies his mother and shows up at an old mine where the squatters have hidden out, but will the feud turn deadly?

Matt and Festus shoot it out with an outlaw who was a member of the infamous Jess Trevor gang, particularly notorious for murder and mayhem. Matt finally kicks in the outlaw's door and shoots him. The outlaw lives for a few minutes, and Matt asks him why he deserted the Trevor gang. The dying outlaw reveals that he left at the request of Trevor's girlfriend, who was also shocked by his cruelty and wishes to leave. The woman is then shown lying in a corner, having accidentally been shot by Matt. To his horror, Matt recognizes the woman as Leona, a woman he knew and loved before he came to Dodge City. Guilt-ridden, he brings Leona back to Dodge and learns her story: she had drifted after leaving Matt, turning to prostitution and hooking up with various gang members, closing with Trevor himself. Trevor has learned of Leona's defection and puts out a murder contract on her. While Matt searches for Trevor (and Trevor orders a hit on Matt), Kitty (who is nursing Leona) struggles with her feelings toward her boyfriend's past girlfriend, finally making an uneasy alliance with Leona. When Matt gets to Trevor first and takes him in, Trevor warns "there will be twenty shotguns pointed at your head" when Matt sends Trevor off to court for trial. Matt warns Trevor that "there's going to be one aimed at yours" in return. The extradition trip to the train station begins in an atmosphere of the highest tension, as Leona watches from a sidewalk.

Mannon, arguably the fastest gun in the West, terrorizes Dodge City while he waits for Matt Dillon to return. A cruel, violent encounter with Kitty Russell sets up the inevitable showdown.

Merry Florene is back, along with her remaining half-brother Elbert Moses and cousin Smiley. Merry pesters Newly while the boys scam Dodge City with a salted gold mine. 

A buffalo hunter stumbles on the fact that a local man was head of an abusive Confederate prison camp during the war. With tension high, Matt and Festus will try to prevent citizens from taking the law into their own hands. 

A young wife miscarries when Doc Adams must tend to a wounded killer instead of making a house call. The killer will probably hang, because Doc's witness to his murdering a local card-player celebrating winning a big pot. As the only physician in the area, Doc's over-committed, but the young woman's husband, a short-sighted farmer with a bad temper, can't accept the loss.

After surviving (barely) a bounty hunter's attempt to assassinate him, an outlaw tries to turn himself in to Matt Dillon. But Matt's out of town, and the bounty hunter's companions get to the outlaw first. They aren't so much interested in the outlaw as they are in killing Matt, so they take over the Long Branch and hold everyone hostage. They also get word out to a land baron whose wife the outlaw accidentally killed: come here and pick up the prisoner in return for your gunmen to waste the marshal. The land baron accepts the deal, but the outlaw's girlfriend shoots him as he's about to take the outlaw away. While Doc performs an emergency operation, the land baron's hirelings are torn between their promise to punish the outlaw and their revulsion at the bounty hunters' sadistic leader, who forces town drunk Louie Pheeters to crawl on his hands and knees the length of the saloon to get a drink (which he then refuses in a dramatic sequence). This episode's production number indicates it was actually filmed at the end of the previous season and held up for reasons unknown (it's shown in broadcast order in syndication).

The Civil War isn't over -- not nearly -- for Judge Proctor, a respected Missouri man who was on the losing side and had his home devastated by a guerrilla band led by a Kansas man. Now the judge has formed a gang of his own and sweeps through Kansas seeking the guerrilla leader. A tip-off tells the group that the man is in or near Dodge, but the judge can't locate his exact whereabouts and sets fire to a wheat field as a warning to the local citizenry. When that fails to produce the man, the judge threatens to burn all of Dodge City.

Festus, while taking a wounded prisoner to Dodge, has to stop at a farm house for help. Little does Festus know this was part of the prisoner's plan all along.

A group of former slaves on their way to Oregon are temporarily halted to repair a broken wheel. They find Matt on the prairie, wounded by two outlaws trying to prevent his reaching Dodge City, and hide him until he can recover.

A prisoner is being escorted to a town where his chance of receiving a fair trial are slim. Kitty will intervene by protecting this young man until the Marshal can return.

Frank Reardon, a former lawman and friend of Matt's whose pregnant wife was killed by a gang, has tracked the last three remaining men to Dodge to carry out his form of punishment.