Gunsmoke

- Season 20

(1974)

Since the mob killing of his wife years ago, old man Wakefield has gone on murderous rampages with his sons. Now the Wakefields are trying to run down and kill Matt in the freezing mountains.

Five ex-Confederate soldiers have robbed the bank in Dodge City and are on the run through Indian territory, followed by Matt Dillon. The outlaws find abandoned Union military uniforms and disguise themselves as Union soldiers. At the next town, they declare martial law under the guise of an Indian uprising. The outlaws, disguised as Union Soldiers, talk the town's sheriff into getting the townspeople to load all their valuables into the safe at the town bank, which they are secretly planning to rob. When Matt catches up to the outlaws, things come to a head.

Doc and his female companion, Lyla, are captured by ex-confederates and renegade Comancheros. Matt, Festus and Newly have a plan to rescue the two people from the large gang of bandits.

Matt, Festus and Newly have disguised themselves as gunrunners to penetrate the outlaw's hideout in order to rescue Doc and his female companion.

Three cattle drivers find competition with railroads is forcing them out of business, and 2 of them mistakenly turn to crime for a temporary fix.

Three saloon girls are kidnapped in Dodge by three men who want to marry them, and oddly enough, the women do start to fall in love.

Matt is in the town of Brimstone to investigate a brutal cattle baron and asks his drunkard, ex marshal friend to help.

Dillon has to find and stop a serial sniper in Dodge who has been killing one man per night with a silencer equipped .30 caliber rifle.

Matt has to stop his friend, the sheriff of a nearby town, who has become so dominant, brutal and power hungry he commits murder and thinks he can get away with it.

An elderly circuit judge comes to Dodge to take care of its court docket, only to run into a group of old enemies -- outlaws who rob and kill people in their paths. No one has ever lived to give eyewitness testimony against the family. The judge soon learns that he himself is near death from a heart condition. When the gang goes free after still another set of murders, the judge contrives an ironclad way to get the entire group hanged.

Festus is shot by the killer he is pursuing in the blazing desert, only to be helped by a crazed hermit and forced to tote water to try and get him to a town 80 miles away.

Festus and the hermit come upon killer Gard Dixon dying in the desert, and when Festus helps him recover, the hermit forces both of them to tote water and gold dust.

A drunkard ex colonel overhears plans of robbery and murder while spending a night in jail, but isn't sure if it was a dream.

Matt, in pursuit of three bank robbers, inadvertently catches a fourth one -- their bagman, who swiped the loot and took off. The thieves learn what's happened and go in pursuit of both Matt and the thief. While stopped at a water hole, Matt and the thief meet a group of Indians who are about to leave a squaw in the desert to die. The startled thief asks why and is told the woman is a bad-luck omen, having outlived both of her husbands. To his own surprise, the thief bargains to take the squaw with him and Matt. He doesn't have any regard for the woman, but she proves...

When a young teenager from a group of squatters decides he can do better than stealing, he changes his ways. But the leader of the squatters will try to manipulate the young man with the people that has treated him the best.

Newly is taking wanted killer, Clay Larkin, to Dodge. He not only has to deal with the dangerous killer but also three bounty-hunters also wanting Larkin.

An inflexible father believes that his son is needed more on the farm than attending school. The local schoolteacher believes different and after being assaulted by the father will try to force the need for mandatory education in court.

After Matt finds a young girl on the prairie whose parents have been killed, he takes her to her only relative, an aunt that has troubles of her own and wants no part of her niece's life.

The sons of a loony farmer have all finally found women willing to marry them (the farmer makes a play for Hannah Cobb, in her second appearance, and is turned down again). But finding wives was easy by comparison to actually marrying them.

Dillon is sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor by Judge Flood, who uses an illegally constituted court to staff his private silver mine.

An aging pastor is determined to erect a church for the Indians on the reservation but is met with bigotry from the citizens of a nearby town.

A cowboy is unaware that Doc has given him less than a week to live after being kicked in the head by a horse and his partner tries to give him whatever he wants.

The sons of a Basque sheep herder who's part of a community near Dodge are faced with a manhood ritual. A Basque boy must defeat his father in a fist fight. The older son had beaten a schoolyard rival to death in a fight while a boy in the old country, and wants nothing to do with the ritual. The younger son has no such qualms, and wins the fight with his father in a surprise (inadvertently ramming the old man's head into a huge cast-iron water jug). This leads to the ostracizing of Manolo, made worse when he doesn't spot a wolf attacking the herd and loses sheep and ...

When Festus accidentally shoots a man in the leg, he takes the man back to his farm only to be used by members of the family.