This is one of the best episodes of Season Five. Matt Dillon and Chester find an injured girl on the prairie (were it seems only bad things happen). They take her to Doc Adams, and he and Miss Kitty take care of the girl. Dillon finds out a few details from the girl, such as a white man was on the Indian lands, and came to see the girl and her husband. After they fed him, he killed her husband, and shot the girl when she was trying to escape (which she did). Considering how slowly the girl was traveling because she had been shot in the back, it seems odd that the villain did not catch up to her at the outset.
Matt Dillon contacts the local U.S. Cavalry fort, and finds out that some white men had been spotted in that area. So he and Chester head out to find them, and bring justice to the Native American girl. Of course, Chester is only armed with a piece of licorice and his whittling knife. I always wondered why most of the time Chester was not armed at all.
Eventually Dillon and Chester find the white men, and they include Robert Wilke, who almost always plays a villain, and Jack Elam who played a villain about 75% of the time. Lesser known Gene Nelson, a gambler from Saint Louis is also with them. He claims he got lost. For some reason, I always thought he was probably the killer, because he was the least guilty looking of the three.
So on the long road back, Dillon keeps baiting the three of them with little details about the murder, and he keeps telling them that when they get to Dodge, Sochia (the victim) will be able to identify them. By the time they get to the edge of Dodge (Boot Hill), they are very frazzled and edgy. Dillon succeeded in getting all of them to the edge of their sanity, and the guilty one breaks. Great example of Dillon working the mental edge on criminals, similar to what many other great detectives have done in many other movies and TV shows. I was impressed.
One issue that is brought up is why Dillon let the suspects keep their guns? He says it was because he wanted them to think they could get away. I think it is because Dillon was hoping to have the opportunity to goad the guilty party into a confrontation. In the early years, Matt Dillon was incredibly sure of himself, and often confronted people. It was pretty obvious he thought he was the fastest gun around, and he did not mind risking his own life every day. Another reason that Chester should have been carrying a rifle all the time.