- Lucas and Mark interrupt two young men stealing horses. Lucas is forced to defend himself and shoots and kills one of the men. He is one of Ma Boyle's sons. The Boyles are a mountain family who live by their own laws and Micah foresees trouble. When the clan arrives in town they are set on hanging the man responsible for the killing.—tomtrekp
- Late one night, Lucas McCain sees two young men taking horses from the livery stable in North Fork. He tells them to stop but when but when one of them shoots at him, he kills him in self defence. Soon the entire Boyle clan descends on North Fork intent on revenge. The head of the clan, Ma Boyle, will accept nothing but blood from her son's killer and the Boyles have been known to wreak havoc in other towns in the same circumstances. It's up to Lucas to confess that the is the shooter and try and talk some sense into her.—garykmcd
- Two of domineering mountain mom Ma Boyle's boys, Johnny and Hoyt come down to party in Northfork one night and after drinking a little bit too much try to steal some horses. Lucas intervenes only to have one of the boys draw on him forcing him to kill Hoyt.
Johnny returns home to Ma with a slightly different story implicating a gunman in the dark whom he couldn't make out - Lucas McCain. This brings Ma Boyle and clan into town who begin to raise hell in hopes of flushing out Hoyt's killer. Lucas pleads with marshall Micah Torrence to allow him to tell Ma that he killed Hoyt in self defense but Micah won't let him. The Boyle clan from Hog Ridge enter a store and break some rakes and generally begin to make themselves unwelcome, ultimately resulting in marshall Torrence reversing his position on letting McCain tell the truth. about what happened. Lucas challenges Johnny's version of what happened, but Ma says that her boys will go to the grave having known two things: "1) that they never lied, and 2) never took anything that weren't belonged to them." Johnny still can't bring himself to tell the truth about what happened.
Ultimately Lucas tells Ma that he killed Hoyt in self defense but Johnny is now completely trapped in a lie and still fearful and afraid of Ma. Ma forces Johnny into a showdown with Lucas even though she apparently realizes Lucas will surely kill her boy, whereupon Lucas' son Mark confronts Ma saying that she is "full of hate, even for her own boy" causing her to reflect on Mark's statement that surely "a mother would know her own boy if he's telling the truth or not" and she now realizes that Johnny is in fact lying and with that she tells Johnny's brothers to get "the mule, they are going home" and Johnny not to come home again unless he "is in trouble," allowing him the freedom that ironically brought he and his brother into town int he first place.
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