- Joe Caswell: Mister, you're just talkin' words! Justice, right and wrong. They sound good in this nice warm room and a nice full stomach, just a few feet away from a soft bed. They sound nice, and they go down easy! But you just try 'em on an ice cold mesa, where another man's bread or another man's jacket stands between you and stayin' alive. You get in this machine of yours, and you go back to where I was, and you talk about your law and your order and your justice. They're gonna sound different! Mister, I know your kind. Your clean face, your Johnny-come-lately dandies. You come out in your warm trains rollin' over the graves of men like me! I just hate your kind!
- Narrator: [Closing Narration] This is November 1880, the aftermath of a necktie party. The victim's name - Paul Johnson, a minor-league criminal and the taker of another human life. No comment on his death save this: justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar. Tonight's case in point in The Twilight Zone.
- Old Man: Now, if that's all you got to say, I've got this to add. I'd like it to take awhile. I'd like you to feel it, Caswell. The more you kick, the more justice I figure there is in the world.
- Joe Caswell: Well, I'll do a jig for you, pappy, just like a puppet.
- Prof. Manion: [speaking into a Dictaphone] At 8:15 the subject appeared desperately tired, so I put him to bed. After two hours, I've discovered the following: His name is Joseph Caswell. He tells me he was a trail boss on a cattle ranch in the territory of Montana. His last moment of recollection was November 14th, 1880. He says he was riding herd when suddenly he blacked out. He awoke to find himself on the cot of my laboratory. He felt no sensations, and only in the last few moments did he seem to have any grasp of what has occurred. There's one disturbing point. There are the marks of a rope etched deeply into his neck. He has no explanation for this. And I have one other observation, hardly scientific. I don't like his looks. I don't like the eyes, or the face, or the expression. I get a feeling of disquiet. I - I get a feeling that I've taken a 19th-century primitive and placed him in a 20th-century jungle. And heaven help whoever gets in his way.
- Prof. Manion: But some things don't change - ideas, concepts, things like right and wrong.
- Joe Caswell: I know all about right and wrong. Once, there was a deputy sheriff in Dodge City, tried to beat the difference between them into my back with a wet rope. I know all about right and wrong.
- Narrator: [Opening Narration] Commonplace - if somewhat grim - unsocial event known as a necktie party, the guest of dishonor a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Joe Caswell, who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow men, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr. Joe Caswell, in the last, quiet moment of a violent life.