Chief Joseph comes to town on the way to Washington,, is very ill and has to be treated by Doc. Matt, with some help from Festus and a lot more from a cavalry officer played by Robert Loggia, hold off a mob of prejudiced townspeople so Joseph can recover and continue his journey. Why isn't Quint in on this? He would certainly have both respect and empathy for Chief Joseph and want this journey to be a successful to bring peace to his people. Wouldn't he join the effort to protect the old man?
I decided to do something i'd earlier done with Chester: plot out the appearances of Burt Reynolds as Quint using the production numbers noted in the book "Gunsmoke: A Complete History" by Suzanne and Gabor Barabas. Quint first appears in 'Quint Asper Comes Home', broadcast 9/29/62as the third episode of the 8th season but actually filmed as the penultimate episode of the 7th season. Quint next shows up in 'Phoebe Strunk', the 4th episode of the 8th season but not again until 'The Renegades', the 11th episode of that season. he didn't get the 'Festus' treatment of a series of episodes to introduce his character that almost made him the temporary star of the show. From the renegades, Quint appeared in 14 of the last 26 shows of the 8th season, 21 of the 36 shows of the 9th season and 12 of the first 23 shows filmed for the 10th season. The last of those is Eliah's Aim, shown 2/27/65, four weeks after Chief Joseph. he's also in 'Circus Trick', 'Winner Take All' and 'Bank Baby', which was his last appearance, shown 3/20/65. But all those were filmed before Chief Joseph, , the 24th episode filmed that year. Eliab's Aim had been the 23rd episode filmed that season. So Burt, and thus Quint, had just left the show. he didn't appear in any of the remaining 13 episodes filmed for Season 10. He had appeared in a total of 50 episodes in three season for which 36 episodes were filmed each year. (Strangely, the last episode of Season 10, "He Who Steals', was actually filmed for Season 11).
it's got to be tough for young, ambitious actor on his way to eventually being the #1 movie box office star to appear in less than half the episodes of a three year run even in as popular a series as Gunsmoke. His IMDB resume shows no other credits until he went off to do a film called 'Operation CIA', which he probably left Gunsmoke to do.