... plus Matt Dillon, in his weekly prologue as he walks through the graves of Boot Hill gives the entire plot away with just one not so subtle line.
This is a half hour show at this point, so there is no time to clearly demonstrate that Sarah Baxton is and always has been madly in love with her husband Sam Baxton, although he at least verbally abuses her and seems to love only money.
One squatter on the Baxton ranch plans to shoot another squatter because his cow ate his corn. Matt stops the shooting. So later when the original target of the other squatter's wrath is shot on his front porch, Matt figures he knows who did it. But THAT squatter is dead on his front porch too!
At this point Matt figures that the shooter must be Sam Baxton, and he arrests him and takes him into Dodge, only to find out that a third squatter on Baxton's land has also been shot dead and that the fourth and final squatter is leaving before he ends up dead. With Sam Baxton in jail, he could not be the shooter of the third squatter, so Matt plans a trap to catch whoever the murderer might be.
Of course the question I have is - If Baxton has four squatters on his ranch, why didn't the law toss them out? Didn't they leave Baxton with no way to defend his property rights? There is no explanation of this whatsoever other than to call the squatters "homesteaders". As a native of Texas I am familiar with the old homestead laws. Some of their customs reach into 21st century Texas law. But in order to claim the land of another as a homestead the original owner had to basically abandon the land and the homesteader had to continually occupy that abandoned land and improve it. You just couldn't move into land on somebody's working ranch and "claim this land for Spain" so to speak.
Also in this episode I notice something that Matt and Kitty definitely have in common - they both love a good bit of gossip. Considering both of them require being able to read people in their respective lines of work, this probably should be no surprise.
This episode seemed rushed and patched together, but the main characters are always a joy to watch.