Gunsmoke: Season 7
Season 7 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of Gunsmoke Season 6.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 7 Progress Shield
Perce
Sep 30, 1961 · 45 min
Ex-con Perce McCall helps to save Matt's life in a shootout, and then falls for a beautiful, but greedy saloon girl who puts him under great pressure to start stealing again.
Old Yellow Boots
Oct 7, 1961 · 45 min
Matt becomes suspicious when drifter Frank Cassidy publicly announces his engagement to spinsterish Beulah Parker immediately after the seemingly unrelated murders of an old prospe
Miss Kitty
Oct 14, 1961 · 45 min
Kitty has her friends in Dodge buzzing when she meets the stage in the early hours to pick up a small boy. All wonder, especially his foster parents: could his real mother be Kitty
Harper's Blood
Oct 21, 1961 · 45 min
A hard man has given his two sons a hard raising, sure that they inherited their mother's bad blood from their murderous ancestor. The old man may be right: one of his sons may be
All That
Oct 28, 1961 · 45 min
A man who lost his wife and all he had returns to Dodge from gold prospecting with three bulging bags to deposit in the bank, and all who scorned him before, including his ex-wife,
Long, Long Trail
Nov 4, 1961 · 45 min
A headstrong young woman will undertake the long, dangerous journey to her fiancé's fort on her own if she must, so Matt nominates himself to escort her.
The Squaw
Nov 11, 1961 · 45 min
His mother has been dead almost a year, and Cully is troubled by his pa's carousing. When they discuss his getting married again, it seems like a good idea until he returns from a
Chesterland
Nov 18, 1961 · 45 min
Chester becomes engaged more or less accidentally, but he takes to heart his obligation to his betrothed, leaving his job with Mr. Dillon to devote himself to homesteading a barren
Milly
Nov 25, 1961 · 45 min
The plain but nubile daughter of a hopeless drunkard decides to marry herself off so that she and her little brother might avoid starvation.
Indian Ford
Dec 2, 1961 · 45 min
Matt escorts a captain and his troops to an Indian village, to make an exchange for a white woman captured over a year ago.
Apprentice Doc
Dec 9, 1961 · 45 min
A young outlaw finds he has a knack for medicine and turns straight, telling Doc he wants to be his pupil.
Nina's Revenge
Dec 16, 1961 · 45 min
A homesteader hires a man to make the appearance of a scandal with his wife so that he can blackmail his wife's wealthy father.
Marry Me
Dec 23, 1961 · 45 min
Orkey Cathcart is looking for a wife and sets his sites on Miss Kitty.
A Man a Day
Dec 30, 1961 · 45 min
Outlaws want Matt to leave Dodge so they can steal from the bank or they will kill a man per day.
The Do-Badder
Jan 6, 1962 · 45 min
Prospector Harvey Easter settles in Dodge City after striking it rich in the Colorado Rockies. His heavy handed attempts at philanthropy soon have unintended results.
Lacey
Jan 13, 1962 · 45 min
A hired man is sweet on his boss's daughter and disliked by his boss. When the boss is killed, his own daughter claims to have done it, but Matt is suspicious.
Cody's Code
Jan 20, 1962 · 45 min
Cody is a well-liked citizen of Dodge. He's building a house and getting married. When he befriends a stranger, his perfect life is turned upside down.
Old Dan
Jan 27, 1962 · 45 min
Beginning with Doc, who rescues him from a ditch, everyone wants to give amiable drunk Dan a chance, or a job, or both.
Catawomper
Feb 10, 1962 · 45 min
Chester is getting home-cooked meals from, and giving guitar lessons to, a spirited young woman who hopes thereby to make her estranged sweetheart jealous.
Half Straight
Feb 17, 1962 · 45 min
A man has been hired to kill Matt, but when he meets and quickly falls in love with a decent girl, he has a change of heart--or does he?
He Learned About Women
Feb 24, 1962 · 45 min
Taken prisoner by a band of comancheros, Chester is helped to escape by one of the band's women and flees with another who may or may not be worthy of his trust.
The Gallows
Mar 3, 1962 · 45 min
While returning suspected killer Pruit Dover to Dodge to stand trial, Matt is shot and badly wounded, and yet Dover stays with him and nurses him back to health.
Reprisal
Mar 10, 1962 · 45 min
Oren was a rancher who liked his drink, gambling and women, even though he had a pretty wife at home. Matt is forced to kill him and when he breaks the news to her, all she can see
Coventry
Mar 17, 1962 · 45 min
A speculator in land is already unpopular in Dodge, but when he is acquitted of the murder of a man he killed, he finds himself "sent to Coventry": no one in town, not even Kitty,
The Widow
Mar 24, 1962 · 45 min
A young woman comes to Dodge insisting on an escort to Indian country so that the body of her husband, believed to have been killed fighting the Kiowa, may be recovered.
Durham Bull
Mar 31, 1962 · 45 min
Little Bit and his grandpa, from Texas, are passing through Dodge after buying a breeding bull. When they meet Silva, someone grandpa considers a "fooler", they have their hands fu
Wagon Girls
Apr 7, 1962 · 45 min
A group of women are going by wagon train to Colorado, lured by the promise of marrying rich miners, but Matt learns that the leader's actual plan for the women is quite different.
The Dealer
Apr 14, 1962 · 45 min
Johnny Cole kills a crooked card dealer in self defense, and then falls in love with the dealer's beautiful daughter, but she resists his advances and wants to seriously hurt him i
The Summons
Apr 21, 1962 · 45 min
Loy has always felt he could do what he pleased. When he shoots one of his gang members in the back just for the reward, he takes the body into Dodge to Matt Dillon who isn't as re
The Dreamers
Apr 28, 1962 · 45 min
Henry and Jake have struck it rich. Now they want to follow their dream and buy a Mississippi river boat. When Henry spots Miss Kitty, he fancies marrying her but she will have not
Cale
May 5, 1962 · 45 min
Cale is a bullheaded young drifter who takes a nap in a barn he comes across only to wake up to a shootout between a horse thief and the owner. Cale is shot, wounded, and becomes a
Chester's Indian
May 12, 1962 · 45 min
On his way to a fishing vacation, Chester stumbles into a human drama when he wounds a fleeing Indian he mistakes for a thief, who has touched the heart of a lonely young white wom
The Prisoner
May 19, 1962 · 45 min
A charmer escapes from federal prison to Dodge and finds himself caught up in the drama among two brothers, the wife of one of them, and their domineering father.
The Boys
May 26, 1962 · 45 min
The market for snake oil is on the decline, so a peddler and his sons expand their con game with murder.