User Reviews

A wolf has been terrorizing the ranchers around Dodge City. The ranchers decide to offer a bounty on wolves of $500 each to entice so-called "wolfers" to come to the area. Matt Dillon, Festus Haggen, and Newly O'Brien know this action has the potential to attract many undesirable types to the area. (This is an interesting sentiment, because Festus Haggen has been known to engage in wolf hunting, especially during his earlier days in Dodge.)

A rugged old loner named Luke Brazo has made his way to Dodge City. Brazo is not a "wolfer," but he has an interest in the wolf that has been causing the trouble, as he feels a kinship with the lobo.

Luke is one of Matt Dillon's old friends. Brazo invites the Marshal to accompany him on a quest to find the wolf before the wolfers can find it. Matt agrees.

This is not the first time Dillon has encountered old friends who happen to be loners struggling with changing times and the steady advancement of people into territories that were previously unoccupied. Abe Blocker, Caleb Nash, and to some degree, Quint Asper fit into that category. (Quint was not Matt's old friend, but one can imagine him fitting this mold later in life.)

Brazo is torn between knowing the wolf will continue to kill livestock and his affinity with the wolf. Luke romanticizes the life of the wolf and ascribes him traits that Luke desires. As a result, the wolf becomes much more than an animal; it is a metaphor for Luke's own way of life. Luke sees both the life of the wolf and his own life as increasingly unsustainable and inevitably leading to a tragic end.

Therefore, when Luke and Matt eventually find the wolf, Luke does not want to kill it, but he knows it is for the best. He wants to handle the situation on his own terms. He tells Matt he plans to bury the wolf deep enough to keep the vultures -- both the avian and the human -- away, and then he wants to find a place where time does not exist.

Morgan Woodward shines in his performance as Luke Brazo. Woodward could play many diverse types of characters. In Season 13's "Death Train," Woodward is an arrogant, elaborately dressed businessman accustomed to luxury. Here he is a grizzled, stoic, introspective, disheveled nomad.

Some of the actors playing wolfers who come to Dodge in the hopes of killing the wolf include Sheldon Allman, Sandy Kenyon, Ken Swofford, and Eddie Firestone, all familiar faces on the show. This episode would be the last appearances for Kenyon and Allman in a Gunsmoke episode.

The regular cast members show up early in the episode within Dodge City and again toward the end of the story. Most of this episode focuses on the Luke Brazo character and takes place outside the town.

This is the most profound Gunsmoke story viewers have seen in some time, and it comes along at a time when several recent episodes had used rehashed, predictable story ideas. I especially enjoy the way writer Jim Byrnes contrasts legal and moral aspects of the story. Luke Brazo violates the law with his actions later in the story, but his actions are consistent with his morality. It is not so much that Brazo's actions are acceptable, but they are understandable under the circumstances. (Byrnes would revisit this theme later in the Season 20 award-winning, highly regarded episode "Thirty a Month and Found.")

The episode begins with the farmers around Dodge having trouble with wolves and coyotes that are killing their herds. So the farmers put out a bounty for killing these animals which attracts all the money hungry hunters from all over Kansas. There main goal is to kill this lone wolf named Lobo.

While the hunters gather inside Dodge along comes this mountain man named Luke Brazo. Luke is a breed to himself. Just like the wolf, Luke is a lone person that lives off the land with no help from anyone. In fact you can say that Luke is also a lone wolf.

Since Matt is an old friend of Luke's, Matt agrees to ride with Luke to see if they can track the wolf. Luke ends up shooting the wolf but wants no part of the reward money. He feels remorse for the animal as he sees his life aging like the old wolf.

When Luke takes the wolf to the high country to bury the animal, he is shot by some of the hunters wanting the reward money. Luke is able to make it back to Dodge City only to see the wolf hanging in the city street while people applaud the killing. Luke now becomes the wolf as he is the one killing the farmer's animals and creating chaos for the herds. Now the farmers want a price on Luke's head much like they did the wolf- Lobo.

This was a very nice story that was played well by Morgan Woodward. A script that s just as interesting today as it was in 1967 when aired. Good watch

Interesting that Lobo in English is a timber wolf, which is a type of wolf found in the Great Lakes region, and Brazo in English is arm. Did the writer have limited Spanish ability or was the story transported from up north? Anyway, those are the two reasons to watch this episode - the wolf and Brazo.

Being from Ohio I had a tough time with Brazo's accent. Even when his words were clear it seemed like he used obsolete words to express whatever was on his mind, which eventually seemed to be an extreme dislike for all concerned but the wolf. I guess I understood his overall meaning, but was Brazo depicting senility?

Apart from his speech, he wore the same costume as two other men who made fun of his costume, so I became distracted thinking about the costume department. Did they borrow from the Danielle Boone set (1964-1970)?

Lobo was the most likeable character in the episode. I would like to have seen more of this title character. Ferocious but beautiful. For my 14th birthday I got a puppy whose mother lived on a farm, a German Shepherd, and whose father was a roving wolf. Smart dog, and what a loyal companion. Brazo had a similar connection to Lobo for whatever past they shared together, and I understood Brazo's actions (more than his words).

The overall story is filled with unfortunate outcomes, but I appreciated the last thing Matt does in this episode.