The opening scene has a couple of buffalo hunters insulting a settler's Indian wife. The disagreement leads to the two men shooting the settler. But then from a nearby creek bed comes a shirtless young man with an ax who makes quick work of one. He strangles the other with his bare hands. It turns out the young man is Quint (Burt Reynolds), the son of the settler and his Indian wife. When his father dies of his wounds Quint takes his mother back to her people - the Comanche - and asks the chief if he can become a warrior among the Comanche himself. His training takes three years. Quint wants this because he has blind hatred for the white man who have always menaced and killed his people and now killed his own father.
Three years later Quint is in a Comanche war party that has a couple of buffalo hunters surrounded. Matt Dillon hears the commotion and helps the hunters ward off the party, but one Indian is badly injured and yet keeps on fighting. That man would be Quint. The hunters are all killed, so Matt takes Quint back to Dodge to be patched up by Doc Adams. The townspeople of course object to this and want to lynch Quint. Matt holds off all would be lynchers AND gives Quint a rifle to help him get back to his people. He hopes all of this will bring Quint around. Later, when back with his tribe, Quint is told to kill a white farmer who has been captured and who is tied up and helpless in a tent. How will Quint handle this key moment in his life? Watch and find out.
This episode was written by the great John Meston, probably because Quint is to be a recurring member of the cast and so the script that introduced him was important. Reynolds gives a great performance that is a reflection of things to come, but there are things about this story that don't make sense. For one, Quint was an admitted killer when Matt captured him. You can understand him wanting his wounds tended, but setting Quint free with a rifle so he can go back to his tribe and maybe back to killing is taking a big chance, even for compassionate progressive Matt Dillon.
It's also a bit much for Quint to have an about face in his feelings towards the white man just for the way Dillon treated him for a very short period of time. Having a white dad, Quint must have met individual white men who were kind and fair.
You might look around in the last few Gunsmokes and notice that there is a definite missing person that Dillon has oddly not noticed - Chester. This is about the time that Dennis Weaver began making noises about wanting to leave Gunsmoke for better things and bigger parts before he actually does that in early 1964. Quint is probably an attempt to add a character in the event Weaver should turn in his resignation.