The world of John Ford's had always been rather the domain of Gunsmoke - Victor McLaglen's son the director of this and many other Gunsmoke episodes, Ken Curtis a frequent guest star and then a regular member of the cast, James Arness once a colleague of John Wayne's and so on. So on this, the day before St. Patrick's Day, Gunsmoke does a tribute to the Emerald Isle of sorts with the story of two Irishmen and partners and one time friends now enemies, their relationship soured over the romance of one with a woman that the other says is no good. The woman is not in this episode, so it is left to the viewer's imagination as to which viewpoint is correct.
The actual villains are a group of men who want to take over the title to the land of the feuding pair, because of the rock salt mine on it. But it's not your typical Gunsmoke situation with the villains just riding out to where they live and killing them at point blank range. Instead there is all kinds of undermining at work. Then, when the two get into a knock down drag out fight at the Long Branch and do over two hundred dollars worth of damage, a princely sum in the 1870s, a judge does a completely unconstitutional thing and says that if either of them is found murdered and no third party can be found responsible, the other will be hanged without trial. Complications ensue.
This sounds like it could be a heavy episode, but it really is light and breezy, although perhaps not as light and breezy as the Bonanza episode "Hoss and the Leprechauns" which aired later this very same year.