Episode Details

Originally Aired: April 13, 1958

In Gunsmoke #314, "Livvie's Loss," a bitter family conflict erupts when Livvie Redgate tries desperately to prevent her son Ben from following in his father Horatio's footsteps. Horatio, a long-absent husband whose breath hasn't been free of whiskey for five years, returns to take the boy into town against Livvie's wishes. When she follows them to a saloon and physically knocks a bottle from Ben's hand, she declares she'd gladly see every saloon in Kansas burned to the ground. The confrontation drives Ben away in anger, determined to get drunk somewhere his mother can't find him.

That very night, the new Prairie Wagon saloon goes up in flames, and Livvie is found standing in the alley behind the burning building. With witnesses ready to testify about her threats and her suspicious presence at the scene, Marshal Matt Dillon has little choice but to hold her for questioning. Just as the situation looks dire for Livvie, her drunken husband Horatio staggers into the marshal's office claiming he knows who really set the fire.