Plot

Etta Stone is a very bitter, older, woman who has Kitty and Matt captured, and thrown into a homemade jail, and now she plans on hanging Matt for the execution of her husband 6 years before.

In an episode that made TV Guide's list of "Top 50 Dramatic Episodes of All Time" (and quite high on the list at that), Etta Stone is the matriarch of a crime family, whose husband was hanged and three sons imprisoned six years earlier at Matt's instigation. Now the sons have gotten out of jail and their first order of business is to kidnap Kitty, forcing Matt to come alone to rescue her. He gets a dire welcome when he sees a do-it-yourself working gallows right in the Stone front yard, and he is quickly seized and locked in the barn (Kitty is locked in the house). Etta Stone, with the help of the three imprisoned sons, tells Matt that he will be hanged from the gallows "on the morning of the second day." The only honest people around are the youngest son and the wife of another son, who have developed a romance of their own. One of the other sons can be bought, but he comes to a bad end -- Etta catches him helping Kitty try to escape and blows her own son away with the rifle she always carries. Now Kitty will also hang for "murder" immediately after Matt does, unless somehow Matt and Kitty can outwit the remaining crooks (which is hard; Matt survives a second botched escape attempt only because Etta demands that he be hanged rather than shot when cornered) and escape Etta herself.—Peter Harris