Wyatt comes downstairs at the Gem to find his brother chatting with Jen, the girl Johnny was giving reading lessons to this morning. Morgan is attempting to convince her that he loaned her sister, Mary Bess -- who is a whore at the Yellow Bird in Gunnison -- eleven dollars. Morgan's a little pissant dickweed (which my spell check changed to "puissant duckweed"), and even Wyatt has no patience with him. Seeing Johnny starting a concerned stroll towards them, Wyatt clenches to Morgan that he and Jen can talk about the alleged loan later and pushes him out the door. Jen smiles at Johnny, her conquering hero, and exhales a long breath of cigarette smoke.

On the boardwalk, Wyatt pushes some money into Morgan's hands and commands him to go buy their timber supplies while he moves on to "the next step in my fuckin' plan." Morgan is frustrated with his brother's lack of confidence in him. He asks what Al wanted upstairs. "You ain't got time for me to get into that," Wyatt says, and with that, he heads into the Bella Union.

Just now I am wondering what it was about this episode that made me rave about it so in the recaplet. Admittedly, I have the short-term memory of gnat, but I've yet to recall or come across whatever it was that I loved so much. I mean, that one Earp is pretty cute, but...wait. Was it Steve getting kicked in the head? Possibly.

Merrick is brushing down his press when he is rudely interrupted by Hearst, who charges in acting unnaturally friendly, making a pointed joke about The Pioneer's election countdown calendar. He asks if Merrick plans to keep that up. "As long as my presses stay intact," Merrick laughs, uncomfortable. "Thanks, too," Hearst says, "for publishing Sheriff Bullock's letter of condolence to the family of that murdered worker of mine. I suppose I should have written them myself." Merrick politely says that he'd not presumed to suppose in that regard, one way or another. "Was the Sheriff's making his letter part of the public record meant to embarrass or reproach me?" Hearst asks, revealing now how pissed he is about the letter. Merrick quietly says he'd not suppose in that connection either. "I'm to take you for majestically neutral?" Hearst snarks. Hey, now, Hearst, I hate you enough already without you strongarming Merrick, who is just a nice man trying to get by in this ridiculous place. "I'd make the less exalted claim," Merrick says, pulling himself up nobly, "as a journalist, of keeping my opinions to myself." "You are less majestically neutral, then, than cloaking your cowardice in principle," Hearst says, taking Merrick's breath away with his UTTER ASSHOLERY. Very quietly, and with much dignity, Merrick answers that he can only say that perhaps events have not yet disclosed to him all that he is. "Those kind of events could be in the weather, Merrick," Hearst says, waving the paper in his face. "You might have a second calendar for them." Poor Merrick. I hope when the great Day of Judgment comes, he is allowed to get in one good stab. Brilliant scene for McRaney, but Jeffrey Jones steals it.