Weaver, Dennis, ENS

Did you ever wonder how he got it, or what happened in the end, to Chester B.Goode . . . the guy with that stiff leg?

If you were like me, you always wondered about that limp Chester had. You know, they never covered it as a story in GUNSMOKE and the credit goes to Dennis Weaver from Episode One where he made his character, an unarmed pacifist, stand out a bit more and it was written into the show for the next nine years.

Well, that wasn't good enough for me. So, I decided to make up a story, one they can use if a movie version is made. So, here is my explanation for his stiff leg:

Chester B. Goode, 1853 - 1885

Born in Arkansas, June 1853. Died in Colorado, December 1885.

Raised on a farm in Arkansas, the orphan son of a lay preacher, Chester considered himself a pacifist but was pressed into the Confederate Army in the fall of 1864 as a flag bearer in a battle drum and fife corps at the age of eleven. Captured in the spring of 1865 by war weary members of the Union Army he was beaten for not surrendering his flag. His leg would have been amputated had medical care been given. Instead he was transported to a nearby prison holding area where he was kept until the end of the war. A prison guard, Matt Dillion, assisted the boy and was the reason Chester did not lose the leg while in the camp.

Ten years later, 1875, Chester arrived in Dodge City where Matt was now the Marshall. The two would never speak publicly about the war, the prison camp or Chester's badly broken leg, however, Doc Adams would occasionally treat Chester for the cronic pain the poorly set bones caused.

For the next nine years, Chester assisted Matt with odd-jobs around town and at the jail. Thinking the Gold Rush, especially the Silver Rush, were coming to an end Chester heads for Colorado and finds work as a clerk in a general store. After just a few short months he is shot during a robbery and dies.

When the word reaches Dodge City Matt brings the news to the Long Branch. Doc and Kitty listen as Matt tells Festus that Chester has been killed. Of the group, Festus takes the news the hardest when recalling the ribbing he often gave Chester over that darn limp of his and asks... "Do any of you all know whatever happened to give Chester that awful twisted leg?"

Doc nods and Matt says, "Well, yes. As a matter of fact I do".

Festus: "Well dern it Matthew, he'd only tell me it was something what happened when he was but a child... So, how did it happen?"

Matt: "He nearly lost it during the war".

Festus: "War? What war? I never knowed Chester to even own no gun. Anyhow, he was too young for the Rebellion".

Matt: "Nope, that ain't so. He was just a boy of ten or eleven, and a flag bearer. His company was captured and he was beaten, so badly that he nearly lost that leg".

Festus: "Prisoner, prisoner of war? Matthew, just how long have you knowed that, bout his leg?"

Matt: "I've alway known. You see, I was a guard in the prison camp".

Festus: "Now Matthew, I knowd you was a Union soldier. You mean to tell me Chester was a Confederate Johnny Reb?"

Matt: "That's right. I believe he was from Arkansas and pressed into the army as a child. When he was in the camp we got to know a bit about each other and I told him if he ever needed a job to come up to Kansas. I had no plans to become a Marshall back then and it just happened that Chester rode into Dodge City one afternoon, so I helped him find some work".

Festus: "Well dad blame it, don't that beat all. Now I feel terrible bout all the things I ever said to him. Chester Goode, a soldier, dang Matthew, we were brothers of a sort and I never ever knowd it".


/ Steve Loomis, written 20 May 2015 for the DENNIS WEAVER profile.