Brisco is called upon by an old friend, a doctor, to serve as defense lawyer when the guy is accused of murdering a prominent citizen. Despite the hostility of the townsfolk, the sheriff, and the judge (who is disdainful of Brisco's Harvard roots, having graduated from Yale himself), Brisco figures out that the citizen wasn't so well-liked, and in fact had left a number of little revenge ploys after his death (such as a case of anthrax for the local cattlemen). Using the new science of fingerprints, Brisco manages to solve the case: the murder victim killed himself and set up the doctor (who had been seeing his wife on the side) to make it look like the murderer. The doctor's jilted girlfriend was in cahoots, and the wife slugs her when she tries to pull a gun on the preceedings.