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Season 2, Episode 12, “Dust,” of the acclaimed 1960 TWILIGHT ZONE TV series will be detailed below.
Warning: Spoiler Alert. Do not read further if you intend to view the episode (available online).
Into a nameless small town in the West, populated by a few handfuls of people, where dust swirls and the sun beats down without mercy during certain times of the year, wanders a corpulent peddler with missing upper front tooth.
He is a loud, crude fellow who, after walking into the town’s one jail, tries to goad both prisoner, a Mexican named Gallegos, and sheriff, a weary man who’s seen better days.
Gallegos had gotten drunk and, not seeing a little girl, run over her with his wagon. Although it was an accident, he is due to hang.
The thick rope to be used in the hanging the peddler had sold to the sheriff not that long before.
The father of Gallegos, a humble man with slicked down hair, comes into view and with clasped hands, falls on his knees in front of the father and mother of the girl, pleading for the life of his son. To no avail. They brush him aside, tell him they have a daughter to bury.
The peddler, ever enterprising, tells the young sister of Gallegos that he will sell some magical dust to her father for 100 pesos. When sprinkled over the people, it will…
