Mornings start pretty early at East Camp – the horses aren’t gonna take themselves out of the barn. But when Kayce Dutton walks into his kitchen, Cruz already has coffee brewing in the Bialetti. It’s been two weeks since the Clegg compound showdown. But while Andrea appreciates that it’s Cowboy watching her six – “Thanks again for saving my ass” – our theory of something more growing between them will remain just theory. Apparently we were all swayed by Riley Green’s plaintive croon. Andrea hands Kayce his coffee with a grin, as she settles into Garrett’s arms. What can she say? “I can’t resist the power of a country ballad.”

We were thinking Garrett would be a fully deputized member of Team Jock Up by now, after his heroics during the Clegg incident. But he’s still in self-care mode, and out by the barn, in the corral, Kayce catches his “rebuilding projects” together – Garrett and the unruly stallion, Monica’s horse, who the damaged ex-SEAL says understands the tornadoes in his head. “Feels like I’ve found a new beginning, Ky-O,” Double-G tells his old battle buddy. It seems to satisfy Kayce, helping Garrett to find his piya wiconi, his, while he continues to shape his own

And it’s a busy morning at East Camp, because Dolly Weaver is back in Marshals. She has arrived with groceries, as Kayce asked her for help with his special project, a birthday dinner for Garrett. They’re baking a cake when his rebuilding project starts on fire. 

When the space heater in the barn shorted out, Garrett ran inside, to save the stallion and all East Camp’s horses. At the trauma center in Bozeman, he’s stable, but breathing burning air will do a number on your lungs, and after surgery, Garrett’s in a druggy haze, thinking about a different trauma. “Tell Cal I’m sorry,” he mumbles in the recovery room. It’s another piece of the fallout from their SEAL deployments, tied to the death of their friend Roner, but Kayce can only ask “Sorry for what?” before Garrett fades away again. 

Cruz’s first day back at work was supposed to be a milk run. A federal prisoner transfer, with her and Belle as security on the jailhouse bus. But a rockslide sent the vehicle careening off the road, killed the driver and another officer, and left the marshals to perform triage on the two prisoners who didn’t make a run for it. Because this is Marshals, it’s convenient that one of them is a deadbeat doctor. And because this is Marshals, the other prisoner happens to be Belle’s estranged mother. 

“Get so far away that none of it, the name, the things they’ve done, can find you.” That was Belle last time on Marshals, and this time, we learn more about her troubled family history. Samantha (Brenda Strong) was the COO of Turek Metals, but greed and power struggles destroyed the family business and generations of success, which ultimately led to the suicide of Belle’s father. Samantha, a white collar criminal rotting in federal prison, was resigned to the fact that she’d never see her daughter again. Her “little Izzy bear.” But now they’re pursuing reconciliation, right here in the chaotic upside down of a destroyed prison bus. Marshals becomes “The Pitt: Wild Side” as Cruz and Belle assist the doctor-prisoner with a field hemothorax and the setting of Samantha’s compound leg fracture.

Miles and Cal were running down tips on the escapees from the bus crash while Kayce held it down beside Garrett’s bed. But while they stopped two violent yahoos from shooting up a bunch of hostages in a general store, when it was time to link up with Kayce, nobody could find him. He saw a mug shot on TV, another federal prisoner, Neil Lamb (Sterling Jones). And Kayce decided to put a collar on him solo.

We were about to scoff that Kayce Dutton must keep a web of Nest cameras under his trusty black felt hat, because he arrives at a faceless wall of wilderness, walks in there, and immediately locates Lamb. But it turns out both prisoner and cowboy have history with this land. Lamb was once a hand on the Yellowstone Ranch, and he recognizes Kayce, who he last saw when the youngest Dutton son was about to make his first deployment. Yeah, Lamb has a shared history with the Duttons, too. History it has become Kayce’s job to keep quiet.

“If you reveal my family’s secrets, you risk upending the life I’ve carved out for me and my son,” he tells Lamb in the woods. The prisoner is looking to make a deal – if Kayce helps him escape over the border to Canada, he’ll keep his mouth shut. But they both know that is no guarantee, and Kayce has his sidearm drawn when there is a commotion in the bushes nearby.

“Ky-O! What the hell are you doing?” It’s Pete Calvin, who looks like he’s trying to figure out why his deputy could be about to perform a bit of extra-legal, family secret-keeping justice.  

To Be Continued.

Kayce Taykes for Episode 10 of Marshals (“Playing With Fire”):

• Lloyd! Kayce’s encounter with the escaped prisoner includes a little Yellowstone nugget: the land where he tracks Lamb down was where Lloyd Pierce (Forrie J. Smith), leader of the Bunkhouse Boys, used to take the Yellowstone hands hunting.

• “What are you gonna tell your other partner?” Working as a two-man Jock Up team with Miles gave Cal time to talk about his Ten Rules For Dating My Bartender Daughter, none of which Miles cares about. Because he is not his boss, and he swears he won’t make the same mistake, putting up a wall between personal relationships and the dangers of his profession.

• “My life is very ordered; this feels like it could be messy.” Belle might need a little more time to process their on-the-fly reconciliation. But as her mother notes, “That’s not a no.”

• The bomb cyclone’s a-coming! While Garrett tries to manage the tornadoes in his head, Miles mentions that the weather’s changing on Marshals. Pressure’s dropping, along with the temps. Is a dangerous storm the next crisis to be managed in this show’s latest two-part gambit?

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.