Sheriff Coffee (Ray Teal) is absent from Virginia City and is in St Louis, Missouri, a distance of over 1,800 miles. In 1870, the approximate era for the setting of this episode, St Louis had a population of over 310,000 and was the 4th largest city in the United States. Virginia City, Nevada was a "boomtown" and the population fluctuated from around 4,000 in 1862 to 25,000 in 1873.