Planning to sail to Boston, the Major, Hawks and Charlie are instead shanghaied to New Orleans where they meet a Captain who has different ideas on raising his child and running a ship.
Juan awakens to the sound of three men hanging his beloved father. Joining the wagon train, he comes across one of the three, tortured by Indians. He nurses him back to health but only under the guise of looking for the other two killers.
Jennifer Churchill, pampered all her life, runs away from a smothering lifestyle and pending marriage, and joins the wagon train. With bounty hunters on her heels, she finds Flint, a man who she wants but doesn't want her.
Major Adams allows two stowaways, Tobias Jones and his young friend Midge, to stay with the train. But Tobias is in trouble due to his drinking, and things get worse when he's accused of murder.
Liam Fitzmorgan joins the train, looking for an informer who betrayed the Irish cause. However, Liam soon falls in love with the daughter of the man who he suspects is the traitor.
Concerned about Bart Grover, one of the passengers on the wagon train, woman doctor Carol Ames Willoughby tries to help even though she's hampered further by everyone else who shuns her. Meantime an Indian chief needs doctoring and they don't believe in female medicine men.
After advertising to look for his brother Charles and offering a $5,000 reward, a member of the wagon train gets a response from someone who walks through an Indian party that's pinning them all down. What he finds is not what he expected.
Millie Davis reluctantly takes in an orphaned baby girl. Eight years later the girl's grandmother arrives to retrieve her. But Millie doesn't want to give up the child, so she claims that she and Flint are the parents.
A samurai warrior fails in his efforts to bring the ashes of his master back to Japan.
When a member of the train is placed in chains after breaking Indian law by killing a buffalo, Major Adams quarrels with Flint who quits and takes a job at nearby Tent City. But White Eagle discovers the dead buffalo and demands justice.
Flint helps out Beauty Jamison, the daughter of a dead rancher who has inherited his spread... and the local ranchers that are trying to drive her out.
A hostile orphan girl accompanies her friend: another girl dying of consumption.
When the wagon horses start to die of a disease, Adams is forced to send two men who are feuding to buy new horses with his emergency money. One of the men's horse returns without him making Adams wonder if he made a mistake.
Kitty Angel finds herself not welcome on the wagon train due to her past. When Flint returns to the train toting a sick Indian baby, she has everyone's prejudices to deal with as well as this life threatening illness.
Flint, in love with a Mormon girl he can't marry, joins the confederate army. When he finds out that he won't be joining any battles and what their real purpose is, it may be too late for him and the girl he loves.
Hunter Malloy and partner get jobs as drivers on the wagon train to rob their boss. Striking gold instead while stopping to repair their wagons, the fever is high as some stop to strike it rich and uncover more than just a few nuggets.
The inhabitants of Bitter Springs are hostile to a Southern family who adopted a black child. The Sheriff is behind their intolerant attitude.
Ella Lindstrom loses her husband on the wagon train ride west from Boston. With her seven children she decides to stay the course against the wishes of Major Adams. It gets more complicated when she thinks she is expecting number eight.
Scouting for a better pass, Flint finds a mountain man, hungry and half out of his mind. With no memory, his strange behavior may endanger the entire wagon train especially when everyone feels they know who he is.
Flint escorts a wagon, leaving the train, to their new home. When they meet an old man with a wagon load of uncured buffalo skins he's trying to sell, they invite him along as he appears friendly enough. But Flint feels he's too friendly.
Flint, seeking safe passage through the mountains, is shot and losing consciousness is dragged to a cabin. Nursed back to health, his savior finds the man who shot him was her husband and Flint had to kill him or be killed.
Jasper Cato joins the train, claiming to be looking for man who has an inheritance waiting for him back east.
Getting set to leave the wagon train, Vivian Carter finds out a friend she knows from the train hoped for more than that. Heading to a new life and her first marriage, she's given some options and even at her age has its surprises.
Suspecting a hurt girl he finds on the trail is part of a group of bandits, Flint cautiously helps her but soon learns she is all he suspects until her guardian is killed and Flint becomes her only protection.
Leaving the safety of their village, a group of nuns set out to help those Indians in need at a mission. Now Flint must try to help them fight some Ute Indians who don't seem to know the nuns are just there to help them.
Matthew Lowry, a one-armed Quaker, helps the train when they risk infection of cholera, and Adams faces a mutiny.
During an Indian attack on the wagon train, Major Seth Adams spares the life of Swift Cloud, crippled son of the Indian chief. Adams is shocked to learn that Swift Cloud's condition is a result of a vicious assault by a half-breed.
A would-be college professor, Vincent Eaglewood, offers to teach the train's children to pay his way to San Francisco. Major Seth agrees, but Vincent's lack of common sense gets him into trouble.
Clara Duncan joins the train in a search for her artist fiancé. But finding him could lead to trouble, as one of his missing paintings depicting a heinous crime may implicate some of the locals.
Escaped convict Duke Le May joins the wagon train under an assumed name. When a deputy shows up to arrest him and is killed, Flint is asked to escort him to the nearest fort for trial but he does all he can to prolong that journey.
The wagon train pushes ahead when one of the passengers has an accident. With only a wagon between two couples, one person decides to leave with money including some gold coins. They have an accident and the storm's only getting worse.
Flint must find a way to get the wagon train around a snow covered pass. On a scouting trek, he meets a father and son who are willing to help him but they want to hike up the mountain. The adventure ahead has surprises for them all.
When a big snow halts the train, several of the men disappear mysteriously with no trace of them to be found. After Flint, Major Adams, and Hawks go missing, it's up to Chuck Wooster to lead the train to safety.
The Shoshone string up a Pawnee warrior to die. The train finds the warrior and discovers that he's the long-lost son of Spanish aristocrats... and the Shoshone won't stop until he's dead.
The Major finds an old man in the desert and takes him to the wagon train. He doesn't remember his name but when he's recognized by one of the other passengers, he remembers not just his name but the faith he thought he lost as well.
After his parents are killed by white men, a boy is raised by a lone Indian. Years later when the wagon train stops nearby, the Indian tells the young man to join his people. But his previous experience with the train make him hesitate.
A widow and her four unmarried daughters on their way to California. She hopes to find husbands for her daughters.
A young girl is injured while on the way to San Francisco to find her famous mother who abandoned her as a baby. The crew helps her with her pending blindness and find her mother who has her own problem unknown to her daughter.
