When the preceding wagon train falls victim to attack, fear that their train will be next results in a mutiny among wagonmaster Chris' team.
Indian captive Caroline Casteel is traded to a man who brings her to the wagon train. She encounters prejudice and hostility from many of the train members. But her biggest hurdle comes when her family, who had long given up hope, arrives.
Charlie offers support to a new woman who joined the train after being kicked out of Beaver City under suspicion of staging cons.
Wealthy merchant Martin Gatsby wants to get west to open a new business. With little for compassion for others, he demands that Hale avoids delays by leaving inexperienced Caleb Lefton and his family behind.
John Augustus wins a game of cards with a Chinese merchant; his prize turns out to be a beautiful Chinese girl, which the rest of the train takes issue with.
In the midst of a dry spell and desperately in need of water, the wagons stop at Mavis Grant's station, the only source of water for miles. But Miss Grant is a bitter and cold hearted woman who demands an outrageous price for the water.
A Native American tribe prepares to execute Bill, believing he tried to rob a grave site, but plans change when the chief's daughter falls in love with Bill.
An officer Chris knows is found near the wagon train near death. He tells Chris that a passage in the bible describes him and his commander - Shiloh Degnan. Chris returns him to Fort Bannerman to the Army where the truth is revealed.
When the Levy family joins the wagon train, the tranquility becomes less so as the fathers compete in checkers, young sons fight, and son and daughter fall in love. Lastly, a settler who tries to shake down the train to cross his property.
Indians kidnap an elderly lady on the train. They will return her when the train takes the Chief's son to the doctor and cure him. However, some on the train don't want to help. The task becomes harder when they learn what the illness is.
Highly respected Kurt Davos is badly injured while trying to save Florence Hastings on a runaway wagon. Florence, who's scared of dogs and had tried to kill Kurt's dog, volunteers to live with and care for Kurt, now paralyzed.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy has come to visit his daughter Eve, believing her to be a respectable married woman. Knowing that Eve actually is the popular owner of a saloon, Hawks, Wooster, Duke, and Eve's favorite patrons decide to change Eve.
A Bible quoting marshal joins the wagon train with his prisoner, a young bank robber whom he claims to be trying to reform. He wants the prisoner to atone for his sins by telling the location of the money he hid from his last holdup.
After Charlie and a winemaker rescue a group of teetotal travelers from a runaway wagon, one of them falls in love with the winemaker and must reconcile her lifestyle with his profession.
The wagon train finds Sam Darland with orphan boys in an old ghost town. Hale tries to convince Darland that it is not safe to stay in the town, as it in the midst of Indian territory and the leader of the tribe has been on the warpath.
A sea captain traveling west haunted by nightmares from his past is found stranded, injured and drunk by Bill and Charlie. After hearing his story, they help him reach his destination to locate a ghost: a dead sailor that may be alive.
When his wagon falls down a cliff, Davey Baxter's mother is killed, and his arm is crushed. The doctor is unavailable, so Chris is forced to make the decision to amputate. This changes everything for Davey and the girl he plans to marry.
A sergeant becomes torn between his Cherokee roots and his loyalty to the U.S. Army when he faces a 20 year prison sentence.
Hawks rides to the John Kaylor ranch to buy horses for the train but John just died. His widow Naomi refuses to sell the horses at the price John had promised. Naomi shows no sorrow over her husband's death, only wanting to sell the ranch.
Alcoholic Southerner Stevenson Drake becomes angry with John Hollister, who never joined the Confederate Army, and suspects John of trying to lure away his wife.
While riding through the desert plains, Duke and Charlie come across a sheriff as he is about to die of a heart attack and his female prisoner, Lily Legend, a childhood sweetheart of Duke who the sheriff is taking to be hanged for murder.
Bella McKavitch wants to kidnap Chris Hale, in order to find out about a gold shipment which she thinks the wagon train is carrying, but her dimwitted sons nab Wooster instead. To stop them, Wooster pretends to be a robber himself.
Suspicions of insanity and witchcraft abound when members of the wagon train discover several broken dolls among Sarah Proctor's belongings, prompting Hale and Charlie to investigate.
Duke Shannon stops in the town High Times and almost right away gets into a fight with, and accidentally kills, one of the gunmen who are essentially holding the town hostage. Then he finds his horse missing and ignores advice to leave.
An elderly couple and then a young girl become ill with typhoid fever on the wagon train. A young servant girl has attended to them all in isolation. One of the women on the train has an idea about the cause but no one wants to listen.
When four brothers are orphaned, no one on the train wants all four. Charlie is determined to find a home for the four together and even proposes to a spinster who wants the boys but turns him down so he looks for a husband for her.
The Perez family is run out of town because people believe their daughter Juana is a witch. The family joins the wagon train, and after Juana's brother Felipe is mauled by a cat, the old world is pitted against the new world of medicine.
While scouting in Wyoming territory, Duke is forced by outlaw Tom Tuesday to act as his guide to an important rendezvous in Ruby City, Idaho. Tuesday is going blind from a gunshot wound, and Duke is able to turn the tables on him.
Samuel MacIntosh picks Hamish Browne to marry his daughter Heather before the two have met. Heather is a naive young girl who thinks she can talk to animals, while Hamish is a backwoods boy who cares for his livestock more than for women.
Duke and three women under attack by Cheyenne Indians are helped by a stranger who has a fatalistic attitude toward life. They take refuge in a relay station where the stranger slowly relays his past to the others while they hope for help.
Tom O'Neal and Ellen Howard want to get married, but their parents object, so Tom takes money from his father's savings and runs away with Ellen. They soon realize that that was an unwise decision.
Duke and Charlie leave the train for supplies and to see Duke's old friends at a fort. One is a minister who was cashiered out of the Army who is trying to create peace with the Modocs despite a Major who only wants to kill all Indians.
Hale is entrusted to deliver $8,000 to a bank. Young David Garner is determined to steal it and he stows along on the wagon train, along with a girl who's in love with him. Following them is a shady man who seems to have a hold over David.
Bill Hawks receives a note asking him to help an Indian friend of his from the Civil War. He arrives to find the local town drilling a well on the man's property and eventually that the man has been hanged for attacking a local girl.
Invalid rancher Henry Ludlow is so determined that daughter Judy not marry Basque sheepherder Antone Rose that he sells his land and joins the wagon train to head west. When Antone learns of this, he joins the train as well to marry her.
Duke Shannon returns to check on his small ranch he split evenly with a childhood friend. When he arrives he finds tenant farmers being bull-whipped and a ruthless foreman his partner does not want to fire claiming he is needed.
Bill meets young Barnaby West, who claims he is traveling west to see his father, a famous frontiersman. Bill invites him to join the wagon train. But he and the others wonder just how much, if any, of young Barnaby's story is really true.
