In Kentucky just after the Civil War, the Hayden-Colby feud leads to Jed Colby being sent to prison for 15 years for murder. The Haydens head for Nevada and when Colby gets out of prison he heads there also seeking revenge. The head of the Hayden family tries to avoid more killing but the inevitable showdown has to occur, complicated by Lynn Hayden and Ellen Colby's plans to marry.
The hero is affected in his daily life by petty superstitious fears, which gives the heroine an idea he is cowardly. She returns his ring, but later events prove his real mettle and she is glad when a reconciliation comes.
When Juliette sets out to bring her slain lover – outlaw Ransom Pride – home to Texas to be buried, she knows the journey won't be easy, but she has little idea of the dangers that lie ahead in this dark Western drama.
In the sordid shirt factory in which she works, Sadie Hicks dreams of the great outdoors. Surrounded by men of puny minds and flabby bodies, her fancy goes out to great manhood that is strong of mind and muscle. Translated in the language of the shirt factory life she knows best, she finds that she admires a man with a 44 chest. She sees a shipment of 44s all ready to be sent to Arizona, and she writes a little note and tucks it into one of the shirts. On account of a rush order, the box is sent to Canada and the shirt with Sadie's note reaches John Stoddard, a wealthy civil engineer, who prefers the life of the woods to the polite society enjoyed by his family and friends.
A young Mormon couple is attacked by a bunch of outlaws. They kill the man and the woman is raped several times and left for dead in the desert. With the last ounce of her strength she gets to the hut of an old hermit who nurses her back to health and teaches her how to shoot. The woman then frees three female criminals and seeks vengeance on the outlaws.
After a card game, Southerner Owen Pentecost finds himself the owner of a Denver hotel. Involved with two women, he then has to make even more fundamental choices when, with the start of the Civil War, he becomes one of a Confederate minority in a strongly Unionist town.
Onion Jack has bought a piece of land on which to settle, but the property is still in possession of the orphans of the original owner and is coveted by the local oil baron.
The story of Henry McBride, a down and out cowboy with a painful past he can't drink away. Living on his last dollar with nowhere to go, he ends up working the last place an old cowboy wants to be: A dude ranch. It is here he meets the owner, Jessie King, a no-nonsense rancher with a deep love for horses. McBride's self-discovery begins when she introduces him to a new way of training a troubled mustang, a horse whose past and temperament mirror his own.
On the coast of France, the police are raiding the streets and taverns at night in search of girls to send to the colonists in North America. A ship takes these girls to America, where they are placed in carts leaving for territories where colonists and soldiers are expecting them.
A cowboy finds himself betrayed by his best friend and must choose between bringing him to justice and alienating the pretty schoolteacher he is in love with.
Barely out of prison, Jim Regan is arrested once again, this time for the attempted shooting of Denver Dan Norris, the villain who framed him in the first place. With the assistance of his young friend Wally Weston Jim is released once again on the condition that he won't leave town.
Don Santiago (Richard Angarola) is a vicious man who helps provoke an Indian massacre that will allow him to steal the Indians' land and claim it as his own. However, his son-in-law, Finley (Tom Laughlin), is an expert hand with both guns and swords and will not allow him to push around the peace-loving Indians or fellow settlers of the West.
Jimmy Pearls, a directionless young drifter, kills Henry Logan's son and two other men after he found out that they murdered Jimmy's parents for their land. Trying to get away from Logan's vengeance, he goes to ground in the mountains and meets Winston Patrick Culler, an old trapper, who becomes his traveling companion and protector. Jimmy doesn't understand though why Culler is helping him...
Having been falsely court marshaled for cowardice and sentenced to prison by the Army, Jed Kilton escapes and heads to Nevada Springs to see his kid brother. There he meets his old school friend Sam Ballou. But the two old friends soon find themselves on opposite sides and Sam has Jed arrested. Then when Jed's young brother sees one of Sam's men kill another man, the boy becomes Sam's intended victim.
The story is of a small town in the early west and of a 'shooter' of reputation that drifts into it and stands up to the controlling family that runs it. But far from a John Wayne, this hero is caught and brutally beaten and left to die, only to be saved by a prostitute that has also suffered under the hand of this group of desperados. The only one possible to stand up to the shooter is another solitary man who joins with the notorious family although he is deputized as the town's sherif.
Will Tenneray and Abe Cross are two aging, famous gunfighters, both in need of money. Tenneray comes up with the idea to stage a duel to the death in a bullfight arena, with the ticket proceeds going to the winner.