In the 1830's beaver trapper Flint Mitchell and other white men hunt and trap in the then unnamed territories of Montana and Idaho. Flint marries a Blackfoot woman as a way to gain entrance into her people's rich lands, but finds she means more to him than a ticket to good beaver habitat.
The story opens as Stony returns to his home town, only to discover that his sheriff father has been murdered by person or persons unknown. The new sheriff (Henry Brandon) resents the arrival of the Mesquiteers, going so far as to frame Tucson on a murder charge.
Sonora, Mexico, 1852, during the war with the Apaches and the invasion of the United States to Mexico, a carrier decides to leave his homeland to seek better life in Mexico, for it is forced to cross the land of the Chiricahua in search of gold.
Albert Quinn Ingalls wants to be a doctor. But soon he discovers that he is fatally ill. He decides to spend the rest of his life in Walnut Grove. Meanwhile children from school are preparing for their traditional climbing of the mountain.
Franco and Ciccio are two cousins who, in the old West, have opened a service station, where they carry out the washing and drying of the horses and a bar service for the passing riders. One day a stranger saves them from an attempted robbery against them: the girl introduces herself as Calamity Jane, as well as Franco and Ciccio's aunt.
Bob Fulton is the superintendent of a mine in the West. He wins the enmity of dancehall owner Jack King when he saves one of the girls, Rose De Braisy, from his unwanted advances. Fulton also wins Rose's love, which he does not return. The mine's owner sends his troublesome son, Roland Holt, out West to work at the mine. Before Holt leaves the East he secretly marries Beth Hoover. Upon Holt's arrival, Fulton tries to befriend him, but Holt prefers the company of bad-guy King.
Zeb Macahan, a pioneering westerner, helps move his brother's family to the wild west. They run into several obstacles including the breakout of the Civil War. This sends the father back to fight in the war and leaves the family to move on ahead.
A group of confederate prisoners escape to Canada and plan to rob the banks and set fire to the small town of Saint Albans in Vermont. To get the lie of the land, their leader spends a few days in the town and finds he is getting drawn into its life and especially into that of an attractive widow and her son.
After being released from prison, ex-gunfighter John Wesley Hardin hopes to have his autobiography published in order to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation.
Before the U.S. Civil War rebel leader Luke Darcy sees himself as leader of a new independent Republic of Kansas but the military governor sends an ex-raider to capture Darcy.
Quincy Drew and Jason O’Rourke, a pair of friends and con men—the former white, the latter a Northern-born free Black man— travel from town to town in the pre–Civil War American West. In their scam, Quincy sells Jason into slavery, frees him, and the two move on to the next town of suckers . . . until a con gone wrong leads Jason into real danger.