A Midwestern family decides to pack up their belongings and head west to Oregon, where they hear land is free for the taking.
We meet the Wagon train. They are heading to the west coast to start a better life for themselves. Character and plot descriptions revealed.
The young son of Thorpe accidentally wanders into a burial ground and brings the wrath of Indians against the wagon train.
After hours in the desert, the Wagon Train comes upon a watering hole in the desert. After everyone drinks the water, they fall ill. It takes some smart thinking to figure out what caused the sickness - and to save the people on the Wagon Train.
The Thorpe family inadvertently makes friends with a trapper who has the secret mission of murdering his old friend Luther.
An injured young man is taken in and cared for by the Thorpes, who have no way of knowing that he is a deserter from the Army.
Hannah Morgan (Stella Stevens) is the leader of a group of mail-order brides (who actually are a group of "showgirls") who join the wagon train. Romance percolates, but mutual respect arises instead as Hannah helps nurse Evan's daughter back from a bout of cholera.
Evan Thorpe serves as defense attorney for a mysterious man suspected of killing a member of the wagon train. Frontier justice was never so just.
A bullet-ridden wagon reveals that gun-runners are supplying rifles to the Redskins and Evan is detemined to run them to earth whatever the risk.
While riding, Thorpe and Andy are taken prisoner by a gang of men and women fleeing to Mexico after knocking off a train. Under the assumption Andy has been shot dead, Thorpe leads the tense gang to a source of water or so it seems.