Bill Longley arrives in a small Texas town with the intension of helping Les Torbit, an old army buddy, in his range war with Kyle Richards' outfit. Longley soon learns that Torbit is held for accidentally shooting Richards' teen-aged daughter, but a potential lynch mob is getting liquored up to hang the prisoner if the girl dies.
Professional gambler Jake Romer wins big in a poker game, taking thousands of dollars in IOUs from Jim Caldwell, an ex-lawman, who had planned to buy cattle for his ranch in Texas. Convinced he's been cheated, Caldwell and his men hold-up the Cattleman Association and take their money along with $100,000 belonging to other cattlemen that was stored in the safe. Although Bill Longley hates Romer and rode with Caldwell years ago, he agrees to join the posse to capture his old friend.
Hot-headed Johnny Kaler, embarrassed that he's been caught cheating at cards, provokes Bill Longley into a barroom brawl and is quickly thrashed. Later in the evening Johnny tries to kill Bill, but dies when an unknown assailant shoots him in the back from the shadows. Johnny's big brother Mike still blames Longley for the shooting and calls him out for a showdown.
Bill Longley meets an old, but beautiful, friend who currently owns the local saloon and is happy to renew her acquaintance. This angers the local land baron, who has a proprietary interest in the young lady, and he tries to goad his college-educated son into killing Longley to earn the first notch on his gun.
Orin and Ruth McKnight's May/December romance hits a rough spot when Bill Longley returns from a cattle drive with news that Orin's son from his first marriage died driving off rustlers. To make matters worse, Ruth's old beau has traveled all the way from Ohio to bring his former girlfriend home.
While sleeping by his campsite, Bill is startled by sounds of movement in the underbrush. He investigates and finds a young boy who is so frightened that he can't talk. On the road to town, Bill is confronted by two henchmen who try to force Bill to turn the boy over to them; in the ensuing gunfight, Bill kills one of the gunslingers. Bill learns that the lad's father had a gold mine and just struck it rich; he reasons that the miner had been killed by the henchmen and the only witness to the crime is the boy. Bill must find proof to link the town's criminal element ...
Bill Longley comes to the aid of Ramirez, a farmer who wants to plant peach trees when the local cattlemen object. The town's sheriff, one of Longley's non-commissioned officers during the Civil War, doesn't want any trouble, but is forced to take sides when a lynch mob threatens to hang the farmer.
The $8300 Bill Longley earned for driving a herd of cattle to Mesa isn't in his hands for thirty seconds before two gunmen rob take his money and the bank's assets as well, mortally wounding the bank president in the process. One robber is killed by Max Bowen almost immediately and Longley continues his pursuit of the remaining bandit into Mexico after the posse turns back. Nick Ahern, the man Longley has been trailing, convinces the Texan that he's not the murdering thief that hasn't been apprehended and Longley convinces him to return to Mesa to defend his reputation in the face of an angry lynch mob.
After Longley is forced to kill a barfly that tried to shoot him in the back, he learns a quirk in the Montana law code - any man who slays another in a fair fight is responsible for the care and feeding of the widow and children until she gets married. Longley's efforts to escape the snare all come to naught because the widow is in love with him and wants him for a husband until he resorts to reverse psychology.
While riding down a trail, Bill is accosted by a 'boy' who demands he help 'his' father, who has been shut in the stomach. Before the man dies, he asks Bill to take care of his daughter and Bill discovers that the mud-splattered youth who accosted him is really a pretty girl with her long tresses tucked under her cap. Before the man can be a buried, a posse rides into their camp and the express agent accuses the dead man of robbery, but none of the stolen money can be found in the dead man's saddlebags. Henrietta asks Bill to help her clear her father's name.
Bill has been hired to guide two Easterners who want to capture wild stallions to use as studs for breeding. Bill and the Dowds get off on the wrong foot when the husband becomes jealous of his old friendship with his wife. Dowd hires three gunslingers to fake a robbery so that he drive them off and look like a hero in his wife's eyes but the owlhoots plan to steal all of the Easterners money and kill Bill Longley in the bargain.
Bill Longley shares a stagecoach compartment with Jody Sammett and his pregnant wife Maria on their journey to meet Jody's father, Big Jim Sammett for Christmas. Jody dies helping to fight off bandits who try to rob their stagecoach and Maria's father-in-law refuses to take in his son's Mexican-American wife or allow anyone in town to help her even though she has started in labor. While Bill tries to convince the old man to change his mind, the unsuccessful bandits try to abduct the town's only doctor to operate on their seriously wounded companion.
After Longley rescues the wounded Reverend Kilgore from two would-be bushwhackers, he learns that the parson was heading for Phillipsburg, a town with a reputation for killing men of the cloth. Bill decides to pose as the minister to investigate, but without his holster at the minister's insistence. With only Kilgore's Bible for protection, Bill attempts to rally the townspeople against the town boss and his crooked judge.
Longley is hired to drive the first herd of cattle directly from the Texas Panhandle to Denver. When he arrives he discovers that the woman who hired him, Jenny Brewster aka The Duchess of Denver, was the daughter of a sharecropper who lived on his plantation before the Civil War and is none to happy when Bill doesn't recognize her immediately. The woman's current love interest is jealous of Longley, too. He precipitates a duel that Longley is sure to lose since it's as crooked as the roulette wheels in his casino.
A crooked sheriff and his henchmen are attempting to continue their reign of terror by running a crooked election. Longley persuades an alcoholic former Harvard law professor to stand-up to the old sheriff and then backs him when he must evict the gunsels from a ranch they're trespassing on.
Longley rescues the lone survivor of a murderous stagecoach robbery, but the man refuses to help him identify the three killers.
Longley and the town's newspaper editor come to the assistance of a Hungarian peddler when he is attacked by local toughs. When the editor is murdered by the same gunsels, the peddler must choose between helping the Texan bring the killers to justice or fleeing with his pregnant wife.
Longley attempts to escort Yancey Lewis, a bank robber sentenced to spend five years in prison in a distant town. Longley not only has to deal with a howling windstorm and an empty canteen, but the outlaw's gang and his pretty girlfriend who are all trying to rescue him - not so much out of loyalty, but Yancey's the only person who knows where the loot from the heist is hidden.
Longley's old friend, pretty ranch owner Martha Driscoll, negotiates a highly successful sale at the end of a cattle drive. Although her friends urge her to put her money in the bank until she's ready to board a train home, Martha refuses and ends up being robbed and murdered - but not before naming her killer - Clint Gleason, one of her trailhands. Longley tracks the killer to his hometown where his father is sheriff and learns that the lawman implicitly believes his son is innocent of whatever crimes others accuse him of - even killing women.
Bill Longley returns from a cattle drive and discovers an impostor has stolen his mail, destroyed a saloon and dallied with a pretty girl, causing his father to demand a shotgun wedding. The impostor, a criminal recently sprung from jail by a crooked gambler with a grudge against Longley, starts to have a change of heart when he discovers the respect and admiration others have for a man who stands up for the weak and has second thoughts about luring Longley into the trap the gambler has set for the Texan.
A sea captain returns home to take possession of the ranch his father left him. Blinded in an attack on his, the captain turns to Longley for help.
Longley has just ridden into the town of Yellow Jacket, when he sees a gunman unhitching a team of horses over the loud objections of a pretty woman. When Longley intervenes, he discovers the man is only carrying out an obscure town ordinance that forbids leaving a wagon on the street overnight - the fine being $50, payable to the town marshal. Longley learns that the marshal has been lining his pockets with fines for obscure town laws he enforces with vigor and determines to beat the man at his own game.
Wylie Ames, a big gruff widower, has been corresponding with a lonely woman whose personal ad he saw in an out-of town paper. However, she is coming to meet him and this creates a big problem. He asks his old army captain, Bill Longley, to meet her and break the news that Wylie is not the attractive gentleman she is expecting. Also a man Wylie knocked out in a barroom fight dies and the family wants revenge - Longley is in for even bigger problems.
A crooked gambler with a Kentucky-born thoroughbred prods a drunken rancher into betting his entire spread and all the money he has in the bank on a horse race. The gambler tries to incapacitate the rancher's entry in the race but fails; however, what his henchmen couldn't accomplish a rattlesnake bite could and the horse comes up lame racing to fetch the doctor. Longley agrees to allow his quarter-horse to enter the race instead.
Longley rides to the rescue when four gunmen bushwhack a man riding in a buggy. Longley takes the man to a nearby ranch house, but neither the owner or the town doctor wishes to assist the wounded man, a judge scheduled to preside over the trial of the local land baron. When Longley reports the shooting to the sheriff, the lawman can't find any evidence to support the Texan's version of events - or the judge himself for that matter.
Longley, trapped by a landslide, is rescued by Johnny Hinshaw who the Texan soon discovers is on the run from the law. Johnny's accused of shooting a man after a quarrel and since he's already served a jail term and has two brothers on the run from the law he seems like a reasonable suspect to the sheriff - the more so since Johnny's sweet on the lawman's beautiful sister.
Longley and Captain Acosta of the Mexican Rurales travel to San Thomas to bid on a shipment of rifles and ammunition being sold at auction. There efforts are in vain - to their surprise, they are outbid by a beautiful blonde woman. They learn that she's merely the front for a notorious gun runner who plans to sell the guns along the border where they'll soon fall into the hands of the Apaches. Longley and Acosta throw into together to prevent the gunrunners plans from coming to fruition.
Stopping by a remote cabin to water his horse, Longley stumbles across its dead owner, the recipient of two bullets in the back. The dead man's brothers don't believe Longley's story that he just killed a rattlesnake and are preparing to string him up when he's rescued by a stranger with a dislike for lynchings. Longley explains his story to the marshal, who rides out of town to find the rattler, but Longley soon discovers that just about half the town was related to the dead man - and many of them are stone cold killers themselves more interested in revenge than explanations.
Longley must help a parolee and his pretty daughter battle a family of outlaws who are trying to drive him off his ranch. Longley has a pair of unlikely allies - a young gunman dressed all in black and a half-crazed old woman who was long held as a prisoner by the Apaches.
After the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Longley and two his junior officers agree to reunion five years later. The trio rendezvous in Laramie, Wyoming where the sheriff suspects one of the ex-Confederates of stealing an army-payroll.
Longley chases after Clay Thompson, a ruthless bounty hunter who is pursuit of a man falsely accused of bank robbery. Thompson won't believe the Texan when he explains that the wanted posters are being retracted and arranges with a crooked deputy sheriff to ensure that Bill won't interfere with his deadly vocation.
When an outlaw gang shoots up a town and robs the bank, Bill joins the posse to track the owlhoots down. When the outlaws cross into Mexico, the sheriff and his men return home, but Bill crosses the border to avenge the deaths of a pretty mother and daughter who had only just arrived in the West.
An actor/cardsharp who cleaned out two men at poker is set up as the fall guy by a crooked express agent and his cohorts when Longley is ambushed and the payroll he is delivering stolen.
Though reluctant at first, Bill accepts the offer of his old friend Sheriff Ben Tildy to take the job as his deputy, even though several deputies have been killed over the past few years as two ruthless men have taken over the town, and the residents blame Tildy for the deputies' deaths
Bill stops a trail boss from harassing a saloon girl. The humiliated trail boss then decides to use a young man, too eager to prove his manhood and join up with the group, to get his revenge on Bill.
Bill tries to help a young woman who is being pursued by two men. The men tell him that she is a thief and that they are bringing her back to the gunfighter who she is trying to flee from. Unfortunately her experience with the gunfighter has made her bitter toward all men.
Bill stops at an inn, where he meets an old lawman friend, who is holding two convicted killers. The lawman knows that friends of his two prisoners are in the area and planning to free them. When the lawman is wounded, Bill must take the responsibility of keeping the prisoners in custody himself, helped only by the meek owner of the inn, his domineering wife, and a gambler unwilling to take unnecessary risks.
While Bill is participating in a draw and shoot contest in a town rodeo, the local bank is robbed, and a photographer friend of Bill's is shot and killed. The photographer's young son, however, sees the picture his father took of the robbers just before they shot him.
Riding with a posse, Bill captures the bank robber they were after, as well as the money he had stolen. But the others in the posse decide to split the loot among themselves. When Bill is the only one who refuses to go along with the idea, they decide they'll have to kill him as well as the robber. But a band of Comancheros interrupts their plans.
Bill is ambushed and his horse is stolen. Having to take a stagecoach, he finds that one of the other passengers is wanted outlaw Pony Sloan. But after stopping at a way station, he meets another man from whom he finds there is another side to Sloan's story.
After killing one of the outlaw Kiley brothers, the citizens of Calico have buried him as an exhibit in the middle of the main street. The veteran lawman who they've hired as their new sheriff objects to this provocative act, causing the citizens to ask for his resignation. Then Bill comes to warn the citizens after he learns that the Kiley gang is planning to ride in and wipe out the entire town in revenge.
Bill is working with a telegraph company installing lines, but an outlaw gang camped in the area wants to get the crew to leave.
Bill is hired as trail boss driving a cattle herd to Abilene. But he has to contend with two big problems. One is a hostile trail hand, whose anger over Bill getting the ramrod job over him is aggravated by his jealousy over the ranch owner's daughter. The other is a rival drive who's leader will stop at nothing to insure that his herd gets to Abilene first. First of a two part story, concluding with "Showdown At Abilene".
After failing in an attempt to ambush Bill, Bishop pays a band of Indians to attack the Akins herd, hoping to scatter the cattle and thus prevent them from reaching Abilene first. Conclusion of a two-part story, the first part being "Stampede".
Still leading the cattle drive, Bill is allowed to take his herd across a powerful rancher's land. On the way across, he finds a woman who claims she is fleeing from the rancher's advances. But he soon learns that she has not told the whole truth.
A former lawman, now a storekeeper, has lost his nerve after a shooting incident, and is now being harassed by a gang of outlaws led by the brother of a man he once killed. The ex-lawman's daughter refuses to let him put on a gun again or try to fight back.
Bill travels to Ciudad Juarez to accept a job working for a cattleman and his fiancée, only to soon find out he has been set up as the scapegoat in a counterfeiting scheme.
A rancher warns Bill and the railroad workers not to put track down through the land his cattle graze on, even though it is government land. Later he shoots and seriously wounds one of the workers as they are riding in a wagon. But Bill picks up the rancher's son instead, and the workers are in lynching mood.
Bill tries to find out who's been supplying whiskey to railroad workers during their working hours, thus slowing down their progress. He first suspects a lady saloon owner, but it soon becomes apparent she's not the one, and whoever it is is determined to stop the railroad from going through.
Bill's former Civil War commander asks him to take his oldest son with him on the trail to make a better man out of him. Bill agrees to this, but he detects that the son has an intense bitterness toward his father --- until another man who served under his father in the war makes a claim the boy can't allow to go unchallenged.
Longley has been a special marshal to the Texas town of Rio Nada. The area has been plagued by Mexican bandits who have used to the cross the border into the United States and raid the countryside. The gang is led by a mysterious leader known only as "El Sombro". When Longley captures an agent for El Sombro, he hopes to use the threat of hanging for the attempted murder of a deputy sheriff to force him to identify the illusive bandit chief. (Note to viewers: Best to first view "The Terrified Town", then "Sixgun Street", then "The Taming Of Rio Nada", as this is the order in which the events are meant to take place even though the episodes originally aired in the reverse order).
After acting marshal Bill orders no guns to be worn on the streets of Rio Nada, a local casino owner sends for two notorious gunmen to kill him.
Bill is brought by two bounty hunters to the Governor, who hires him as a marshal to clean up a border area which is being run by an outlaw known as El Sombro.
Bill is forced to kill one of the Dawson brothers after a fight when the man draws on him, and then he must contend with three other brothers who vow to kill him.
After Bill, again working with the railroad, turns down a bribe from a landowner to detour the track through his town, the man then forces a doctor to quarantine the railroad workers, falsely claiming a case of cholera.
Bill finds an old prospector almost dead from thirst, and brings him in to the railroad workers camp. But men from a rival outfit talk the old man into spreading a story about finding gold, hoping to lure the workers away from their job.
A group of convicts take over the work train, killing their guards, and hold the entire crew at the construction site hostage. Bill, who they think they also killed on the train, makes it back to the site and must figure out a way to stop them.
With his job about done, Bill is planning to leave the railroad workers camp and move on, until a former crewman once fired by MacMorris shows up to make trouble, and Bill learns the man is working as field agent for the company that the workers hoped to get a new contract from.
Bill saves a government agent from ambush. The agent is carrying a list of landowners who are refusing to pay their taxes, and the daughter of one of those landowners --- the one who the attempted killers are working for --- is engaged to the governor.
Bill finds a town engulfed by a feud between two ranchers. He also learns that his former commanding officer, now a doctor, has turned to drinking, and that a young man blames him for crippling his arm. Bill tries to talk the doctor into staying and not running from the challenges.
A lynch mob wants to hang a young man convicted of killing a family of homesteaders. Bill rides in with a stay of execution from the governor just as the mob is about to break into the jail and the desperate prisoner escapes.
Bill stops to visit his friend, a well-respected sheriff, only to find that the man has been jailed for killing an unarmed youth, and the whole town has turned against him, including his own son. Bill seeks to find the real truth even though the sheriff himself tries to discourage him.
Bill comes to the defense of an unassuming man who is being bullied and tries to encourage him to stand up for himself. Soon the man asks Bill to teach him how to use a gun.
Bill takes the job of escorting a convicted killer to his hanging, knowing that the man's sons and gang members are in the area planning to free him.
An Easterner and his daughter hire Bill to guide them in the search for a wild stallion whom they hope to breed. But an old enemy plans to follow them on the search and rob the horse breeder and get revenge on Bill.
Bill goes after three men who forced him to accompany them on a bank robbery and framed him for it.
Bill befriends an overeager young man named Johnny Tuvo who plans to challenge him in the upcoming horse race. But two other men at the event have more sinister plans for how to take advantage of it.
Bill is captured by a posse and accused of being one of the men who robbed the bank and shot the banker. Unfortunately, the victim claims Bill was the robber who shot him. Only the sheriff, whom the banker hates for being in love with his daughter, is inclined to believe Bill.
Bill is sent into Mexico to investigate and put an end to a counterfeiting ring that's been operating there making phony American currency. The lawman he was to contact is ambushed and killed, leaving Bill to handle the situation alone, dealing with Mexican authorities who don't trust him.
Bill escorts a prisoner to Pueblo for trial. He is also to deliver money to the prisoner's mother for his daughter, whom she has custody of. On the way the two men encounter a dust storm, which forces them to take refuge in a ghost town. Three outlaw associates of the prisoner are also coming there.
Bill hopes to prove that his friend Steve Murrow is innocent of killing the man who married the girl he was hoping to marry. But he only has 24 hours to do it before Steve is hung, and the town sheriff has threatened to kill Bill if he tries to break Steve out.