After tangling with bandits on the way to California to buy a prize bull for the Ponderosa, Little Joe fends off a pretty senorita and her jealous fiancé, while Hoss discovers that the bull has been spirited away by a little boy who is convinced that the Cartwrights plan to kill and eat his big bovine friend.

Ben tries to uncover the reason gold and silver exporter, Frederick Kyle, has befriended Little Joe before the shadowy businessman's hidden Civil War agenda tears Virginia City, and the Cartwright family, apart.