Jaimie tells a friend about an early incident on the trip—when Billy Slocum was to be hanged for horse stealing. 

Jaimie (Kurt Russell) meets political has-been Piggy Trewblood---in the act of committing suicide. When Jaimie stops Piggy Trewblood from hanging himself, he doesn't realize the mess that it all leads to. Piggy hopes to buy back his wife, Zoe Pigalle, who he gambled away for 700 dollars. But his efforts to do this land himself, Linc, and Doc in jail, and Jaimie being held as ransom for the money.

Three new passengers join the wagon train: a drunken blowhard, a killer posing as a marshal and a wounded traveler. Seeing an old derelict being harassed by thugs, Doc and Jaimie invite the man to join them on the wagon train. The old codger interests Jaimie and the other kids with his stories about past adventures on the frontier. But he doesn't tell anyone that he recognizes the "U.S. Marshal" who stops by with his wounded prisoner as a killer outlaw, because the outlaw knows a secret about the old man that he'd rather not have revealed as well.

Beaver Compary has some problems: There's no pass through the mountains, threre's no water and they've encountered a 10-foot ghost that looks like a monk. Doc and Jaimie find a diary in an old wrecked stagecoach, which gives apparent instructions about how to find the way out of the dry valley in which the wagon train is trapped with Linc way overdue to return. Then Jaimie decides to go looking for the mysterious robed figure that is occasionally seen up on the hill. Jaimie, and Doc following after him, discover an amazing secret.

Jaimie and Linc come across a bounty hunter and his prisoner, a mountain man who he is bringing in to hang. The mountain man talks Jaimie into releasing him with a tall tale of a fortune in gold over the hill.

A traveling fortune teller plans to pass off Jaimie as the long-missing son of a couple who is offering a large reward for his return. To do this, he convinces Jaimie that he is destined to accidentally kill his own father unless he comes away with him and participates in the fraud.

Indians capture Jaimie (Kurt Russell), intending to trade him for horses. 

A father kidnaps Doc to tend his pregnant daughter (Mariette Hartley) and perhaps marry her. A group of miners come to Doc with gold nuggets and offer to show him the location of the mine if he will attend to the pregnant daughter of the camp's leader. When he hesitates, their guns give him no choice in the matter. Jaimie secretly follows him to the camp, where Doc learns that the young woman is four months from giving birth, and that the miners want him to stay with her for at least that long

When Jaimie encounters a runaway boy, they are both captured and taken to a run-down orphanage where all the boys are shackled together, beaten, and forced to work the fields. Only the female indentured servant of the ruthless headmaster is able to get to Doc and Linc and try to let them know what is going on. Linc Murdock becomes the new wagon train guide beginning with this episode.

In a lighter episode, Jaimie, stricken with a high fever due to chicken pox, conjures up the story of a sea captain and his converted ship traveling through the West, guided by only the stars at night and his wife's astrological expertise. Unfortunately the captain makes a deal with the unscrupulous Murrel and his cohort Shep which could get him into deep trouble---with the Indians as well as the crooks. Buck Coulter appears for the last time here despite his fate in the previous episode.

Jaimie finds a man with a bullet wound, and the wagon takes him in, though he is still being hunted by the bandits who shot him.

Jaimie and a young girl befriend a big, simple-minded man named Angus, who is traveling alone with his sister. Unfortunately Angus, though gentle with children and animals, has a problem controlling his temper and does not know his own strength.

When Jaimie finds an old Indian staked out and left for dead, Doc insists on bringing him in and trying to save his life, though Coulter warns him that interfering with tribal custom by doing so could put the lives of everyone on the wagon train at risk.

The Beaver Company comes across a cavalry officer whose men have been killed by the Kiowa Indians.

Jenny (Donna Anderson) faces a problem: two men she hardly knows think she'd make a perfect wife.

New passengers join Doc and Jaimie on the wagon train. 

Doc and Jaimie try to get out of Paducah and away from their creditors, but thugs capture the boy and hold him for ransom.