Yuma stops at a bar where a bounty hunter is holding the wife of the outlaw he hopes to collect on. Seeing Yuma's descriptive resemblance to the outlaw, the bounty hunter decides upon an alternative plan---killing Yuma and passing him off as the outlaw. Will the wife go along with this idea?

Johnny Yuma fulfills a promise made to a dying Union soldier. He rides into Lassiter City to return a keepsake medal to the boy's family. The mother proudly receives the medal and then asks Yuma to stay on as a cowhand.

Yuma is in town to deliver a letter to Lick Stribling when he is targeted by young Virgil Moss who wants to make his name as a gunfighter to defend his family name against the charge of cowardice.

After Yuma kills a man in self defense, he finds himself in the position of having to mediate between the man's dangerously defensive widow and his associates who include his employer and co-workers.

General Grant pays a post-war visit to the South, and Johnny tells young Jimmy the story of Lee's surrender.

Jeremy Hake receives a double blow of bad news---that his mine is worthless, and that his family is in need. Hake commits murder in a robbery attempting to help his family. Hake asks Yuma to surrender him for the reward offered for the murder and give the money to his family.

Johnny Yuma returns home one year after the war's end to find a gang of thugs have extorted a local mine and murdered his father while his father's deputy and the rest of the town live in fear and despair.

Yuma tries to saves a very ill family against a mob lead by a townsman who's calling it diphtheria, and wants to burn them out.

The Ricker family frames Yuma for a murder that one of them has committed and then arranges for Yuma to flee town before he is hanged. But Yuma refuses to leave.

A Confederate colonel and two of his marauders live in seclusion to avoid consequences of the war but the two marauders kidnap a banker's daughter and send Yuma to collect the ransom.

Yuma brings old farmer Frank Gottwald a document proving he's right in his land dispute with Dan Hauser. But since Gottwald lacks money for an appeal, and despite his bad heart, he agrees to Hauser's deal to walk his entire land in the hot sun---which could prove fatal.

Snake bit, Yuma collapses at the home of a marshal who's been targeted by hired killers. He is taken in by the marshal's wife and son. But when they are both gone, the marshal's deputy, Roader, kills the marshal on his return home and frames Yuma.

Yuma finds a trapper caught in a bear trap and takes him to cabin where he discovers the man's blind daughter who mistakes him for an enemy until the actual brigands come to steal pelts meant to pay for the woman's eye operation.

After convincing a woman living alone at her homestead that he is not an outlaw, Yuma joins forces with her to fend off marauders who have robbed a bank and killed a neighboring family.

Yuma becomes the leader teenage gang that plans to rob a bank, with the full intention of making them decide not to go through with it.

Yuma kills a man appointed sheriff by his gang leader brother who seeks revenge by intimidating the fearful townspeople into not transacting any business with him.

Yuma finds items on a dead horse and brings them to the home indicated, where he is arrested by the Sheriff for suspected murder. He is cleared but remains to defend the Mexican boy then held for the crime and being railroaded by the deputy.

After his horse is killed by Apaches, Yuma is found by a stagecoach driver. On the stage is Travers, who is blind and tormented by a previous stagecoach encounter with Apaches, in which his wife was killed when they were left by a driver.

A sadistic former Union prison guard who tortured Yuma wants revenge for the punishment he suffered when Yuma escaped from the POW camp.

Yuma happens upon a ruthless gang of drifters running out of supplies and proceeds to join in the defense of a nearby family that he has learned the gang is targeting.

Yuma visits his former commanding officer Quincy Bannister who is irrationally and overtly pursuing the prosecution of alleged murderer Newt Schofield.

A bounty hunter taking a beautiful, high class, woman in for murder at a stage depot, is poisoned to death, but Yuma is determined to finish taking her in for the dead man.

Yuma's friend Jim Colburn has been found innocent of a murder for which he was to hang. Before the news of his innocence arrived, Colburn escaped from jail with a posse unaware of his innocence in pursuit.

Yuma witnesses as Roy Shandell murders his partner to keep the money from a stage robbery. Yuma nabs Shandell and delivers him to the Socorro jail but Shandell's father uses nitroglycerin to force the son's release.

Yuma rescues Arthur Sutro, who was staked to an ant hill by Indians. Sutro tells Yuma he is responsible for him now. But Sutro wants to rob Yuma's peacefully reclusive and scholarly friend Portal of an imagined fortune of gold.