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 believes there is something very corrupt about a town that tries a horse thief, and sentences him to hang within hours of his capture.

A mortally wounded soldier stumbles into Johnny's camp. Before he dies, he says only one thing: "Fort Concho." Johnny rides to the fort and discovers it empty of soldiers. The sole survivor is a coward who hid during the fighting and survived--knowing Indians do not harm the mentally infirm--by pretending to be crazy. Before Johnny can leave, he's captured by Kiowas who plan to torture him to death.

Yuma is accosted by two ex Yankee Prisoners seeking to take gold from a Captain Pollack who later Yuma learns is a demented ex-Confederate prison officer who hoards prisoner mined gold with which he plans to reverse the outcome of the war.

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.

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.

Realizing Yuma is literate and in admiration of his ability to stand up to illiterate Armbruster family, Liam O'Shea offers Yuma a temporary schoolmaster job and he gains the affection of Peggy of which Troy Armbruster is jealous.

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.

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.

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 arrested for vagrancy upon arrival in town put on a road gang of a group of men that the corrupt sheriff has falsely arrested for vagrancy to work on projects without wages and he immediately starts leading a plan to escape.

Yuma arrives in a town in which the local editor checks guns and, when he checks Johnny's, one is discovered missing. It is learned Ted Keller has taken the gun to settle a perceived injustice to his father.

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 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.

After seeing a man kill his Indian wife over gold, Yuma tries to take him to the nearest fort for trial, but the Indian Chief and father of the murdered woman captures them, and Yuma must convince him that he did not kill her.

Glory, a saloon girl, has been banished from town for murder without trial. Yuma offers to help her but while in town he runs afoul of Emma Longdon who has falsely accused Glory to keep her from her brother Don.

Yuma rescues old Sam Amister from thieves and takes him to his hometown where Yuma learns Amister is hated for grave robbery but Yuma expects there is more to his grave digging than just stealing valuables.

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.

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

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.

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.

Yuma is befriended by a married couple who perform a shooting act. When the alienated wife forces her affections upon Johnny to persuade him to run away with her, the obsessive husband vows to kill him.

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.

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.