Mary Ellen is an orphan traveling west to join family, but members of the train reject her due to her surly disposition. Her only friend is Sally Mayhew, another girl traveling west with her family dying of consumption.

Ella Lindstrom loses her husband on the wagon train ride west from Boston. With her seven children she decides to stay the course against the wishes of Major Adams. It gets more complicated when she thinks she is expecting number eight.

Major Adams allows two stowaways, Tobias Jones and his young friend Midge, to stay with the train. But Tobias is in trouble due to his drinking, and things get worse when he's accused of murder.

The Major finds an old man in the desert and takes him to the wagon train. He doesn't remember his name but when he's recognized by one of the other passengers, he remembers not just his name but the faith he thought he lost as well.

The major comes upon two Japanese men, attacked by Indians and heading towards California. He learns one of the men plans on committing hara kiri while others on the train have designs on a black box they suspect may contain precious gems.

When a big snow halts the train, several of the men disappear mysteriously with no trace of them to be found. After Flint, Major Adams, and Hawks go missing, it's up to Chuck Wooster to lead the train to safety.

Leaving the safety of their village, a group of nuns set out to help those Indians in need at a mission. Now Flint must try to help them fight some Ute Indians who don't seem to know the nuns are just there to help them.

Matthew Lowry seems timid to everyone especially a bully on the wagon train. Riding upon some cholera sick wagons in a pass, they find out who he really is and why he has been acting this way.

After his parents are killed by whites, a boy is raised by a lone Indian. Years later when the wagon train stops nearby, the Indian tells the young man to join his people. But his previous experience and with the train make him hesitate.

Millie Davis reluctantly takes in an orphaned baby girl. Eight years later the girl's grandmother arrives to retrieve her. But Millie doesn't want to give up the child, so she claims that she and Flint are the parents.

Kitty Angel finds herself not welcome on the wagon train due to her past. When Flint returns to the train toting a sick Indian baby, she has everyone's prejudices to deal with as well as this life threatening illness.

The sheriff of Bitter Springs feels he has lots of reasons to hate. When settlers from the south want to live there, he tries to take a black child he says they are just using for free labour but his reasons go much deeper than that.

A young girl is injured while on the way to San Francisco to find her famous mother who abandoned her as a baby. The crew helps her with her pending blindness and find her mother who has her own problem unknown to her daughter.

When a member of the train is placed in chains after breaking Indian law by killing a buffalo, Major Adams quarrels with Flint who quits and takes a job at nearby Tent City. But White Eagle discovers the dead buffalo and demands justice.

Flint, seeking safe passage through the mountains, is shot and losing consciousness is dragged to a cabin. Nursed back to health, his saviour finds the man who shot him was her husband and Flint had to kill him or be killed.

The wagon train pushes ahead when one of the passengers has an accident. With only a wagon between two couples, one person decides to leave with money including some gold coins. They have an accident and the storm's only getting worse.

Planning to sail to Boston, the Major, Hawks and Charlie are instead shanghaied to New Orleans where they meet a Captain who has different ideas on raising his child and running a ship.

Juan awakens to the sound of three men hanging his beloved father. Joining the wagon train, he comes across one of the three, tortured by Indians. He nurses him back to health but only under the guise of looking for the other two killers.

Liam Fitzmorgan has come from Ireland on a mission to kill an informer he believes is traveling with the train. However, his mission is complicated when he falls in love with his target's daughter.

After advertising to look for his brother Charles and offering a $5,000 reward, a member of the wagon train gets a response from someone who walks through an Indian party that's pinning them all down. What he finds is not what he expected.

Scouting for a better pass, Flint finds a mountain man, hungry and half out of his mind. With no memory, his strange behavior may endanger the entire wagon train especially when everyone feels they know who he is.

Getting set to leave the wagon train, Vivian Carter finds out a friend she knows from the train hoped for more than that. Heading to a new life and her first marriage, she's given some options and even at her age has its surprises.

An educated man from the East tags alongside the wagon train. When he offers to teach school to pay his passage, all goes well until he is kicked off the train and the kids go looking for him - and they are near an Indian camp.

The Major and party find a Pawnee Indian strung up and left to die. Back at the wagon train they find he is not who he appears to be. The mystery deepens as the Shoshonees, who hung him there, are still after him and getting closer.

Jennifer Churchill, pampered all her life, runs away from a smothering lifestyle and pending marriage, and joins the wagon train. With bounty hunters on her heels, she finds Flint, a man who she wants but doesn't want her.