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.

The Tent City Story

Ward Bond

Robert Horton

The Beauty Jamison Story

The Sakae Ito Story

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.

Around the Horn

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.

The Juan Ortega Story

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.

The Jennifer Churchill Story

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 Tobias Jones Story

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.

The Liam Fitzmorgan Story

Concerned by one of the passengers on the wagon train, a woman doctor tries to help even though she's hampered further by everyone else who shuns her. Meantime an Indian chief needs doctoring and they don't believe in female medicine men.

The Doctor Willoughby Story

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.

The Bije Wilcox Story

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.

The Millie Davis Story

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.

Flint, at a grave, sees a man stabbed in the back with a note saying Deliver to Beauty Jamison. As that is the daughter of the man interred he pays a visit and sees a woman trying to continue a legacy with the locals trying to break her.

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.

The Mary Ellen Thomas Story

When the wagon horses start to die of a disease, Adams is forced to send two men who are feuding to buy new horses with his emergency money. One of the men's horse returns without him making Adams wonder if he made a mistake.

The Dick Richardson Story

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 Kitty Angel Story

Flint, in love with a Mormon girl he can't marry, joins the confederate army. When he finds out that he won't be joining any battles and what their real purpose is, it may be too late for him and the girl he loves.

The Flint McCullough Story

Hunter Malloy and partner get jobs as drivers on the wagon train to rob their boss. Striking gold instead while stopping to repair their wagons, the fever is high as some stop to strike it rich and uncover more than just a few nuggets.

The Hunter Malloy Story

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.

The Ben Courtney Story

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.

The Ella Lindstrom Story

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.

The Last Man

Flint escorts a wagon, leaving the train, to their new home. When they meet an old man with a wagon load of uncured buffalo skins he's trying to sell, they invite him along as he appears friendly enough. But Flint feels he's too friendly.

The Old Man Charvanaugh Story

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 Annie Griffith Story

Wanting a safe escort through Indian country, a stranger rides upon the wagon train. Telling the major his reasons for being there, the truth is soon uncovered and it causes two men to come to change their lifelong habits.

The Jasper Cato Story

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.

The Vivian Carter Story

Suspecting a hurt girl he finds on the trail is part of a group of bandits, Flint cautiously helps her but soon learns she is all he suspects until her guardian is killed and Flint becomes her only protection.

The Conchita Vasquez Story

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.

The Sister Rita Story

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.

The Matthew Lowry Story

During an Indian attack on the wagon train, Major Adams spares the life of Swift Cloud, crippled son of the Indian Chief. Adams is shocked to learn that Swift Cloud's condition is the result of a vicious attack by a half-breed. The chief sends his son with the wagon train to go see a city doctor who might be able to cure him.

The Swift Cloud Story

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 Vincent Eaglewood Story

Clara Duncan joins the train in a search for her artist fiancee. But finding him could lead to trouble, as one of his missing paintings depicting a heinous crime may implicate some of the locals.

The Clara Duncan Story

Duke Le May, an escaped convict, joins the wagon train under an assumed name. When a deputy shows up to arrest him and is killed, Flint is asked to escort him to the nearest fort for trial but he does all he can to prolong that journey.

The Duke LeMay Story

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.

The Kate Parker Story

Flint must find a way to get the wagon train around a snow covered pass. On a scouting trek, he meets a father and son who are willing to help him but they want to hike up the mountain. The adventure ahead has surprises for them all.

The Steve Campden Story

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.

Chuck Wooster, Wagonmaster

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.

The Jose Maria Moran Story

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 Andrew Hale Story

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.

The Rodney Lawrence Story

Nearing the end of their trip, a mother with four beautiful daughters, all of marrying age and a wagon train full of men who are either the same or wanting to be and the Major is not off limits either.

The Steele Family

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.

The Jenny Tannen Story

The series initially starred veteran movie supporting actor Ward Bond as the wagon master, later replaced upon his death by John McIntire, and Robert Horton as the scout, subsequently replaced by lookalike Robert Fuller a year after Horton had decided to leave the series.

The series was inspired by the 1950 film Wagon Master directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr. and Ward Bond, and harkens back to the early widescreen wagon train epic The Big Trail starring John Wayne and featuring Bond in his first major screen appearance playing a supporting role. Horton's buckskin outfit as the scout in the first season of the television series resembles Wayne's, who also played the wagon train's scout in the earlier film.

The Tent City Story

Seasons8

Season 2 Episodes38

Cast2

Discussion

Episode Summary