Following the Civil War, headstrong rancher Thomas Dunson decides to lead a perilous cattle drive from Texas to Missouri. During the exhausting journey, his persistence becomes tyrannical in the eyes of Matthew Garth, his adopted son and protégé.
A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.
Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the Old West, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between his future father-in-law, Major Terrill, and the rough and lawless Hannasseys over a valuable patch of land.
A former gunslinger is forced to take up arms again when he and his cattle crew are threatened by a corrupt lawman.
Peterson has a plan to obtain all the ranches in the valley. He gives Carson a phony Spanish land grant and has him pose as the Mexican owner. When Fred and Fuzzy have their cattle stolen by Peterson's men, they quickly become involved in the scheme.
A cattleman's association hires a range detective to track down and capture a notorious rustler known as El Lobo.
When his cattlemen abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his cowboys in order to get his herd to market in time to avoid financial disaster. The boys learn to do a man's job under Andersen's tutelage, however, neither he nor the boys know that a gang of cattle thieves is stalking them.
In 1864, during the American Civil War, Mexican cattleman Alvarez Kelly supplies the Union with cattle until unexpected circumstances force him to change his customers.
Shadrach Jones, ex-Texas State Policeman, has the ruthless determination to find and kill the man who shot his brother in the back and stole the money with which he was to buy a ranch for the two of them. At the saloon-hotel run by Adelaide, Shadrach is convinced that one of the cowhands on the Captain McKellar cattle drive to Montana is his man. He takes the job of trail-herd boss to find the killer. McKellar preaches to Jones that he should forget revenge and let the law of retribution take care of the killer. Shadrach's hard driving of the men and his hunt for the killer makes him bitterly hated, and his retribution quest ends in a manner he did not anticipated.
A young woman inherits her father's large Texas ranch and plans to begin a cattle drive to Abilene, Kansas, 1000 miles away. The crooked State Treasurer plans to attack the cattle drive and steal all of the stock so he can gain control of her ranch.
A noted gunman takes a job on a cattle ranch to stop a band of rustlers.
One man wants to control all the land in the state to graze all his cattle. His band of outlaws are raiding ranchers and homesteaders, trying to drive them out. Rocky and Fuzzy are brought in to help stop the raiders and keep the land for the small ranchers and homesteaders.
Young Travis Coates is left to take care of the family ranch with his mother and younger brother while his father goes off on a cattle drive in the 1860s. When a yellow mongrel comes for an uninvited stay with the family, Travis reluctantly adopts the dog.
When a crooked sheriff murders his employer, William "Billy the Kid" Bonney decides to avenge the death by killing the man responsible, throwing the lives of everyone around him into turmoil, and endangering the General Amnesty set up by Governor Wallace to bring peace to the New Mexico Territory.
Working as an assistant on a long cattle drive, the young Ben Mockridge contends between his dream of being a cowboy and the harsh truth of the Old West.
Cattle baron Matt Devereaux raids a copper smelter that is polluting his water, then divides his property among his sons. Son Joe takes responsibility for the raid and gets three years in prison. Matt dies from a stroke partly caused by his rebellious sons and when Joe gets out he plans revenge.
Mortimer builds a fence for the cattle brought by Ken Morley. To retaliate, Slater who wants access to the land, builds a dam cutting off Mortimer's water supply. When Ken confronts Slater, he is captured. Then lightning destroys the dam and Ken, imprisoned in a shack, is in the path of the oncoming water.
Captain Porter's scheme is to buy livestock and then have his men show up later to kill the buyer and retrieve the money. When his men kill the next victim, he frames the Arizonian for the murder. The Arizonian escapes the law and joins up with the outlaw Vasquez. Knowing Porter's scheme, he plans to trap him by using Vasquez as the next buyer.
A drought is about to end the cattle business. The owner of a canning factory wants to buy all the remaining cattle cheap. He plans to ruin the cattlemen's plans to ship water by train and to seed the clouds for rain. Roy is sent by a packing house to investigate.
A cattle baron takes in an orphaned boy and raises him, causing his own son to resent the boy. As they get older the resentment festers into hatred, and eventually the real son frames his stepbrother for fathering an illegitimate child that is actually his, seeing it as an opportunity to get his half-brother out of the way so he can have his father's empire all to himself.