After he's accused of a series of stagecoach robberies, an innocent man has to find the real crooks.
Story follows a stagecoach ride through Old West Apache territory. On board are a cavalry man's pregnant wife, a prostitute with a broken heart, a Marshal taking in his prisoner Johnny Ringo, a crooked gambler, and the infamous Doc Holliday
Jesse W. Haywood (Don Knotts) graduates from dental school in Philadelphia in 1870 and goes west to become a frontier dentist. Penelope "Bad Penny" Cushing (Barbara Rhoades) is offered a pardon if she will track down a ring of gun smugglers. She tricks Haywood into a sham marriage as a disguise. Haywood inadvertently becomes the legendary "Doc the Haywood" after he guns down "Arnold the Kid".
Double-crossed and left without water in the desert, Cable Hogue is saved when he finds a spring. It is in just the right spot for a much needed rest stop on the local stagecoach line, and Hogue uses this to his advantage. He builds a house and makes money off the stagecoach passengers. Hildy, a prostitute from the nearest town, moves in with him. Hogue has everything going his way until the advent of the automobile ends the era of the stagecoach.
Union officer Kerry Bradford escapes from a Confederate prison and races to intercept $5 million in gold destined for Confederate coffers. A Confederate sympathizer and a Mexican bandit, each with their own stake in the loot, stand in his way.
Tom Kenyon and his sidekick Pierre La Farge are hired by rancher Mike O'Day who, with his daughters Toni and Sugar, provides wild horses for the government remount station.
Just before the Civil War (but after the South has seceded), Southern saboteurs try to prevent railroad construction from crossing Kansas to the frontier; army captain Nelson is sent out to oppose them. As the tracks push westward, Nelson must contend with increasingly violent sabotage, while trying to romance the foreman's pretty daughter Barbara.
Questions arise when Senator Stoddard attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance. As the territory's safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.
Dan Evans, a small time farmer, is hired to escort Ben Wade, a dangerous outlaw, to Yuma. As Evans and Wade wait for the 3:10 train to Yuma, Wade's gang is racing to free him.
An old Chinese man rides into the town of Abalone, Arizona and changes it forever, as the citizens see themselves reflected in the mirror of Lao's mysterious circus of mythical beasts.
When Rocklin arrives in a western town he finds that the rancher who hired him as a foreman has been murdered. He is out to solve the murder and thwart the scheming to take the ranch from its rightful owner.
The Trail Blazers are bringing in a prisoner to stand trial for bank robbery, when several attempts are made to kill him; convinced of the man's innocence, they arrange a trap for the real thieves.
After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.
Stodge City is in the grip of the Rumpo Kid and his gang. Mistaken identity again takes a hand as a 'sanitary engineer' named Marshal P. Knutt is mistaken for a law marshal. Being the conscientious sort, Marshal tries to help the town get rid of Rumpo, and a showdown is inevitable. Marshal has two aids—revenge-seeking Annie Oakley and his sanitary expertise.
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.
A Mexican bandit is about to be executed in the United States, so his brother takes over a train and holds the passengers as hostages unless his brother is released. Now both the Americans and Mexicans are baffled as to what to do. One of the passengers — who wrote the letter for their captor — has a suggestion: call mercenaries Hank Brackett and Johnny Reech. They do, and as expected they do come up with a plan, but the president of the railroad is not sure if it will work.
Bounty hunters seek shelter from a raging blizzard and get caught up in a plot of betrayal and deception.
Grant MacLaine, a former railroad troubleshooter, lost his job after letting his outlaw, the Utica Kid, escape. After spending five years wandering the west and earning his living playing the accordion, he is given a second chance by his former boss.
As prisoner Ed Archer is being transferred, the stage is attacked and crashes. Archer escapes the attackers but Ranger Rocky Lane catches up with him. As Rocky is bringing him in, Archer is attacked again. Somebody wants Archer killed and Rocky, now suspecting Archer is innocent, decides to find out who and why.
John Russell, disdained by his "respectable" fellow stagecoach passengers because he was raised by Indians, becomes their only hope for survival when they are set upon by outlaws.