As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.
Army despatch rider Hondo Lane discovers a woman and her son living in the midst of warring Apaches, and he becomes their protector.
A Union Cavalry outfit is sent behind confederate lines in strength to destroy a rail supply center. Along with them is sent a doctor who causes instant antipathy between him and the commander. The secret plan for the mission is overheard by a southern belle who must be taken along to assure her silence.
After the Civil War, ex-Union Colonel John Henry Thomas and ex-Confederate Colonel James Langdon are leading two disparate groups of people through strife-torn Mexico. John Henry and company are bringing horses to the unpopular Mexican government for $35 a head while Langdon is leading a contingent of displaced southerners, who are looking for a new life in Mexico after losing their property to carpetbaggers. The two men are eventually forced to mend their differences in order to fight off both bandits and revolutionaries, as they try to lead their friends and kin to safety.
Lance Caldwell, a cavalry lieutenant, recounts his efforts to make peace with the Seminole Indian tribe, under an evil major.
Cardelanche, the son of an Indian chief, returns from the East to find himself rejected by his own people. He is made captain of the U.S. army when he saves a detachment of cavalry from a group of renegade Indians, and further removes himself from his race when he develops a relationship with Miriam, the daughter of the Fort Remmington commandant. Lieutenant Parkman (Walker) gets into a fight with Cardelanche when Parkman is demoted, while General Custer's troops are slaughtered by Cardelanche's people. Cardelanche decides that his true allegiance is to his own race, and gives up Miriam to return to them.
Captain Maddocks will never be promoted beyond Captain because of a mistake that he made in the past. Lt. McQuade is a green rookie who is now under the command of the tough Captain and he does not seem to be able to do anything right. Lt. McQuade also has trouble with Tracey, but it will be the renegade Indians that will test him and teach him the importance of following orders.
Curley Smith, a lieutenant of the Texas Rangers, gets chased by a band of smugglers after getting caught spying on them and becomes injured. Anita, the daughter of the chief smuggler tends to him and the two of them fall in love. Dean, a member of the renegade, becomes jealous of their romance, and will do whatever he can to get rid of Curley - fair or foul.
Soldiers Steve and Jim are friends but when their enlistment ends, Jim reenlists while Steve doesn't. Instead he takes an assignment to find the local gold rustlers. Robbing the stage and then the bank gets Steve into the gang where he plans a job that will capture the entire gang. But just as he is about to put his plan into action Jim arrives to arrest him.
In 1869, the United States begins a railroad mail service to the West Coast which proves highly tempting to train robbers, in particular an organized gang with one of the mail's supposed guardians in their pay. Prizefighter Steve Davis, a former army intelligence man, is hired to track down the gang and save the Territorial Mail Service. Steve goes undercover in territorial prison, leans Morse Code from a fellow prisoner, breaks jail, infiltrates the gang...and finds time to romance dance-hall singer Mary, who proves to have hidden depths...
A little boy is abducted by ruthless bandit gang leader El Cachal after Cachal and his men butcher the boy's family with the exception of his father. Johnny Ashley, the gunslinger father of the boy, goes searching for his son. Alas, the boy has grown up to be a mean and vicious criminal.
Captain Hunt of the cavalry is trying to promote good relations with the Indian chief Acoma. But Hunt's superiors in the military insist on pursuing policies that will provoke a conflict, and Chief Acoma is not willing to let himself be insulted.
Miraculously escaping a painful demise in the gallows, a notorious outlaw cons a crooked judge, an attractive saloon girl, and an old partner into carrying out the heist of a lifetime. As the plan gets underway, a small town sheriff makes it his personal mission to capture the outlaw and ensure that justice is served.
Though a fictionalized Western based on George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the film is almost a generic war story covering the enlistment, training, and operational deployment of a group of recruits that could take place in any time period.
After fierce war chief Ulzana and a small war party jump the reservation bent on murder and terror, an inexperienced young lieutenant is assigned to track him down.
An army major, himself guilty of cowardice, is asked to recommended soldiers for the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Mexican Border Incursion of 1916.
Captain Hayes of the mighty law enforcement squad named the Texas Rangers reached the pinnacle of his career when he captured the notorious John Henry, an outlaw cowboy, and put him behind bars. Twenty years later, upon his release, Henry is older but unrepentant. Within six hours after leaving his jail cell, he evens the score with Hayes by holding up the Bank of Texas for $20,000 in gold. Hayes, in his fury, gets himself out of retirement to take up the chase once more.
In 1883, US Cavalry lieutenant Matthew Hazard, newly graduated from West Point, is assigned to isolated Fort Delivery on the Mexican border of Arizona, where he meets commanding officer Teddy Mainwarring's wife Kitty, whom he later rescues from an Indian attack.
A Southern belle frees a Rebel officer and his men from a Union captain's Arizona fort.
A captured mustang remains determined to return to his herd no matter what.