Colorado

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.

Embezzler, shill, all around confidence man S. Quentin Quale is heading west to find his fortune; he meets the crafty but simple brothers Joseph and Rusty Panello in a train station, where they steal all his money. They're heading west, too, because they've heard you can just pick the gold off the ground. Once there, they befriend an old miner named Dan Wilson whose property, Dead Man's Gulch, has no gold. They loan him their last ten dollars so he can go start life anew, and for collateral, he gives them the deed to the Gulch. Unbeknownst to Wilson, the son of his longtime rival, Terry Turner (who's also in love with his daughter, Eva), has contacted the railroad to arrange for them to build through the land, making the old man rich and hopefully resolving the feud. But the evil Red Baxter, owner of a saloon, tricks the boys out of the deed, and it's up to them - as well as Quale, who naturally finds his way out west anyway - to save the day.

A group of unlikely travelling companions find themselves on the same stagecoach to Cheyenne. They include a drunken doctor, a bar girl who's been thrown out of town, a professional gambler, a travelling liquor salesman, a banker who has decided to embezzle money, a gun-slinger out for revenge and a young woman going to join her army captain husband. All have secrets but when they are set upon by an Indian war party and then a family of outlaws, they find they must all work together if they are to stay alive.

Karl Westover, an inexperienced farm boy, runs away after unintentionally killing a neighbor, whose family pursues him for vengeance. He meets Barbarosa, a gunman of near-mythical proportions, who is himself in danger from his father-in-law Don Braulio, a wealthy Mexican rancher. Don Braulio wants Barbarosa dead for marrying his daughter against the father's will. Barbarosa reluctantly takes the clumsy Karl on as a partner, as both of them look to survive the forces lining up against them.

Two brothers discharged from the Confederate Army join a businessman for a cattle drive from Texas to Montana where they run into raiding Jayhawkers, angry Sioux, rough terrain and bad weather.

Ross Bodine and Frank Post are cowhands on Walt Buckman's R-Bar-R ranch. Bodine is older and broods a bit about how he will get along when he's too old to cowboy. Post is young and rambunctious and ambitious for a better life than wrangling cows. When one of their fellow cowboys is killed in a corral accident, Post suggests a way into a better life for himself and his friend: robbing a bank. Bodine reluctantly joins in the plan and the two contrive to rob the local bank. They make good their escape initially, but Walt Buckman and his two sons, John and Paul, are incensed at this betrayal by their own trusted employees. John and Paul set out to bring Bodine and Post to justice.

A young boy draws on the inspiration of legendary western characters to find the strength to fight an evil land baron in the old west who wants to steal his family's farm and destroy their idyllic community. When Daniel Hackett sees his father Jonas gravely wounded by the villainous Stiles, his first urge is for his family to flee the danger, and give up their life on a farm which Daniel has come to despise anyway. Going alone to a lake to try to decide what to do, he falls asleep on a boat and wakes to find himself in the wild west, in the company of such "tall tale" legends as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, John Henry and Calamity Jane. Together, they battle the same villains Daniel is facing in his "real" world, ending with a heroic confrontation in which the boy stands up to Stiles and his henchmen, and rallies his neighbors to fight back against land grabbers who want to destroy their town.

When a handful of settlers survive an Apache attack on their wagon train they must put their lives into the hands of Comanche Todd, a white man who has lived with the Comanches most of his life and is wanted for the murder of three men.