The Cartwrights try to disprove the validity of a Spanish land grant to stop the De La Cuesta family from seizing part of the Ponderosa and all of the Carson Valley settlers' homestead lands.
Jim investigates an accidental killing during a robbery.
An army officer's wife, tired of the frontier, sets up a fake confrontation with the local Native Americans in hopes of getting her husband sent back east.
Hardie needs to find a home for a condemned convict's belligerent son.