One of Kelton's riders reports that his son has been abducted by a group of Apaches led by Cochise himself. Rynning quickly organizes a posse to pursue the renegades, but their rescue mission is dogged by misfortune and, eventually, murder. The rangers begin to suspect that a member of their posse is in cahoots with the abductors, who may not be Indians after all.
Rynning orders Frank Seldom to meet a stagecoach heading from New Mexico to Wilcox, Arizona to ensure its cargo of six lovely mail-order brides arrive unscathed. Seldom has his hands full fending off marauding Apache Indians, crooked stagecoach drivers and an outlaw gang who intends to kidnap the women and sell them to white slavers in Mexico.
Rynning offers Vin Carter, Tucson's tough and honest marshal, a position in the Rangers, but Vin turns him down because of his sour relationship with the town's business community. When Carter's fiancée is seriously injured and desperately needs an operation, Vin begins to reconsider his stance on integrity.
Ben Haddock, a recently hired trail boss, is fired by Red Emerson for dating his daughter. The two men have an argument over the money owed to the foreman resulting in the Ben shooting Red and taking the money he feels he is owed. Travis rides out to arrest Haddock but is stung by a scorpion and cowhand flees leaving the ranger to die.
The economic recession afflicting Arizona after the Spanish-American War hits the young veterans returning to civilian life the hardest. A young veteran, his sister and three friends try to make a go of farming by squatting on land claimed by other homesteaders resulting in bloodshed. The sister decides to become a dance hall girl to raise enough money for the group to eat with only to find out that the hall's owner is interested in more than her ability to dance the Can-Can.
The territorial governor orders Rhynning to clean up prize fighting in Arizona. The Ranger captain focuses his attention on Barker, a promoter who offer $500 to anyone who can stay in the ring for four rounds with his champion. The problem is that, while suckers throw their money away betting on the challenger, there's nothing illegal about the promoter's activities.
A man whose wife was killed during an Indian raid is incensed when his brother takes an Apache woman to be his wife and encourages other Indians to settle in the town of which he is one of the founders. The man takes his racial prejudice so far as to hire a gang of gunslingers to drive the Indians from the town and his brother's wife along with them.
Ralph Kincaid, a wealthy rancher, catches his son, Juro, stealing money from his desk so he can pay his gambling debts and brutally beats him. The next day, the father is found murdered and the evidence seems to point to his son as the killer. During the trial, Captain Rynning discovers incontrovertible that the young man was incarcerated in another town at the time of the murder after suffering from a blackout. The ranger thinks the explanation is too pat, though, and searches for Juro's murderous accomplice.
A poker game in Nogales, Arizona turns sour when one of the participants is accused of crooked dealing. After the accused shoots the accuser and makes off with all the cash, the manhunt for the perpetrator quickly leads to an arrest - the real killer's identical twin brother. The rangers desperately search for murderer before a lynch mob hangs an innocent man.
A meek, hen-pecked bank teller is accused of complicity in a bank hold-up when he is the only employee in the bank when an outlaw gang robs the Bisbee bank. The teller is so taken with the attention and publicity his case is garnering that he refuses to admit that he had nothing to do with the crime. Rynning is convinced of the man's innocence and grants the gang's leader a 24-hour immunity to testify at the man's trial.