A wandering cowboy abandons his baby boy and leaves him in Dr. Mike's care.

Sully's best friend Daniel arrives for a visit, but the relationship becomes strained when Daniel offers Sully money at a time when Sully desperately needs it to save the homestead.

After Preston calls the loan due on the homestead while Sully is gone, Dr. Mike reluctantly accepts Daniel's offer to pay it off, further straining relationships. Things are also complicated because Daniel has fallen in love with Dr. Mike.

After Sgt. O'Connor is found dead at the bottom of a cliff, everyone fears that Sully died too in the fall. Dr. Mike and friends go looking for Sully. Matthew quits as sheriff. The Dog Soldiers continue raids on the town.

Dr. Mike, Matthew, Brian and Daniel find a seriously wounded Sully and move him to a cave near the homestead so they can nurse him back to health while hiding him. Dr. Mike starts working to clear Sully's name.

General Wooden is injured by dog soldiers and dies. Daniel talks with Sgt. McKay and the non-violent Indians are let free. Hank takes over as sheriff temporarily. Daniel runs for sheriff and wins. Sully and Cloud Dancing work for peace.

Dr.Mike becomes alarmed when a Russian Princess is a guest of Preston's hotel & claims she has a gift to speak with the dead.

Dr. Mike's mother and oldest sister visit for thanksgiving just as an outbreak of diphtheria hits Colorado Springs.

Dr. Mike struggles to control the diphtheria outbreak and disagrees with Andrew on whether to use a new treatment.

Dr. Mike reluctantly takes on the role of temporary judge when Horace sues Hank for accidentally breaking his nose and sets off a flurry of suits and countersuits among the town's citizens. Matthew, who has been studying the law, tips off Horace that he's legally entitled to have Hank pay his medical bills. Soon Dr. Mike finds herself in the middle of that case, as well as a property dispute between Dorothy and Grace and a claim by Loren that he was crippled and nearly drowned because of negligence at Preston's hotel.

Dr. Mike matches wits with a notorious Indian hater, Maj. Samuel Morrison, as she tries to mediate a peace treaty between Black Moon's braves and the cavalry, which would include a pardon for Sully and allow him to return home. Dying of consumption, Black Cloud agrees to surrender if his braves are allowed safe passage to the reservation. Wellend Smith, an emissary sent by President Grant, sides with the Indians, but Maj. Morrison is determined to thwart the agreement and put them in prison. Mike and Sully must look toward Sgt. McKay for support in upholding the law

After accompanying Black Moon's braves safely to the reservation, Dr. Mike and Sully begin the trip home for Christmas but are delayed when they stop to help a hapless young married couple they find wandering in the wilderness. The young couple, Chester and Hallie, are former city dwellers trying to find a new settlement established by their relatives, but are hopelessly lost. Meanwhile, Daniel, who has been wandering all his life, is tempted to give up his job as sheriff to accept an offer to run a mining operation far away from Colorado Springs.

Dr. Mike befriends a young Chinese woman who is posing as a man so that she can practice medicine in the tradition-bound Chinese community. Dr. Mike finds herself matching her medical skills against those of an elderly Cantonese herbalist when many members of a large group of Chinese passing through Colorado Springs looking for work fall victim to fever. She becomes attached to the herbalist's young assistant, whom he introduces as his grandson but who actually turns out to be his granddaughter. Both of them, and the rest of the Chinese community, are endangered by the actions of Hank, who tries to drive them from town because he fears they will cause an epidemic.

As Jake and Teresa look forward to their wedding day, Dr. Mike and Sully struggle to free Cloud Dancing, who was captured and put in prison for leaving the reservation. Dorothy is so disturbed at the thought of Cloud Dancing in jail that she contemplates helping him escape and fleeing with him into the wilderness. Meanwhile, Teresa introduces Jake to her visiting aunt, Dona Verano, and her cousin, Carlos, a priest. The visit turns sour when the older woman takes an immediate dislike to Jake and tries to prevent the marriage.

Dr. Mike grapples with her fear for Brian's safety when the youngster befriends a seemingly harmless but eccentric fellow who thinks he's a bird and covers himself with feathers in an attempt to fly. Martin Von Hoffman, the birdman, not only tries to fly, he also sleeps in a nest and literally pecks at his food when Dr. Mike invites him home for dinner. To her alarm, Martin turns out to be an escapee from a New York insane asylum. She is torn between returning him to the asylum or allowing him to carry on his self-deception in peace.

U.S. Marshall Elias Burch asks Matthew, still a student of law, to defend him when he's accused of murder. Daniel is forced to arrest Burch for killing Exner, an ex-con whom he had been pursuing. Rather than accept a traveling defense attorney with a drinking problem, Burch asks Matthew to defend him, claiming he was framed. But, a fiction writer who had been traveling with Exner claims to be an eyewitness, having seen Burch shoot the man in cold blood. With Burch's life in the balance and little evidence to support his claim that Exner drew a gun on him, fledgling lawyer Matthew, with help from Dr. Mike, sets out to discover what actually happened between the two sworn enemies.