Add
Private Notes
To explain to a young boy why he tries not to kill in gunfights, Vint relates to him the story of his grandfather, and how he dealt with a young hoodlum bent on revenge.
After a minister and his wife are killed by Yaqui renegades, their young son vows to avenge their deaths by killing 200 of the tribe. Vint hopes to talk some sense into the boy before it's too late.
At the dying request of an old buffalo hunter friend, Vint brings the man's uneducated, unkempt, and poorly mannered daughter to town with him in the hopes of transforming her into a lady.
Vint and a sheriff locate two Mexicans they have been pursuing for horse stealing. One escapes, but Vint is shocked to witness the sheriff shoot down the other one while he has his hands up. Vint decides to continue the pursuit of the other thief, if only to make sure he is brought in alive. When he locates the man, along with his beautiful sister, he learns the sheriff has been lying to him about many things.
A cocky and cynical young man who just came into town looking for a saloon woman is the main suspect when a robbery takes place, but is released as there are no witnesses to identify him. The teenage daughter of Vint's rancher friend is smitten with the young man, much to her father's chagrin. Vint tries to see if he can change the hotheaded youth or else discourage the girl from him.
Bonner persuades Chief Tashuka to honour the treaty with the white man by handing over two braves who are suspected of robbery. Unfortunately for Bonner, the chief's daughter Running Fawn takes a shine to Bonner and follows him to town. By Indian law Bonner is to marry the girl and reluctantly agrees to prevent a war. However when Bonner sees how beautiful Running Fawn is he uses an Indian custom to lose her to a brave.
While riding in an area where road agents have recently held up a stage and killed three men, Vint is himself held up by a rather inept would-be road agent, who happens to be a young woman, and who manages to save his life.
Vint learns that a gambling house worker he knows is the daughter of a Quaker couple who believe she is dead. The girl is in an abusive relationship with the owner of the gambling house, who will not let her leave him.
Vint brings an orphaned Southern boy to live with his Northern uncle's family. But the boy still has resentments toward the North, and is angry that his uncle fought on a different side from his father, who was killed in the war.
After being forced to kill a young hood in self defense, Vint rides to the man's sister's ranch, only to find she has already put out a bounty on him for shooting her brother in the back. Since she does not know who he is, Vint works for her under a different name, until he can convince her the killing did not happen in the way she was told.
A priest asks Vint to accompany him, along with two nuns, to check on the status of a mission in the midst of hostile Indian territory. Vint agrees, even though he knows that whites are forbidden in the area and are not known to have ever returned alive.
Vint's friend Olaf Burland plans to take his newly earned money back to his farm in native Minnesota, but Vint fears that the gullible Olaf will be easy prey for some who want to separate him from the money and will use any trick to do it. A crooked trail hand and a saloon owner plan to do just that, with the help of a saloon hostess who actually has desires similar to Olaf's.
An artist begins painting a portrait of a saloon girl, much to the displeasure of the owner of the saloon, who regards her as his woman, and thinks that the portrait, which will be hung on his wall, will show more of her than he wants to share with others.
Vint takes the son of an ex-gunfighter friend out of a saloon where the young man was in danger of losing all the money he had just received from his first trail drive. The boy is ashamed of his father's past and refuses to go back with Vint, but lets Vint take the money back to his father. When Vint comes to the father's ranch he learns that the boy has been killed, that he has been accused of the murder, and that the father plans to avenge his son's death in a showdown with him.
Vint is infuriated when he learns that a young woman has taken his horse Scar for a joyride, but his anger quickly evaporates when he meets the girl, and soon falls in love with her.
A rancher, a former major in the Confederate Army, asks Vint to hire on as a ramrod, to be paired with another ramrod whom Vint dislikes. Vint soon learns that the other ramrod has plans to take the ranch for himself, taking advantage of an embarrassing secret he has learned about the Major.
Vint is deputized by a U.S. Marshal and sent to serve notice on a German baron for having a cannon on his land. But the Baron, who has only recently acquired the title, insists he is within his constitutional rights, and sticks Vint in a jail cell. But Vint turns the tables on him.
Vint is deliberately framed for a bank robbery and murder.
Vint accompanies three cavalry officers to the shack of a stubborn old Confederate, whom the officers suspect of holding a gold shipment stolen twenty years ago during the Civil War. Vint is surprised to find that the old man does have the gold, that his place is fortified with cannons and Gatling guns, and that the only way he'll give back the gold is if the Northern officers surrender---to him.
Vint visits a former girlfriend, though she is now married, and her husband is now paralyzed and unable to speak, a fact for which she blames herself. Nearby a posse is hunting a ruthless killer who is known to be in the area.
A young woman meets Vint on the trail and tries to hire him to guide her to Abilene, but she changes her mind after her husband and two other men meet them and threaten Vint. Later Vint learns from her that the two men with her husband are killers. Her husband is working with them, planning to rob the bank when a gold shipment comes in.
An old medicine peddler has symptoms which could be serious, but refuses to go to the town doctor to have it checked. The peddler also sells quack medicines to a man who's been told by the doctor to stop drinking for his health's sake. Trouble brews.
Local ranchers are in arms over a series of cattle rustlings, all involving just a few calves taken at a time, and they are blaming the thefts on homesteaders. Vint, assisting the sheriff in looking for the culprits and avoiding bloodshed, is staying at the home of the two elderly Sweet sisters, both animal lovers who are vegetarians and don't believe in raising cows to be killed.
Vint comes to the town of Bluefield to investigate the death of a friend. He learns that the man was murdered for trying to organize small land owners against the town boss who has been using his gunfighter son to intimidate them into making him a partner in their ranch, then forcing them out or killing them. But getting the town boss convicted will not be so easy.
An old friend of Vint's has been jailed after being caught with a band of rustlers, and is likely to be hanged if he doesn't tell where the other rustlers are. But he is unwilling to because he fears that his compatriots will harm his deaf-mute daughter if they think he's told on them.
Vint helps search for a killer, a young man he helped raise, hoping to get him to trial before a lynch mob gets him. He has to contend with the man's ex-girlfriend, who still believes him to be innocent.
Old Matt Harper spent many years in prison for a bank robbery he did not commit. The state is now offering him compensation, but he refuses to take it, believing the state owes him a bank robbery.
Vint Bonner arrives in the town of Toredo to be best man at his friend, Dave Regan's wedding. Vint soon discovers that Dave has been shot in the back and that the town, led by the new sheriff Ben Webster, are looking for his supposed killer, Vance Carter. It is left to Vint to find the truth and lay a trap for the real killer.
A tough-talking lady blacksmith asks Vint to accompany her grandson, who has been educated in a fancy Eastern school, as he comes home on the stage. But the boy has been educated a bit too properly, as he is not ready for and contemptuous of the kind of life his grandmother has been living and the poor Mexican children around her.
When Vint stands up for saloon owner Fern Foster against abuse from townsfolk, a judge gives him 60 days to turn her into a lady---and threatens him with jail if he's not successful. Fern's husband, an outlaw, may complicate matters.
Bonner is sent for by Don Tomas Verdes, a Mexican ranch owner, to help him convince his son to stop riding with an outlaw gang. Bonner joins the outlaws to try and bring the boy to his senses.
After Jenny May McElroy's husband was killed in a gunfight, no one in town would give her a job to support her children, except for the saloon owner, who hired her as a bookkeeper. Because of this some of the "proper" townspeople want to take her children and make them wards of the state. They also want to fire the schoolteacher, the only other person in town who supports Jenny May.
Stopping see an old friend, Vint learns that the man has been charged with killing the town sheriff. After a farcical trial in a saloon presided over by a drunken judge, the man is sentenced to hang the next day. With the help of his friend's young son, Vint sets out to prove him innocent in the little time allowed.
An English journalist asks Vint to accompany him as he researches the West for material for his book, but actually he has other plans.
Vint tries to help an old newspaper editor in his crusade against three corrupt officials---the town's mayor, sheriff, and judge, as well as the gunman they've been using as their enforcer.
In the series' final episode, Vint is visiting a doctor friend when an unconscious and badly beaten boy is dropped at the door. A witness leads them to suspect a religious fanatic, and when Vint and the doctor check into it, they find a marked grave with only a log inside.
