Louis L'Amour's The Cherokee Trail (1981)

Dan Evans, a small time farmer, is hired to escort Ben Wade, a dangerous outlaw, to Yuma. As Evans and Wade wait for the 3:10 train to Yuma, Wade's gang is racing to free him.

In the Oklahoma territory at the turn of the twentieth century, two young cowboys vie with a violent ranch hand and a traveling peddler for the hearts of the women they love.

In the 1800s frontier, Missie Davis is a bright and beautiful schoolteacher whose love for the prairie is matched only by her passion for books. When Missie encounters Grant, a handsome New England railroad executive, she feels as though she's met a hero from one of her novels.

In the mid-19th century, Senator William J. Tadlock leads a group of settlers overland in a quest to start a new settlement in the Western US. Tadlock is a highly principled and demanding taskmaster who is as hard on himself as he is on those who have joined his wagon train. He clashes with one of the new settlers, Lije Evans, who doesn't quite appreciate Tadlock's ways. Along the way, the families must face death and heartbreak and a sampling of frontier justice when one of them accidentally kills a young Indian boy.

Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins are long-time cowhands, working whatever ranch work comes their way, but "nothing they can't do from a horse." Their lives are divided between months on the range and the occasional trip into town. Monte has a long-term relationship with prostitute Martine Bernard, while Chet has fallen under the spell of the widow who owns the hardware store. Camaraderie and competition with the other cowboys fill their days, until one of the hands, Shorty Austin, loses his job and gets involved in rustling and killing. Then Monte and Chet find that their lives on the range are inexorably redirected.

Jesse W. Haywood (Don Knotts) graduates from dental school in Philadelphia in 1870 and goes west to become a frontier dentist. Penelope "Bad Penny" Cushing (Barbara Rhoades) is offered a pardon if she will track down a ring of gun smugglers. She tricks Haywood into a sham marriage as a disguise. Haywood inadvertently becomes the legendary "Doc the Haywood" after he guns down "Arnold the Kid".

A prospector sells his wife and daughter to another gold miner for the rights to a gold mine. Twenty years later, the prospector is a wealthy man who owns much of the old west town named Kingdom Come. But changes are brewing and his past is coming back to haunt him. A surveyor and his crew scouts the town as a location for a new railroad line and a young woman suddenly appears in the town and is evidently the man's daughter.

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.

A man with a grudge against the late Little Joe seeks revenge on the Cartwrights and attempts to take over the Ponderosa.

The continued Westward journey of settlers Missie and Willie Lahaye. Their roots now firmly planted as they set up homestead in the far West, Missie begins to realize her passion for teaching as Willie cares for the couple's young daughter Kathy while expanding the family ranch with a little help from sons Jeff and Matthew. When the frontier railroad comes to town, the pleasure of a long-promised visit from Missie's father Clark is suddenly offset by the tragic death of young Kathy. As the untimely demise of their beloved daughter begins to drive an emotional wedge between Missie and Willie, the devastated father unexpectedly accepts an offer made by the powerful Samuel Doros to assume the role of town sheriff. Their faith shaken and their once close-knit bond suddenly torn asunder, Missie and Willie desperately attempt to bring their crumbling family back together as son Jeff faces a series of dangers while hopelessly falling for Doros' beautiful daughter Colette.