The 10th season opens as Joe helps a widowed mountain woman, a recluse who is suffering from an infection that has become serious, in a battle to save her land from an unscrupulous timber baron.

While Hoss is in a remote town on business, he is arrested for murder and robbery. The town's richest man has just been killed, and the townspeople are less concerned with justice, rather the old man's money. They are convinced that if they threaten Hoss, he'll break down and tell them where he hid the fortune. A few of the town's top citizens, including the mayor, form a lynch mob, but only hang Hoss "part of the way". But when cowboy Child Barnett sees the lynch mob coming, he breaks Hoss out of jail, and the two men form a friendship on the run.

When on a cattle drive on Ponderosa land, the Cartwrights and Candy find a dying cavalry officer on the trail. With his last breath, he asks them to go help his commanding officer, Captain Harris. Riding atop a slope, they see Captain Harris and his soldiers fighting off Mexican bandits who are trying to steal the four kegs of gold hidden in the Army ambulance. The Cartwrights and Candy cut right between the soldiers and the Mexican bandits, in a spectacular chase through a little valley and wind up at a high and rocky outcrop, taking cover and assisting the soldiers.

Ben is in charge of a vicious prisoner and gets virtually no help from the cowardly citizens of the town where he is holding him from the law.

The son of a rancher to whom the Cartwrights are selling a prize bull is trying to get his father ruled mentally incompetant, and will let no one stand in his way.

Hoss and Joe's bickering leads them into taking opposite sides in the Virginia City mayoral race. Their zealous actions leads into dividing Virginia City's citizens into 2 factions that causes nothing but arguments, fights and havoc in town.

The residents of Tin Bucket claim the Cartwrights and Candy are dealing in stolen cattle hides. With most of the town accusing Joe, Hoss and Candy of various crimes, it is Ben who faces the most serious trouble when he determines who is actually responsible for the hide thefts.

A bratty 10-year-old girl named Samantha, whose mother is Ben's cousin and is a third cousin of Hoss and Little Joe, comes to the Ponderosa. While she proves to be a handful, Ben (who tracks down the girl's mother) really has his hands full when her grandfather comes to the Ponderosa demanding custody.

A white woman abducted years before by the Paiutes is reunited with her husband, who is less than pleased to learn she has given birth to an Indian baby.

In the third and final installment of the Rossi family, Georgio Rossi doesn't understand why he cannot allow Indians who have left the reservation to live on his land.

Joe and Candy win a stamping mill in a poker game, but the fact of them not knowing how to run it, is the least of their worries.

An army scout Ben once knew comes to the Ponderosa and asks Ben to stake a cattle ranch in Mira Flores, Mexico.

Hop Sing tells Hoss and Candy they can use the ancient Chinese art of fingerprinting to prove Joe is innocent of murder.

Ben agrees to hide a government witness in a land fraud case at the Ponderosa as part of the witness protection program. However, the witness - who along with eight men committed various crimes in connection with the case - is in constant danger, as his co-defendants ruthlessly track him down in an attempt to seal his silence.

Hoss offers to help Annie Laurie, a beautiful young woman who is running away from her abusive husband, a career criminal who is determined to keep his wife under his control and travel with her throughout the southwest, any which way he can.

Only the testimony of an Indian wanted for horse theft can clear Candy of murder.

Candy sets out to help a feisty and elderly British woman recover the jewels stolen from her in a stage holdup.

A neighbor of the Cartwrights threatens Hoss' fiancé, Erin - a beautiful young woman who has been raised by Indians since her childhood - when Ben allows the Paiutes to camp on Ponderosa land.

A retired Army sergeant, bitter that he never received his pension from the government, kidnaps one-time friend Candy and forces him to go along with a daring plan to blow up the U.S. mint in Carson City and hold the gold and silver for ransom.

Ben's friend is struggling to keep her newspaper going in the face of harrassment by the town boss of Gunlock, so without telling her, Ben buys the business.

The floor of the Virginia City courthouse collapses, trapping Ben in the basement with three other people, one of whom may or may not be guilty of murder.

Hoss spends his two-month vacation helping a black family get their farm in shape, and dealing with racism in the neighboring town.

Candy comes upon a soldier who is running from charges of desertion, and with Joe's help they foil a plan to sell rapid-fire rifles to the Indians.

Joe is shocked to see his ex-fiancee, Emily Anderson, in Virginia City. He had met her in Monterey five years earlier, and they had planned to get married. But her strict father thought Joe was too wild, and he burned all of Joe's letters before Emily saw them. Emily and Joe are still in love with each other, but Emily conveniently forgets to tell Joe that she is now Emily McPhail, the wife of Deputy Marshal Wade McPhail. Wade is on assignment with Marshal Calhoun to help guard a $90,000 currency shipment. Emily tells Wade they have to leave Virginia City immediately, since Joe's presence might interfere with their marriage, but he refuses to leave. He finds Joe and Emily embracing and engages with Joe in a savage fight, almost killing him at gunpoint. That is the first Joe hears of Emily's marriage. That is by no means the end of her lies, which eventually get Joe shot and nearly framed for murder.

Joe and Candy travel to Butlerville and learn that one of Ben's closest friends is burning out new settlers, whom he regards as squatters. Candy's old ex-flame is married to Jess Parker, who always saw Candy as a rival in the past, but things have changed with both men and Jess' wife Barbara. Cal Butler is the real problem: he will stop at nothing to keep Parker from testifying alive.

Feeling unloved, a Marshal's daughter runs off with a Ponderosa hand her father thinks may be related to the man that shot him.

Coley Clayborn, who has always thought his mother abandoned him and his father, thinks she is only after the gold mine he inherited when she recently returned to Virginia City.

While Ben and Hoss visit an old friend to negotiate the purchase of a mine, former Confederate soldiers arrive wanting to exact revenge on the Cartwrights' friend for starving POWs during the Civil War.

A pair of con artists swindle Ben out of nearly $30,000 after convincing the Cartwright patriarch to enter into a deal to buy his cattle. The brother and sister shoot Ben, rob the Virginia City Bank and go on the run with Little Joe hot on their trail.