Bonanza

- Season 2

(1960)

An outlaw gang robs Virginia City's bank and makes off with almost all of its money. The youngest member of the gang manages to get a job on the Ponderosa as a bronc-buster with the intention of informing the bank robbers of any posses that may threaten their hideout. While Ben, Adam and Hoss welcome the newcomer, Little Joe becomes suspicious of his activities.

Charlie Trent used to be an Army scout. Now he's the town drunk. Hoss helps him regain his self-esteem when he has him volunteer to lead a gold-bearing troop through the desert where there's very little water.

After a U.S. deputy marshal apparently saves Adam's life by gunning down two men who shot at him, he eventually reveals that he's in town to bring a close friend of the Cartwrights to Sacramento to testify in a statewide racketeering trial, but the deputy marshal's motives soon become suspect as to what he really wants to do with the reluctant witness.

The Cartwrights' neighbor Tom Edwards has lived as a paraplegic, ever since an accident involving Ben Cartwright and a gun. His ranch is going to waste. His wife Joyce is a longtime friend of Ben, and Ben decides to help the Edwards couple by making Tom a business proposition: the Cartwrights will build a grain mill on Edwards' land. In return, Ben only wants his investment money back, plus fifteen percent. Tom and his hired hand Ezekiel are suspicious of Ben, but Tom agrees to the deal. The Cartwright men build the mill, but tension begins to rise when Ezekiel makes ...

Jacob Darien is leading his family of Quakers through Virginia City. When he is accosted by town roughnecks, Adam Cartwright steps in with the help of his new traveling companion, Sam Bord. Adam offers to escort the wagon train across the Ponderosa, unaware that Sam is planning a robbery.

Ranchers are being killed, cattle stolen, and even after former U.S. Deputy Marshal Denver McKee sends posses after the suspects, they are never found. Meanwhile, McKee suspiciously has plenty of money to take care of his daughter and her schooling back East.

Prejudice erupts on both sides when Ben gives an Indian named Matsou and his wife some of his land, after saving Ben's life from a renegade Indian who almost killed him on the Ponderosa.

Jennifer Beale is abducted in the hopes her rich father, Joshua, the richest silver baron on the Comstock, will pay a $1M ransom. The plan unravels when the beautiful Della is killed and Hercules, who loves her, finds out who did it.

Dolly Kincaid is so fed up with her extremely dominant, controlling, sheriff father, that she runs away with her boyfriend. She later finds out he is the leader of some murderous bank robbers and when they kidnap Hoss and Joe, she still sticks with him.

Gunnar is a long-lost relative of the Cartwright family. When Gunnar arrives at the Ponderosa, the family takes him in for the evening. Gunnar is the brother to one of Ben Cartwright's late wives, Inger. Unbeknownst to the Cartwright family, Gunnar is also the leader of a band of criminals called The Comancheros. Little Joe is visiting his girlfriend away from the ranch. When Little Joe and his girlfriend are kidnapped by The Comancheros, the Cartwrights and Gunnar are forced into a difficult situation.

About to set out on a cattle drive, Ben hires a young drifter named Sam Jackson as one of his drovers. What he doesn't know is that Jackson is really outlaw Johnny Logan, who signed on to the drive because he knew it was going to pass near the town of Waycross, and Logan is determined to kill the Waycross sheriff--who is his father.

Adam rides up on some Indians wanting to harm a white woman they believed was a mountain spirit. He kills them but not before they wound him. The woman nurses him back to health but the rest of the tribe is still out there looking for her.

Angry with the way a beautiful deaf-mute girl is treated by her father, a sheepherder living in a remote mountain cabin, Little Joe takes it upon himself to teach her sign language so they can communicate better. His plan backfires when the young woman falls in love with him and the girl's brutish neighbor resents her lavishing attention on the youngest Cartwright.

Hoss mentors a lonely, mentally challenged man who, with superhuman size and strength, becomes extremely dangerous when angered. These efforts are undermined by a saloon girl who only wants this giant man-child to manipulate him.

When 16-year-old Todd Grayson arrives from Boston to Virginia City, he is told that his father has been killed by Ben Cartwright. Ben shot Luke Grayson in self-defense, but Todd won't listen to this. The boy has only one thing in his head: to avenge his father by killing Ben Cartwright.

Hoss falls prey to the wiles of a beautiful woman with a gambling addiction and refuses to believe she's only interested in his money in spite of Adam's proof to the contrary.

After Joe kills a man in self-defense who tried to set fire to the Ponderosa to clear himself some land, he has to take his lively, feisty, wild daughter home, and she and her relatives are now determined to kill Joe.

The Cartwright boys are shocked by the unexpected arrival of a beautiful young woman who claims to be Mrs. Ben Cartwright. But when Ben comes home to the Ponderosa that night, the new bride declares that he is not the man she married and the Cartwrights soon find themselves involved in what could become a fatal case of mistaken identity.

Hoss and Joe "rob" a bank for altruistic reasons and are pursued not by the law but by a more serious force, Ben and Adam.

Adam goes to Mexico to investigate the death of a friend, only to face hostile townspeople and the dead man's wife.

Hoss accidentally kills Willie the town drunk. His remorse may not be enough to stop Willie's hate-filled brother who only wants revenge even though the townspeople know it wasn't Hoss' fault.

Jock Henry is a very likeable fellow. Ask anyone. When he's given the job of collecting taxes, his peculiar methods of figuring out what people owe causes everyone to reconsider.

The Cartwrights deal with cattle rustlers.

Ross Marquette's behavior over the past few months can't be easily explained -- beating his wife, rustling cattle, robbing a stage, killing a man. Adam is determined to find out why his friend is acting so strangely before it's too late.

*SPOILERS* The Cartwrights challenge an arrogant and cruel British prizefighter, the Duke, and his alcoholic manager to a bout with John Heenan (the Benicia Boy), after the Cartwrights' meek friend J.D. gets pulverized by the Duke in a bar-fight. J.D. is adored by saloon girl Marge, but he has been too shy to return her affections. While the Cartwrights wait to see if Heenan will actually take the bout and come from San Francisco, the Duke pursues Marge and assaults her when she rebuffs him. When the manager comes to Marge's rescue, he too is beaten up by the Duke (...

Jed Trask has been with the Sierra Mail & Stage Lines for many years. When a group of gunmen in the town of Latigo cuts off delivery of the goods and mail, he goes after those responsible with the help of some on the Virginia City council - the Cartwrights.

Little Joe is off to buy a gift for his pa's birthday. He's unaware that where he is heading the local Indians are on the war path and they've got him in their gun sights.

Hoss is riding back from his sweetheart Cameo's house when he comes up on a group of men that have just killed a young couple. Hoss recognizes one of the men as his friend Jim Applegate. Hoss is torn between his friend and the law.

Hoss helps out a shy inventor who needs financial backing to build a horseless carriage. Things do not go well until a slick promoter sells shares into the new automobile. But things turn sour when the promoter skips town.

The mines in the Comstock Lode seem tapped out. With the sharp rise in unemployment, the promise of silver found in the thunderhead could mean boom or bust to everyone in Virginia City. Can the Cartwrights make sure that it's kept?

Joe is accused of murdering a girl. Her father and brothers want to hang Joe, and the Cartwrights race to prove his innocence.

Hoss gets diverted by a hydrogen-filled balloon while a family friend robs the Virginia City bank.

At the bedside of a seriously ill Adam, Ben thinks back to his days as a first mate on a sailing ship and his marriage to Adam's mother, Elizabeth Stoddard.

The Cartwrights join to help mystical blacksmith Sam Hill save the land his drunk, sea-dog father signed away to an old enemy, discover the circumstances behind his mother's death, and solve the mystery of why a tropical tree flourishes in spite of cold Nevada winters.