Bonanza

- Season 3

(1961)

The brother of a man Hoss killed in self-defense says he understands but secretly plans revenge.

When their spring-fever antics injure miserly businessman, Jedediah Milbank, requiring recuperation at the Ponderosa, Ben orders each of his sons to carry out one of Mr. Milbank's seemingly simple tasks, unaware that they may prove impossible for the kind-hearted Cartwright boys to complete.

The Cartwrights must try to get help for Adam, seriously wounded by an Apache bullet, and find out why Cochise and his warriors have threatened to kill them all if they don't hand over an army captain taking refuge in their trail camp.

Joe Cartwright and the young widow of a family friend are held hostage on her isolated ranch outside Platte City by the same gang that robbed Little Joe in the town bank earlier that day.

Everyone seems to think he should marry widow Hawkins - except Ben! When he is asked to assist some land buyers to Virginia City, he must put up with all the talk. Then he finds out that the buyers want to sell a rare gem known as the Burma Rarity to finance the land deal. Now Ben must work quickly to find the buyers who left town with widow Hawkins $25K she paid for the gem.

Ed Payson, a reformed gunfighter, has returned to Virginia City to tend some property he owns. When he's welcomed with resistance by some of the townspeople, Adam decides to help him, even though everyone thinks he may have killed Dave, the grocer's son.

Jennifer Flinch and her uncle Gideon come to Virginia City on the stage to see a client named Bullet Head Burke. They need to explain why his $5K investment has all been spent. Through a case of mistaken identity, now Bullet Head must figure out who is the real Gideon Flinch.

The Cartwrights convince the prison warden to free 23-year-old chain-gang convict, Danny Kid, imprisoned since he was an orphan of thirteen, and take him on as a ranch-hand to repay him for saving Little Joe from being dragged to death by a spooked horse.

Unsettling events that could spell financial ruin for the Ponderosa mysteriously coincide with the arrival of a wealthy countess who seems determined to win the love of Ben Cartwright, the man she spurned twenty years before in New Orleans.

The Cartwrights hope that time and therapy will get bronc breaker, Johnny Lightly, back in the saddle after a bad fall. But Johnny soon faces thinly veiled hostility from the young nurse sent to help him, threats from a rancher who blames Ben Cartwright for his family's calamities, and a growing fear that he may never walk again.

His search for the two men who kidnapped his bride-to-be, Su Ling, will soon take angry Chinese warlord, General Tsung, from San Francisco to the Ponderosa where Little Joe has been challenged to explain how he won the girl in a poker game.

Hoss insults a feisty Frenchman who demands satisfaction with swords, unaware that the little rogue believes himself to be the reincarnation of medieval, outlaw poet Francois Villon and is destined to suffer his namesake's fate of being sentenced to death on the gallows for murder.

Tired of being considered the baby of the family by his older brothers, Little Joe accepts a temporary job of a small town sheriff. But he soon suspects he's been set up and wants answers. Meanwhile, others are plotting a crime that could end in murder.

The Cartwrights take in a young orphaned blind girl on Christmas Eve. Will they be able to reunite her with her embittered old grandfather?

The Cartwrights play host to an eccentric old soldier friend of Ben's while trying to track down a mysterious swindler named Polk who is illegally deeding parcels of the Ponderosa to settlers looking for homesteads.

A handsome, charismatic con man sweeps Margie Owens off her feet with promises of excitement and adventure, jeopardizing Hoss Cartwright's hopes to wed the pretty rancher's daughter.

Bitterly disappointed in her husband's financial failures, genteel matriarch Deborah Banning travels to visit her friends on the Ponderosa, hoping to turn her family's fortunes around by marrying her only daughter off to a Cartwright son.

When Adam is a witness to a murderous armed robbery by masked assailants, he is absolutely convinced he knows who one of them is, but there's ultimately only one way to prove it.

While visiting the Ponderosa, Ben's old friend, sea Captain Matthew White, is forced to reveal a terrible secret after Little Joe Cartwright falls in love with and plans to wed the Captain's daughter, Laura, once a freckle-faced playmate from Joe's childhood in New Orleans, now grown into a beautiful woman.

The Cartwrights allow a shiftless man to pose as head of the ranch to prevent his Irish mother from learning the truth about him.

With tensions with a drought-stricken neighboring flatland rising, the Cartwrights decide to address the problem by helping a stubborn flatland homesteader dig a new well.

Searching for missing Ponderosa cattle, Adam Cartwright stops to aid injured rancher, Matt Grant, takes him home and stays to help his wife and son while he recovers. But Adam doesn't know that Matt is part of a gang of rustlers responsible for the missing cattle, and now that Adam can identify him, they want him dead before their next job.

Tucson gunman, Jack Groat, swore to kill Sheriff Lem Partridge for putting him in prison after a bullet from Groat's gun during a drunken street brawl accidentally killed Sheriff Partridge's wife. Now, 10 years later and fresh out of prison, Groat has tracked retired Lem Partridge to Virginia City and is soon holding Lem's son, Jimmy, and good friend Ben Cartwright hostage. But things go bad and Ben must soon explain to Lem - and try to convince himself - that there was nothing he could have done that day to stop Groat from shooting Jimmy in the back.

The Cartwright boys help cowhand Hank romance reluctant teacher Abigail.

The Cartwrights may have to take the law into their own hands when Virginia City's temporary sheriff, rancher Asa Moran, uses his new badge as a license to kill.

The Cartwrights encourage young genius, Albert Michelson, to pursue his scientific experiments while trying to discover why schoolmaster, George Norton, expelled Albert from school and seems determined to stand in the way of his appointment to the prestigious Annapolis Naval Academy.

Little Joe is his family's only hope when he escapes from a kangaroo court that has framed the Cartwrights for a bank robbery and sentenced them all to hang.

After being robbed in the desert, Adam stumbles onto a seemingly chivalrous prospector named Peter Kane, who offers him a mule and supplies for three days work. However, Kane is a demented madman who is interested in psychological torture, hoping to drive a seemingly rational man like Adam to murder. As Ben, Hoss and Little Joe try to retrace the missing Adam's footsteps, Adam must rely on his own wits to defeat Kane.

The back story behind Ben's three wives is up to Inger, Ben's second wife (and mother of Hoss). The story relates the first meeting between Ben and Inger, as Ben and a young Adam were traveling west.

Ben Cartwright and Virginia City's enigmatic new minister work together to decide which set of feuding grandparents, the Mahans or the Clarkes, will have custody of their recently orphaned twin grandchildren.

A stagecoach carrying Alexander Dubois, his daughter Michele and her fiancé Don Ricardo Fernandez is held up. Her dowry is stolen and Monsieur Dubois is injured trying to get it back. Little Joe brings them all to the Ponderosa where Dubois can recuperate from his wound. Adam and Hoss track the bandits and recover the dowry but the bandits get away and more attempts to steal it are made. The Cartwrights begin to grow suspicious of Don Fernandez and the way he seems to take all of this in stride.

Adam has a day and a half to deliver a large bankdraft. He is ambushed by an escaped convict. When he is mistaken for one of the escapees by the posse, Adam is hardpressed to prove his identity. All they want to do is hang him.

Joe is entrusted to see that Grandpa Coomb's deathbed wish is carried out. That his granddaughter is returned to the people she never knew -- the high society Harkers. Joe must teach her to be like them before they arrive as all she's known is the life of a sheepherder living in the mountains.

Susan's father is killed in a terrible accident she feels responsible for. Her inability to walk is something that Hoss hopes he can help with if the new faith healer in town proves he is more than just a charlatan.