Byron Turner, a 15-year-old runaway from the Eatondale Orphan Asylum, receives a ride into the rural Missouri town of Delphi with rich land-owner Tobias Brown.

John Wyatt is a government agent sent to smash a counterfeiting operation near the Mexican border. Joining Doc Carter's medicine show they arrive in the town where Curly Joe, who once framed Carter, resides.

Rural sage Scattergood Baines (Guy Kibbee) shows big-city newsman how to solve a mystery.

When Martin Knox, a friend of Scattergood's who owns a horse-breeding farm, is killed in a harness race Scattergood tells Martin's son Dan that he will send him to college if he forgets about taking over his father's business, which was heavily mortgaged and has been put up for auction after Knox's death. The boy reluctantly agrees, but when he discovers that his favorite horse Starlight is sick, he decides to bring the animal back to health and then enter him in the Governor's Race, whose $5000 prize would enable Dan to pay off his father's mortgage and keep the business in the family.

Young Scattergood Baines arrives in the small New England town of Coldriver. Through some shrewd business maneuvering, he manages to open up a hardware store. Twenty years later he has become a prosperous and respected member of the community, a member of the local school board and the owner of a railroad that transports timber to the local sawmill. Problems begin to arise, however, when a young schoolteacher he has hired turns out to be not quite what he expected, and the mill owners pressure Scattergood to sell them his railroad, with the idea of raising the transportation fees paid to them by the local loggers.

Small-town store owner Scattergood Baines helps a runaway boy find his father, who has escaped after being unjustly imprisoned, and a young chemist who is trying to invent a color television but is being opposed by his girlfriend's father, who wants the girl to marry a pharmacist like himself instead of some crazy inventor.

A cowboy aids an orphaned girl whose cattle are being rustled by an outlaw gang.

A charismatic gunfighter who is on the run takes refuge in a frontier cattle town and attempts to help a group of ranchers against a wealthy cattle baron.

Gildersleeve has jury duty.

A card sharp steps in when a Mexican family's ranch is threatened by swindlers and cheats.