A young Texas Man who saw his father get killed by a group of bandits, decides years later to go to work for the Pony Express. But he is not just working around the country to deliver mail, he is actually finding the bandits who murdered his father.

A fictionalized account of the real-life adventure of the Sager family. Travelling with a wagon train from Missouri to Oregon, things are going well for the Sagers, until father Sager dies from blood poisoning following an Indian attack, and mother Sager dies soon afterward from pneumonia. The leaders of the wagon train decide to send the children back, but the oldest, John (who had been described by all the adults as lazy and worthless), decides to lead his siblings through the wilderness to complete the journey their parents started.