In the early 1980's there was someone killing the children of Atlanta. Eventually a single man was caught and convicted in one of the largest manhunts in our nation's history. Ever since the case has been closed until four years later two reporters investigate charges that the original investigation was filled with errors and tainted evidence. They seek to find the truth behind the Atlanta Child Murders.

Red Mathews and his gang are out to stop the railroad from coming to Coyote Gulch. When gunslinger Thunderbolt arrives in town, Banker Wingate tries to get him to take the job of kicking the gang out of town. Attracted to Judy Lane he accepts. He Succeeds once but is then captured just as the gang rides to town to break up the ceremony honoring the railroad president.

Holly and Eric were set up on a blind date by their friends, Peter and Allison who are married. After Peter and Allison are killed in an accident, they learn that they have been named as the guardians to Peter and Allison's daughter, Sophie. So they move into their house and try their best to honor their friends' wishes. But raising a child puts a crimp on their style and they don't exactly get along.

Kelly, a prostitute, finds redemption in the town of Grantville, where she arrives working as a medium-time seller. There, she meets Griff, the police captain of the town, with whom she spends a romantic afternoon. The woman, traumatized by an experience in the past called "The Naked Kiss" by psychiatrists, finally, finds a job as a nurser in a Hospital for handicapped children, experience that allows her to find a sensitive side in caring and patiently love each one of her little patients. Apparently, Kelly will find happiness in Grant, her fiancé and Griff's partner, but she will be the witness of a shocking event that will threaten this happiness and even her mental health.

When things get hot for them in the city, gang boss Mack takes his men west to run their protection racket scheme. The FBI sends Bob Blake to investigate and he finds trouble on the Hess ranch. Touring the ranch he finds the gangsters shooting cattle. He trails them to their hideout only to be caught and made a prisoner.

Good-natured troublemaker "Cyclone" Tom Saunders is hired by a ranchers' association manager to investigate recent cattle rustling at one of their ranches and to see if a pair of nesters have anything to do with it. After discovering the nesters, pretty Betty Powell and her rickety old father, are incapable of rustling, Tom instead turns his attention to the huge, swaggering bully of a foreman, Nate Lenox.