Series

Organized crime comes to Virginia City -- in the form of a protection racket. 

S01E32 Death at Dawn

Little Joe comes upon a gypsy girl. Frightened, she runs and falls becoming unconscious. When she wakes, they discover that she believes she is bewitched and so do her people who banished her. Her birth under a dark star has fostered this belief. Little Joe, smitten, must rescue her from this belief, her people and someone posing as a wolf. 

S01E31 Bonanza

A woman dies. Her husband is in prison, and the sheriff needs someone to look after the boy until the boy's uncle can come to claim him. The Cartwrights begin to take care of the boy at the Ponderosa. When the boy arrives at the ranch, he does not know that his father is in prison. The boy learns the truth about his dad, and news reaches the Ponderosa that the convict has escaped from prison. The Cartwrights deal with the possibility that the boy's father may be coming their way. 

S01E30 Feet of Clay

A neighboring rancher, Andy, is good friends with Ben, but his son (Todd) wants to sell their land for mining operations which will spoil the water rights agreement that Andy and Ben made years ago. 

S01E29 Bitter Water

The Cartwrights, with Hop Sing, finish a cattle drive in San Francisco. Ben warns the other men of the dangers of the big city. Nevertheless, some of the men are careless and naive. Two of the hired hands disappear, and Ben suspects that the men were shanghaied. With invaluable assistance from several of Hop Sing's cousins, the Cartwrights locate the missing men and break up the racket. 

S01E28 Francisco

Adam takes Ben's friends, Lord Marion Dunsworth and Lady Beatrice, on a hunting expedition, and they are captured by a gang of crude thieves and murderers. During one early scene, after listening to Ben reminisce, Hoss says, "Always like to hear Pa get wound up. He don't do it often."

S01E27 The LaTrophy

Ben and Adam are locked up in jail, about to be hanged for a crime they didn't commit. Joe and Hoss must find out why the witnesses to the alleged crime have perjured themselves before the execution takes place.

S01E26 The Avenger

Three deserters escaped from an Army stockade to the Ponderosa. When a captain comes looking for them, Ben realizes what they've had to deal with and promises to let his good friend in charge of that fort know the truth.

S01E25 Eto Ponderosa

Inspector Leduque comes from New Orleans to Virginia City to take Ben Cartwright back for a 20 year murder. When Ben declares publicly that he is withdrawing from the Governor's race, the townsfolk are upset not just about this but Little Joe has also been accused of gunning down Leduque's deputy in cold blood. 

S01E24 The Stranger

As is often the case on Bonanza, things are not always as they first seem. Hoss and Adam eventually learn who is the good guy and who is not. 

S01E23 DeJustice

Jeb Drummond, a ruthless and murderous sheep herder, has taken Adam hostage in a desperate attempt to force Ben to sign over a substantial section of Ponderosa land to him, leading to a tense standoff filled with danger.

S01E22 Blood on the Land

The Cartwrights try to disprove the validity of a Spanish land grant to stop the De La Cuesta family from seizing part of the Ponderosa and all of the Carson Valley settlers' homestead lands. 

S01E21 The Grant

The Cartwrights come to the aid of a Chinese-American stable hand accused of murder. Opposing them is a manipulative mayoral candidate who wants all "foreigners" to leave Virginia City. 

S01E20 The Fear Merchants

Hoss and Little Joe are mistaken for bloodthirsty hired killers in a small Texas town dominated by two feuding families. 

S01E19 The Gunmen

Season 1

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. 

S02E12 The Savage

About to set out on a cattle drive, Ben hires a young drifter named Sam Jackson as one of his drivers. 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.

S02E11 The Trail Gang

Gunnar, a long-lost relative of the Cartwright family and brother of one of Ben's late wives, arrives at the Ponderosa. Unbeknownst to them, he leads a band of criminals, The Comancheros. When Little Joe and his girlfriend are kidnapped, the Cartwrights face a difficult situation with Gunnar.

S02E10 The LaViking

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. 

S02E09 Breed of Violence

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. 

S02E08 The Abduction

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. An intense and magnetic performance by Ricardo Montalban.

S02E07 Day of Reckoning

While celebrating the return of his daughter Connie, former lawman McKee is asked to assist in the capture of an outlaw gang. While Joe is courting Connie, no one realizes that McKee is involved with the outlaws.

S02E06 Denver McKee

Adam guides a wagon train of Quakers and falls for the leader's daughter, Regina. The force Adam must employ to protect them, conflicts with their passive philosophy of life.

S02E05 The Hopefuls

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.

S02E04 The Mill

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 in town to bring a close friend of the Cartwrights to San Francisco to testify in a statewide racketeering trial, but the Deputy Marshal's motives soon become suspect as to what he really want to do with the reluctant witness. 

S02E03 Badge Without Honor

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. 

S02E02 The Mission

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. 