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A man comes into town and asks the Marshall why he doesn’t break up the bar fight going on in the nearest saloon. He says people mind their own business in Virginia City. Sam Clemens is introduced to Judge Billington and his wife. He is interested in learning more about them, at a later date. Sam walks into the newspaper office and learns a little more about the town and people in it along with how the newspaper works.

Hoss and Joe come and ask an old prospector to leave and not to spook their herds. As he is leaving, the prospector sees something black moving in the distance and decides it must be a spirit. A little later, surveyors are caught on the Ponderosa and asked to leave. The Cartwrights are suspicious that there would be surveyors and the explanation they were given didn’t seem very sound.

Sam talks to the old prospector that was on the Ponderosa in the local saloon after he buys him a couple drinks. He tells Sam about the spirit he saw and Sam listens as the story gets wilder and wilder as the old man gets drunker and drunker.

Adam and Ben are discussing the effects of the a possible land grab of the Ponderosa when Joe rushes in saying the Ponderosa is crawling with people coming to see the ‘Wild Man’ they had heard about in the newspaper. Adam goes into town to ask Sam about the story and wants him to retract it in the next issue. Sam refuses to retract it and Adam punches Sam out before leaving. The newspaper editor promises a retraction in the next edition.

On his way home from the newspaper, Adam sees a boy dressed in black and chases him down. He takes the boy home with him. Adam and Ben are talking about the possible land grab at dinner when Hop Sing runs in saying that the boy Adam picked up was in fact a girl. Adam gets the girl to come in the house and she explains how her father was murdered by men near the Truckee River. She is the ‘Wild Man’ the prospector had been talking about.

The Cartwrights find a scientist on their land the next day looking for the body of the ‘Wild Man.’ It seems instead of printing a retraction of the story, Sam, using the pen name Josh, killed off the ‘Wild Man’ instead. Meanwhile, Judge Billington and his wife are campaigning in town at the local saloon. Sam walks in and starts talking to Mrs. Billington and after their little chat, decides to write a serious piece on the election since no one seems to know that there is anyone else running against Billington.

The Cartwrights run the surveyors off their property again and catch one. They issue a warning saying that the next time they find people on their land again they might not come back alive. The Cartwrights realize that the Judge must be involved in the land grab and try to figure out a way to expose him.

Sam begins to write stories making fun of Judge Billington and he is clubbed over the head as a warning. Sam goes to get the evidence he needs to humiliate the judge once and for all. The land grabbers decide to get rid of Sam after the next newspaper article permanently. Sam is listening to a speech of Judge Billington’s and is threatened by two armed gunmen. He gets away, but they shoot at him as he runs away. The Cartwrights come to help when they hear the gunshots and as Sam writes his next article, they continue to hold the gunmen off. While Sam is finishing his story, he realizes that his pen name ‘Josh’ is not good enough and changes it to ‘Mark Twain.’ Finally the gunmen are subdued, and Clemens leaves town with a new pen name and plenty of stories to tell.