Yancy gets a telegram from a friend that there is big trouble waiting for him in Virginia City. His silver mine is doing well, but there is a gravestone in the cemetery with Yancy's name on it.
Yancy is at a loss to figure out what's going on when learns that a marshal he knows in Missouri has charged an old wartime friend with robbery and murder.
With the city of New Orleans plagued by counterfeit money, General Hugh Morgan arrives in New Orleans with orders promoting John Colton to a post in Washington and giving Morgan command of the city.
Yancy's Indian friend Pahoo becomes an important element in efforts to prevent a war with the Pawnee tribes, as he journeys to Washington D.C. to present their grievances to Congress.
To keep a woman from stealing money in her crusade to provide a home for the city's orphans, Yancy comes up with a scheme that requires the aid of photography pioneer Mathew Brady.
Asked by Administrator Colton to investigate a series of riverboat accidents, Yancy helps a fellow riverboat owner whose fleet is being sabotaged by rivals trying to corner the market on river traffic.
With a serial killer loose in New Orleans and the authorities seemingly powerless, a group of vigilantes decides to take action before any more prominent women are murdered.
After being arrested on suspicion of complicity, Yancy becomes determined to find out who's responsible for a recent series of robberies, particularly of graves.
A messenger is sent to New Orleans by a former general in the Civil War, but is killed before he can reveal what happened to a fortune that was taken from Richmond, Virginia.
Yancy is relieved to find that the news of administrator Colton's death is premature, but fears that Colton will be the victim of trickery in an upcoming duel.
City administrator Colton entrusts Yancy with an army payroll that is to be taken to Natchez on Yancy's riverboat, the Sultana, but robbers have other plans.
Three years after the end of the American Civil War, Yancy is headed home at last to his plantation in New Orleans. But the losing players in a poker game decide to rob him of his winnings, and follow him onto the riverboat.