Eliza Bowker (Kristen Curry), a young girl traveling west with her parents (Hank Kendrick and Lucky Hayes) in a covered wagon, gets lost in the vast mountain wilderness. While her parents search vainly, she wanders aimlessly through the forest, alone and frightened.

A mountain lion stalks Eliza and then gives chase, but she is rescued by the grizzly bear, Ben, who frightens the vicious cat away. Eliza realizes that Ben won't hurt her and follows the bear back to Adams (Dan Haggerty).

Taking the small girl to his cabin, Adams feeds her and listens to her story of what happened. He promises to help find her parents and they begin by searching the nearby mountains.

Eliza gradually causes Adams to change his life style, convincing him to clean up his cabin and to clean himself up too. When Mad Jack (Denver Pyle) arrives, he is surprised to see the little girl there, and flabbergasted by the neatness of Adams' cabin.

With the help of Mad Jack, they finally locate Eliza's folks and there is

When a man named Cartman and his son make a camp at the valley in the mountains, Adams wants to become a great neighbor, but Cartman doesn't want any help from Adams. Things get complicated when the Cartmans' build a lean-to downwind of the campfire and endanger their lives.

While trying to rescue a raccoon, Adams is accidentally buried by a rock slide. Nakoma and Mad Jack believe that he is died, and they leave him under the rocks. Ben sadly wonders off, Nakoma and Mad Jack return to find Adams alive. In the meantime, Ben is captured by an owner of a animal circus, Mitch Morgan.

Mad Jack meets a young tenderfoot named Teddy in the wilderness, and believes that he is just a clumsy novice, which turns out to be true, when Teddy, or let's say Theodore Roosevelt, attacks Nakoma & Ben and attempts to ride Number Seven.