- Narrator: California in the middle 1880's. The awesome Sierra Nevada Range - an uplift so shear that geologists spoke of it as a defiant wall of granite; an impassable natural barrier to the westward movement. The Governor of California had ordered a road put through at all cost. But in addition to natural barrier, there's a human barrier. And a call for Bat Masterson, the man who became a legend in his own time.
- [first lines]
- Stagecoach Driver: Ho! End of the road.
- William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson: End of the road for now, but one day not too distant, this will be an open gate to the West.
- Stagecoach Driver: Is the elevation botherin' you?
- William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson: One day, you and I will ride across that mountain together.