The program starred Ty Hardin as Bronco Layne, a former Confederate officer who wandered the Old West, meeting such well-known individuals as Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Theodore Roosevelt, Belle Starr, Cole Younger, and John Wesley Hardin.

When the two sides came to an impasse, the network hired newcomer Ty Hardin to play the new character of Bronco Layne, but kept the title of Cheyenne.

In the eighth episode, "Freeze-Out" (December 30, 1958), a writer calling herself Mary Brown, played by Grace Raynor, hires Bronco to escort her to a ghost town in the high country, where they encounter three men amid the isolation.

As it develops, Mary is not interested so much in story ideas, but in the body of a man buried in a nearby glacier and missing gold.

Some four years before the debut of his The Virginian, James Drury plays the part of John Smith, who develops a romantic interest in Mary.