Two small boys are playing in a wood. The younger boy has a revolver and, not understanding that the gun differs from his toy pistol, plays 'highwayman' on the road and holds up a cyclist; the gun goes off, killing the cyclist.
Mr. Gray is the new Resident in Charge of the Welcome Islands in the Indian Ocean. The Islands are full of life, but the only other Europeans are the "sanctimonious, psalm-singing" brother-sister missionary team of Martha and Owen Jordans, and the Honourable Ted - a hard-drinking, womanizing social outcast whose English family pays him to stay away.
Junior and his kid brother Highpockets, who is always causing trouble, enter their dog Daisy (the Bumsteads dog moonlighting) in a pet contest, and Daisy wins doing a latin dance.
Southern California teenagers join the Mobilgas "Safety and Economy" competition, driving from the Los Angeles area to the Inland Empire, the desert, to Las Vegas, Nevada and Hoover Dam, then back home again.
The young Alberto Ruotolo leave the country cottage to go for the sharpshooter. But the command does not pull good air, three riflemen arrogant and unruly bear much disorder as anger Marshal Nero.