A Union soldier with a guilty conscience seeks refuge in a small church, where he confesses his wartime sins to what he thinks is a priest. Instead of absolution, he's giving a bullet in the head. The man posing as a priest is former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon. He's looking for the Union men who were at Meridian, Mississippi, where his wife was killed. His quest takes him to "Hell on Wheels," the grungy tent city that springs up around the building of the transcontinental railroad just after the Civil War. Cullen gets a job as "walking boss," overseeing a crew of former slaves. He has no experience, mind you, but is given the job by the project overseer, Mr. Johnson, after learning that Cullen once owned slaves. Johnson expects Cullen to be as much of a raging racist and asshole as he is, but Cullen was enlightened by his wife. He's a kinder, gentler sort of boss, but this means little to Elam, one of the freedmen who's disillusioned by life since the Emancipation Proclamation.
Meanwhile, there's a survey team ahead of the building site, led by a young man and his wife, Lily. They're attacked by the Cheyenne, with only Lily surviving, thanks to her quick wit and stabbing abilities. Word gets back to Thomas "Doc" Durant, the money-grubbing entrepreneur who's basically greasing the wheels of this railroad undertaking. His concern isn't for the loss of life, but possible loss of the survey team's maps.
When Johnson kills one of Elam's friends for daring to drink water out of turn, Elam plots revenge. Cullen talks him out of it. Partly because he doesn't want Elam to hang, but also because Johnson is one of the Union men who killed Cullen's wife. Cullen wants to savor the sweet, sweet revenge for himself. Turns out Johnson is onto him, and is just about to blast Cullen into the life. But first he reveals that there was another sergeant at Meridian, and he's somewhere at Hell on Wheels. Alas, Elam pops up to save Cullen and kill Johnson right before he can give up the mystery man's name.
The episode ends with Doc making a long, bizarre, meta speech to nobody in particular. It's all about lions and zebras and villains and history and his part in the grand drama he sees unfolding. It caps an otherwise kind of dull story with a big pile of crazy. Stay tuned for the full recap.