When wannabe cowboy Noah Odell and his widowed mother leave rainy Gold Hill, Oregon, to join Noah's flamboyant uncle Bud on a ranch in New Mexico, they find themselves in the middle of nowhere. Bud presents Noah with a cantankerous mule named Brimstone, and the adventures begin. Green space monsters, eccentric Apache college professors, jackalopes, royal Spanish ghosts, and an inept gang of local bullies assure that the days are never dull, especially when the U.S. Army lawyers and MPs try to confiscate Bud's ranch to expand a top-secret rocket-testing facility at nearby White Sands Proving Ground.