John has returned home after attending a Bazil Abbott slave auction at Bazil's home. John outbid Bazil for a young woman slave, which afforded him the opportunity to sit and talk with Bazil after the auction. Given his bloodied wrapped hand and bruised face when he returned home, it was clear something happened at the auction, and it was slowly revealed throughout the episode. As John was talking to Bazil about Bazil's interest in making wagers and success at buying and selling slaves, Bazil speaks on his recent encounter with one of his own runaway slaves that he's recaptured. And that slave is Clyde! So now we know why John is really there! So John decides to make a wager with Bazil, the young woman slave he just purchased up against Clyde for a game of darts. But when preparing to shoot the dart, Bazil stabs John's hand with the dart, telling him he knows John is Tom Macon's abolitionist brother!! A fight ensues, and John nearly beats him to death, with Clyde pulling him off saying they'll think he was killed by a runaway slave.
But back at home, John has yet been able to share the full story with Elizabeth, because Elizabeth has a revelation of her own to share after Boo walks in. She introduces Boo and then tells John that Kyle found Boo in their hideaway, which also means that Kyle now knows they're a station. She reveals that he won't tell, because ...well... Kyle never stopped loving her after she called off their engagement...and well...and in not so many words, John realized she slept with Kyle! John was of course very upset, and to add to that, Kyle had just come by that day trying to force himself on Elizabeth! Elizabeth ended up knocking him out with a candlestick holder and tying him up in the hideaway, where he is still tied up. John is so upset about the entire situation, asking Elizabeth to tell him everything that happened, pointing out she slept with Kyle during their engagement and with John before they were married. He says he wants to slap her and kill John, and at this point, Boo shoots a gun that barely misses John's head!! Elizabeth runs to her, and Boo says she was trying to stop the bad man from hurting Elizabeth. To which Elizabeth says he's not the bad man and hugs her. Then there's a knock on the door! More on that in a moment.
So meanwhile, Cato and Noah have fought two men and taken their horse drawn wagon full of money, as part of their plan to save Rosalee. As the two go back and forth up until they locate where Rosalee is being held, we learn a few things about Cato. He supposedly isn't doing this for Rosalee, but only because she knows where the next station is. And he has a bonnet Noah has seen him with that belongs to his daughter. It turns out Noah HAS (he corrected Noah who said he "had") a wife and daughter that were sold from the Louisiana plantation when the area transitioned from cotton to sugar. Cato ran away, tracking the wagon they were in for days, until he was dragged back.
Their plan is for Cato to ride along the building throwing out money as a distraction, while Noah saves Rosalee and meets Cato in the wagon on the other side. And this turns out to be a good plan. After August has to stop Jeremiah's men from possibly attacking and raping Rosalee, the two had a discussion about those men being focused more on satisfying their current pleasures than long term goals (which makes them prime for Cato's distraction). Which led to Jeremiah asking August to join Patty Cannon's gang, as he is a smarter catcher than the other men. August declines, saying he only plans on keeping his word of helping them find the last two of the Macon 7, and then he and Ben are returning home to his wife. Jeremiah makes a comment that implies Ben knows they do not need the money to save the land, and August goes along with it knowing he hasn't told Ben the bank is offering to pay them money, not take their land away.
Now when August stopped the men from attacking Rosalee, after they were yelling for her to take off that "white woman's" dress, Rosalee went ahead and yanked off the dress and threw it in a near by fire. August then took her into another room where he tied her to a table and left Ben to watch her. Before August walks out the room, Rosalee asks August why he protected her, and August says thanks to her dad, who's paying for her what he's paying for the other 6 combined! She asks him if Tom said she was his daughter, and August says no but the money says it all.
When Ben and Rosalee begin talking, Ben tells her his name, but when she tells him her name he says he knows because it's on the slave bill. So Rosalee begins to tell him things about her like her favorite color is yellow, to ultimately tell him in the end she's more than a runaway or $5000. In the conversation Ben also tells her he's sorry, offers her water a few times, and tries to explain they are doing it because they need the money so they won't lose their land. All the while, Rosalee is trying to get loose unsuccessfully. Later, Jeremiah comes in to give Rosalee some of Ben's clothes to put on, and gives Ben a book to read about a hunter who loses everything due to his obsession with hunting (Rosalee later asks if that hunter represents Ben's father).
Now, at some point Rosalee hallucinates Tom walking by, and it's clear it has something to do with that burning dress and the smoke it's filling the building with. Well the hallucinations continue to intensify, after Cato blows money in front of the men and Noah sneaks into the building. The men run after the money (except for two who follow Cato on horse, but when they come across the wagon pulled over and open the wagon door Cato shoots them dead with a shotgun). Even after August tells Jeremiah it's a distraction and it means Noah is about to try to take Rosalee, Jeremiah goes out to get the money leaving August to try to stop Noah from taking Rosalee by himself.
The next one to begin feeling the affect of the smoke is Ben, who starts reading the book Jeremiah gave him slower until a letter falls out of the book. Turns out it's the letter from the bank telling August they want to pay him for the land. Ben hazily begins to realize his father lied to him and pulls out a knife walking towards Rosalee. Rosalee thinks he's going to stab her, but instead he cuts her loose to let her run away.
Meanwhile, August finds himself hallucinating that Ernestine is in the building with him talking to him about how he's a hunter and will never stop even if he's in denial about being a wolf when he really is. She's slapping him with a knife in a kind of erotic fashion, to the point where the two (August and his hallucination of Ernestine) begin kissing. But more importantly, Ernestine tells him how smart and strong it turned out Rosalee is, and that she was picking Devil's Snare when August first encountered her and put it in that dress that is now burning in the building! Yep, they are on a Devil's Snare trip. Ernestine also tells him his son sees what he is doing and doesn't like it. She says his son will change him. At this point, Noah is in the room with August watching him talk to himself, but just as he is about to attack, August snaps out of it and a fight ensues between the two.
In another room, Rosalee is trying to escape the building without being seen, but when she walks into a room she hallucinates it's Tom's office and Tom's there. She goes back and forth with Tom about her being his daughter, with him yelling she can't have freedom because she's his daughter!! After she yells at him about just sitting their reading a newspaper while her arms were being whipped, the overseer who whipped her and ultimately tried to rape her before she stabbed him in the neck with a broken bottle (ultimately leading to her running away when she did) appeared in the hallucination, as well!! At one point the wounds on her arms started opening and bleeding profusely. And as Tom approached her, she ended up stabbing him. But remember this is all a hallucination she is acting out on. It turns out, she stabbed Ben!!! (I yelled out "Nooooo!!!" and even shed a tear). Ben calling out, "Pa...pa..." led August to leave his fight with Noah to find his son. And Ben was laying there with a knife in him dying in August's arms!!
Rosalee runs out of the building, and Noah runs out from the other side. They run out to find Cato, but he's not there! They're thinking he left them with the money, but he ends up riding up, though at this point Jeremiah and his men are coming towards them. Rosalee and Noah get in the wagon and they ride off, while Jeremiah and his men go to get their horses to follow after them. They come to a block in the road and have to get out and go by foot, but Cato gets his leg caught in a trap and gets hung from a tree by his leg. Rosalee has told them they have to look for a bridge, and they hear water nearby. With Jeremiah and his men approaching and shooting guns and arrows, Noah sends Rosalee ahead to find the bridge while he works on getting Cato down from the tree. With Cato shooting, Noah manages to get Cato cut down, but then Cato gets shot in the thigh with an arrow. With it seeming more likely he won't be able to make it (I had a flashback to what he did to Zeke!), Noah drops Cato's knife in front of him, and they exchange looks (I think Cato looked like he knew Noah was going to leave him but was still upset he wasn't going to try to help him, while Noah had a look like this is pretty much what you get for what you did to Zeke and pretty much his attitude the whole time). Then Noah leaves to meet up with Rosalee. Rosalee asks where Cato is, and Noah looks at her and then there's a final gunshot (there's your answer...maybe...). And the two run off to the bridge with the plan to cut the bridge down once they get over so they can't be followed.
So now, back to the knock at the Hawkes' door! It's Rosalee and Noah! Boo runs to Rosalee!