Ten years after the Civil War has ended, the Governor of Texas asks Leander McNelly to form a company of Rangers to help uphold the law along the Mexican border. With a few veterans of the war, most of the recruits are young men who have little or no experience with guns or policing crime.
In the mountains and hills of Kentucky, a feud has raged for many years between the McTriggers and the Sampsons. In vain did the authorities intervene, threaten arrests and endeavor to patch up the mimic war; all these efforts were of no avail.
Professor Duane, an ethnologist, and his assistant, Roscoe Harding, plan a journey into the wilds of Hindustan. Harding is in love with Lydia, the daughter of Professor Duane, and they are engaged to be married. Lieutenant Tavish, a British army officer, is attracted to Lydia and plans to take her away from Harding by fair means or foul.
In the prophecy of a palm reading hag that he will find his fate through his bravery, Rudolph, the inn-keeper's assistant, obtains encouragement for his fond fancy that he was born to a noble career. Elsa. the pretty daughter of the inn-keeper, refuses to elope with Rudolph, and he seeks his fortune in the great world.
Penny arrives in the West by aeroplane. She is considered a suspicious character and thrown into jail. Kurt Walters, a ranch foreman and deputy sheriff, discovers that she is the same girl that his friend, Jo Gary, met in Chicago. Gary fell in love with her, but she confessed she was a thief. Since Penny claims she wants to reform, Walters releases her and sends her to live with Mrs. Kingdon. In spite of her teasing and taunts (or perhaps because of them), Walters finds himself falling in love with Penny.
A Playboy inherits a Western ranch on the condition that he shall run it properly for 6 months. A villain makes an attempt to distract him from reaching the goal, but he, no longer the wastrel of yore, persists and becomes full owner of the property.
The Desire of the Moth is a 1917 American silent western film directed by Rupert Julian
Following his mother's death, John Gregory becomes the "Eagle," a thief determined to get even with the mining company that stole his family's fortune. Breaking into the company’s head office he discovers that another robber has preceded him and killed the night guard. When he is falsely accused, Lucy the girl he loves, discovers a written confession from the real killer just before John is to be hanged and rides wildly to the jail to save his life.
A young woman goes to visit friends but mistakenly rings at the wrong address. She is greeted and taken in out of the storm by a handsome young man to whom she is immediately attracted. What she does not know, however, is that this young man has been fleeced by her father and has sworn vengeance against him.
Daisy Smith (Marceline Day), a floater and non-desirable citizen in most societies, seeks refuge on a tropical island in the South Seas. She meets Jim Curtis (Don Alvarado), another society-outcast and a piece of human driftwood, and a romance takes place that regenerates both and they sail back to the United States determined to start life anew.
Sayres and his outlaw gang operate out of a town just across the border and out of the jurisdiction of the Texas Rangers. Ranger Bob Allen is sent across the border where he poses as an outlaw hoping to lure the gang back into Texas. He gets into Sayres' gang displacing the gang boss but the disgruntled ex-boss is able to expose the hoax and Bob is made a prisoner.
Arrested for speeding by highway patrolman Bill Rolph (Robert Paige), J.W. Brady (Robert Middlemass), the president of an oil refinery, offers him the assignment to find the culprits who have wrecked his gas stations, hi-jacked his trucks and attempted to blow up his plant.
The naïve Sheila Fairfax (Brent) plays with men’s emotions without fully comprehending the risks leading to several dangerous situations from which she and the man she loves to barely escape with their lives.
An American adventure film serial comprised of fifteen episodes of two reels (24 min) each. All chapters are presumed lost.
Nocturno der Liebe
Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star of the early 1900s, made a number of films, most of them in the 1910s, which displayed her athletic skills. Most of these films were underwater fantasies, and this one was no exception. Here, Kellerman is Merilla, a mermaid who is the "Queen of the Sea." Not satisfied with being a mermaid, she wants a mortal human body with an immortal soul. She discovers she can achieve this if she saves four human lives.
The archetypical renegade Texas Ranger wages war against a drug kingpin with automatic weapons, his wits and martial arts after a gun battle leaves his partner dead. All of this inevitably culminates in a martial arts showdown between the drug lord and the ranger, and involving the woman they both love.
An officer in the British Guards takes to drink when a friend and fellow officer convinces the woman they both love that he has another woman.
Blinded in a train accident James Driscoll (Holmes Herbert), whose wife, Miriam Driscoll (Belle Bennett), has been having an affair with his young male secretary Phillip Kingston )Carroll Nye), regains his eyesight. He keeps this from his wife, who continues her affair. Finally, he invites his young niece Nancy Driscoll (Josephine Borio) in the hopes she will fall for Philip and vice-versa. His ploy works, James reveals he can see again, and husband and wife are reconciled.
In a banana republic, way south of the Texas border, a dumb-Dora American girl, Norma (Olive Borden), lets her ruby-red lips promise more than she is willing to deliver, and she finds herself a prisoner in a notorious dance-hall/brothel. But her American aviator boyfriend, Barry Blake (John Boles), is flying to her rescue. He does just that but, alas, they are quickly captured by a gang of outlaws. Possibly the many expensive pieces of jewelry she has gathered from the many male friends she has made along the way, including El Presidente, captured the outlaws' attention.