Desert Bandit

During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers escape from a Union prison and head for the Mexican border. Along the way, they kill a Union courier bearing the news that the war is over. Keeping the message a secret, the captain has his men go on and they soon find themselves in a battle with the Union search party who also is unaware of the war's end.

An Arizona frontiersman steals an Indian agent's girlfriend, followed by trouble.

Three of the original five "young guns" — Billy the Kid, Jose Chavez y Chavez, and Doc Scurlock — return in Young Guns, Part 2, which is the story of Billy the Kid and his race to safety in Old Mexico while being trailed by a group of government agents led by Pat Garrett.

Rancher Clay Travers finds and brings in the body of ranger Frank Mattison, murdered on the road to Trail City, where he had been sent to deal with an outbreak of cattle rustling. Businessman Art Kenyon, who has hired gunman Ed Martin to impersonate Mattison to further his rustling schemes, quickly changes Martin's story and has Travers framed for the ranger's murder. Managing to escape, Travers must come up with proof to clear his name and bring the true killers to justice.

Union officer Kerry Bradford escapes from a Confederate prison and races to intercept $5 million in gold destined for Confederate coffers. A Confederate sympathizer and a Mexican bandit, each with their own stake in the loot, stand in his way.

Lash goes south of the border looking for a counterfeiter, a kidnapped engraver and his daughter, and the mysterious Frontier Phantom, while Fuzzy St. John studies hypnotism.

A sheriff's son is falsely accused of murder, and a friend determines to clear his name and find the real killer.

A young boy threatens to follow in his outlaw brother's footsteps.

"Nevada" and "Weary" Pierce hijack the loot taken in a bank hold-up by Les Setter, and his gang. They escape from Sheriff Jim Henry Warner. U. S. government horse-buyer David Ward is killed by Settler's men and Settler takes his papers and goes to the ranch of Blaine and asks for the horses Ward was to buy, promising payment from the government later. He also takes an interest in Ina Blaine, much to the resentment of her sweetheart Ben Ide. "Nevada" and "Weary" are hired for the horse round-up but Setter has them and Ben arrested on a fake charge.

Cattlemen's Protective Association agent Tom Wade and his partner Happy are assigned to look into the disappearance of rancher John Carroll, who has been abducted by Carson, who wants to use his out-of-the-way ranch as a base for his smuggling operations. Complications arise as Carrol's daughter, Rita, looking for him, has an unfriendly run-in with Wade, then later is herself kidnapped by Carson.

Curley Smith, a lieutenant of the Texas Rangers, gets chased by a band of smugglers after getting caught spying on them and becomes injured. Anita, the daughter of the chief smuggler tends to him and the two of them fall in love. Dean, a member of the renegade, becomes jealous of their romance, and will do whatever he can to get rid of Curley - fair or foul.

Mountie Matt O'Brien is assigned to escort Miss Owens to a remote outpost. But when he finds an illegal mining operation there that is smuggling gold across the border, his superior Sgt. Means orders him to leave.

Veteran cowboy star Johnny Mack Brown plays a cattle buyer turned prairie sleuth in this low-budget oater from Monogram, which co-stars perennial old-timer Raymond Hatton as a retired U.S. Marshal assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a rancher. As the two old friends soon learn, a gang of smugglers headed by the town's banker (Frank LaRue) needs the use of the Flying Arrow Ranch for their nefarious purposes.

A fiercely independent cowboy arranges to have himself locked up in jail in order to then escape with an old friend who has been sentenced to the penitentiary.

Saint Charles County, Missouri, December 1863. Edmond, a prosperous French perfume merchant, decides to flee to a safer place when the storms of the American Civil War start knocking at his door, threatening the life and fortune of his family.

The Texas Rangers chase down a gang of outlaws led by Butch Cavendish, but the gang ambushes the Rangers, seemingly killing them all. One survivor is found, however, by an American Indian named Tonto, who nurses him back to health. The Ranger, donning a mask and riding a white stallion named Silver, teams up with Tonto to bring the unscrupulous gang and others of that ilk to justice.

A stranger stumbles into the desert town of Absolution with no memory of his past and a futuristic shackle around his wrist. With the help of mysterious beauty Ella and the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde, he finds himself leading an unlikely posse of cowboys, outlaws, and Apache warriors against a common enemy from beyond this world in an epic showdown for survival.

Sandy Doyle, gambler and political chief of a small border town, seeks to gain control of the Bar-X Ranch, owned by Rufe Rickson, to further some undercover activities of his own. He counts on Rickson's inability to stay away from gambling as the means to his ultimate success. Government investigator Oliver Shea and his assistant, Dan Haggerty, start a fight in Doyle's place when they see Rickson being cheated and are invited to the Bar-X where Oliver and Helen Rickson, Rufe's daughter, discover interest in each other and Dan finds himself pursued by Bell, the ranch cook. Sheriff Larson brings the prize money for the $5,000 race of the Rodeo Association, and that night it is stolen.

Rex Allen against diamond smugglers down Laredo way

Around the film hang fascinating questions about border politics, which I’ll touch on in an introduction before the screening. One of Eugene Buck’s motivations for making the film may have been his rough cross-examination during his kidnappers’ first trials, in October 1913, when defense attorneys cast him as a confused and unreliable witness against idealistic freedom fighters. On film he could reproduce the pursuit, the shootouts, his kidnapping, and his friend’s murder just as he had testified. Reenacting the crime on film may have been the best revenge—and a way to honor the sacrifice of Deputy Ortiz, a twenty-year police veteran and, for the era, a rare Mexican American lawman.