While out West, prospector Harry Webb makes enemies of a con artist, Mark Brenton and the con's crooked lawyer, Frank Beekman. Jack goes to the city and meets singer Janice Williams in a cabaret. They become engaged, but Brenton also has designs on her. He tricks her into going to a room to meet with him, and Webb, hearing of the scheme, follows. What he finds when he gets there is Brenton on the floor, dead, and Janice holding a gun.
Removed from an orphanage, Nance Olden is taken to live at Mother Hogan's boarding-house for crooks. There she becomes Tom Morgan's partner, helping him steal a jewel from Edward Ramsey at Union Station.
Pansy O'Donnell, a salesgirl, is given a two-week vacation at a summer resort, where she advertises clothing made by her company. The hotel clerk mistakes her for movie actress Marie La Tour, and gossip spreads that she is staying incognito.
The sheriff, Dan Beckham, and his deputy, Bud Cameron, are posting signs offering a reward for the capture of Cheyenne Harry, accused of holding up a Wells Fargo shipment. Shortly after they have tacked the sign to a tree Cheyenne Harry removes it.
Hell Bent Wade is the victim of an attack in which is wife is killed and daughter kidnapped. A couple of decades later, he is a sheriff known only as the "mysterious rider," because of his nighttime prowls in search of cattle rustlers.
Pauline Hathaway is informed on her 18th birthday by the family lawyer that she will inherit half a million dollars, provided that her behavior meets with his approval; otherwise, the money will revert to her aunt. With new clothes Pauline sets out to visit her mother's friend, Mrs. Brewster. Framed en route by a pickpocket, she is sentenced to a reformatory for 30 days. In court, however, she has been seen by Bruce Reynolds, an amateur investigator and nephew of Mrs. Brewster who is convinced of her innocence.
Strong-willed Kathleen O'Hara, believes in equality of sexes, makes a pact with her sweetheart, Jim Donahue, when they become joint owners of a California gold mine. According to the agreement, Donahue will do the housekeeping while Kathleen runs the mine; the first to call for help loses his share of the mine.
Izzy Murphy is a street vendor of scents that falls in love with the beautiful woman (Audrey Ferris) whose picture adorns the perfume bottle he sells. After resourcefully tracing the beauty (whose father(Warner Oland) manufactures the perfume to a luxury yacht, he finds himself in the company of an escaped lunatic John Miljan) who has vowed to murder the perfume manufacturer in retaliation for all the flowers that have been lost in the making of the perfume.
After the divorce of Schuyler Rutherford from his rich wife Caroline, who was his meal ticket, Schuyler's sister Kathleen is so humiliated by the fact that her penniless condition was brought to light during the court proceedings that she seeks solace in her friend, sculptress Mary Carter. Mary offers her friend a job as her secretary and, while working, she becomes acquainted with Mary's wealthy cousin Robert Winston when she overhears him denouncing parasitic girls like Kathleen. Vowing revenge, Kathleen assumes a false name and obtains a position as Robert's secretary, determined to make him fall in love with her.
When a wealthy young lady loses her inheritance, she decides to apply for work in disguise. In prim and proper working girl attire she becomes the respectable companion of a woman looking to reform her wayward nephew.
Lorenzo Carilo selects more-or-less menial jobs at which to make a living, other more "select" jobs not paying enough, and then he meets and falls in love with Vivian Forrester the daughter of a new-rich family. What's a poor boy to do? He might pose as a French Duke.
Before dying, a man's friend asks him to do his best to keep the truth that he was a robber from his son.
A reformed outlaw give up the girl because of his past.
Henry Martin receives a letter from Buck Lessen, a convict about to be released from prison, telling him that his time is up and he is going to get him for sending him to prison and marrying his sweetheart, Jane. The Martins and their young daughter move away but Buck learns where they went. Buck is hiding on the porch, planning to ambush Henry when he comes out. Two drunken cowboys ride by firing their pistols. When Henry comes outside he sees Buck's body lying in the grass, shot to death by a stray bullet.
Four heirs to a family fortune are summoned to appear at the family estate for the reading of the will, where they meet the estate's staff, which includes a nurse, a crazed doctor, and a sinister handyman.
Sonny Boy's parents are in the midst of a bitter divorce when the boy's mother talks her sister into kidnapping him because she is terrified that her husband will take the boy out of the country after the divorce.
When the painter Christopher Bean dies, some unscrupulous art dealers try to get several of his paintings cheaply from a family who have no idea of their value.
Dismissed from the church because of his seemingly undue intimacy with the schoolteacher, the young minister becomes an evangelist and, after an incident in which he thrashes the drunken sheriff, is appointed sheriff by the mayor. In the girl's home he sees a picture of her father, whom he recognizes as identical with that on a circular calling for the arrest of Idaho Mac, a notorious desperado. He promises the girl that he will never use his gun against her father, but sends his deputy, the ex-sheriff, to apprehend Idaho Mac at the border. The bandit, badly wounded by the deputy's bullets, reaches his daughter's house, and she thinks the sheriff false to his word.
Out of the talk at the Sportsmen's Club arises a wager between the globe-trotter and his friend, who bets that he will not be able, within a fixed time, to find his way out of an isolated mountain location to which he will lead him.
Two road agents hold up the stagecoach and rob the passengers. In making their getaway, one of the road agents is shot by the stage driver. They stop at a lonely cabin, where a miner's widow lives with her little daughter, and ask for aid.