A sheep farmer brings his new wife to his father's ranch and the old man takes an instant dislike to her.
Gambler "On-the Level" Leigh (William S. Hart) is forced to leave his high rolling lifestyle to move his ailing sister Alice (Mildred Harris) to the healing climate the mountains. Financial strain compels him to resume his favored vocation. Unfortunately for Level, the dance hall girl Coralie (Alma Rubens) doesn't take rejection well and convinces the dealer to clean him out with a "cold deck". A desperate robbery ensues, leading to Level wanted for murder!
An outlaw calling himself Passin' Through halts his "evil" ways long enough to help out some children in difficulty.
Don Diego Vega pretends to be an indolent fop as a cover for his true identity, the masked avenger Zorro. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
During the raid on an emigrant train the girl and her brother, the only survivors, are attacked by the villain who kidnaps the girl and takes her to the camp of Calamity Anne, who takes a liking to the girl and becomes her guardian angel. The girl's brother is killed and a ranger takes the locket containing the girl's picture from his neck and recognizes the girl in Calamity Anne's camp. Later, Calamity Anne holds the villain and his band at bay and the girl and the ranger make their escape. The girl and the ranger come to the spot where the girl's brother is buried and here she asks the ranger if he is going to leave her there alone. His answer is to take her into his arms.
In this story the young wife concerned is called upon to solve a rather momentous question. After separating from her husband, whom she has discovered to be a brute and a criminal, she is about to give herself to another man, believing her husband dead, when he appears before her fleeing from justice. Shall she deliver him to the law or surrender to his claims? She yields in one instance, but not in the other. Then justice intervenes.
William S. Hart directs and stars in a film that is a typical Western of the era. He plays Jim, a prospector who lands in the town of Broken Hope, and the name pretty much describes its inhabitants. Jim meets and falls in love with Jennie (Margery Wilson), whose father (Walt Whitman) is gravely ill. Jim rounds up a reluctant doctor from another town to tend to the old man, but he dies anyway. The doctor, however, gains Jennie's trust and she runs off with him. Only then does he tell her he's already married. She leaves immediately, but is too proud to go home so she finds work as a dance hall girl at Tacoma Jake's saloon. Jim, meanwhile, finds gold near Broken Hope, which raises its inhabitants' attitudes considerably. But the bad element is still there, and Jim is chasing after a group of kidnappers when he enters Tacoma Jake's saloon and sees Jennie. Jim not only overcomes the bad guys, he gets the girl, too.
When Pinto reaches her eighteenth birthday, the five wealthy Arizonans who adopted her upon the death of her parents decide that ranch life will never make a lady of her. Their old friend Pop Audry, formerly of Arizona and now a member of New York society, agrees to provide Pinto with the necessary education. Accordingly, Pinto and her cowboy nursemaid Looey are dispatched to New York where they lose Audry's address. ...
Cowboy Billy Fortune is in love with Hope Beecher, who prefers Billy's friend Ben Morgan, but resists his advances because of his fondness for drink. Hope's discontent is echoed by the town wives' public outcry against drink. To divert their interest, Billy is nominated to make love to their leader, widow Fay Bittinger, who has already disposed of four husbands....
A young man in New York has exasperated his father because of his constant carousing and irresponsibility, so his father sends him to his uncle's ranch in the west. The young man arrives in the town of Piute Pass, which is being terrorized by Tiger Lip Tompkins and his gang, the Masked Angels. The Easterner befriends a young woman whose father is being held captive by Tompkins, and he decides to help her.
Ort Hutchins is a confirmed loafer who spends all of his time fishing while his wife toils over the washtub. One day, while digging for worms, Hutch uncovers a box containing $100,000 in bills, the loot of a bank robbed in the next town. Realizing that he cannot spend the money without arousing suspicion, Hutch resigns himself to taking a job for cover. ...
Alec Lloyd, the foreman of the Sewell ranch, is nicknamed "Cupid" because of his propensity for matchmaking. When Macie Sewell returns from boarding school, Cupid himself falls victim to love, but Macie has aspirations to go to New York and become an opera singer, and so ignores his advances. However, Leroy Simpson, a poor doctor who is enamored of Macie's father's money, encourages her ambitions....
Jeremy Dice, a finisher in a New York East Side tailor shop who prides himself on being a smart dresser and dancer, proves to be cowardly when he retreats from a bully who gets fresh with his girl, and his employer discharges him. Deciding to go out west, Jeremy is caught hitching the rails and comes upon two outlaws in the desert disputing over booty; they are both killed in a shoot-out, and Jeremy is proclaimed a hero by the sheriff.....
Jack Pepper accidentally fires his gun while forcing a newspaper editor to retract his statement regarding Miss Tulip Hellier, and the sheriff goes after Jack. While hiding out, Jack finds a liquor cache on the Hellier ranch and knows it was placed there as a ruse to distract the sheriff while an outlaw gang runs dope across the border.
Two prospectors, one the father of Sky "Lightning" Bryce and the other the father of Kate Arnold, find a large gold deposit belonging to an Indian tribe. They head for home but each sends a note to their respective off-springs advising them of their good fortune. One of the fathers conceives a plan of taking a dagger and wrapping a piece of string around the blade, after which he prints on the string with a lead pencil, the exact location of their find. If something happens to them, the string goes to the son and the knife to the daughter. That night an Indian approaches their camp and blows some mysterious wolf powder which causes a man to see wolves in place of human beings. Lightning's father see his partner as a wolf and stabs him to death; later he is brought into town in a dying condition but before dying, hands the knife and the string over to the sheriff with instructions to deliver to Lightning and Kate.
Phillip Haver, who, along with his friend Toby Jones, finds David Ainslee dying in the desert. After rustlers stole his cattle, Ainslee went off in search of a lost mine and fell victim to a killer. Before he kicks the bucket, Ainslee hands Haver a poke of gold dust to pay off the mortgage on the ranch.
Dick Rainboldt (Carey) signs up to work at a gold mine without realizing that he's being hired as a strikebreaker. He takes the job primarily because of a pretty girl who lives in the town. The superintendent and manager of the mine convince Rainboldt to blow up the mine and make it appear like the strikers did it. But Rainboldt turns the tables on the plotters and reveals their scheme. The mine owner rewards him with a big assignment and the girl promises to marry him.
On a trip East, Silent Kerry falls for pretty Mary Stockdale. Later, by coincidence, she just happens to show up in his neck of the West. Her father is at the mercy of the usual gang of rustlers, and there's a jealous dance hall girl, Carmencita, who complicates matters for Kerry.
A silent Western about a rough rider, that winds up in jail and the adventure begins.
Tex Benton (cowboy star Tom Mix) wants to marry Janet McWhorter (Kathleen O'Connor), but her father (Charles K. French) will give his blessings only if Tex works on his sheep ranch. Tex, a cattleman through and through, refuses and gets his aggressions out by stirring things up at the local saloon.