The Vanishing Box Car

A lost film based on the 'Reign of Terror', a real-life series of several dozen murders committed against the Osage people. 'Tragedies of the Osage Hills' was directed by James Young Deer, the first known Native American film director, and boasted a cast of “hundreds of real Indians.” Described as a dramatic thriller interwoven with a “tender love story”, the film’s premiere in Cushing, Oklahoma occurred just months after the arrest of Ernest Burkhart, the subject of Martin Scorsese’s similarly themed 2023 film 'Killers of the Flower Moon'. The 'Cushing Daily Citizen' described 'Tragedies of the Osage Hills' as having a fictitious ending of the Osage and white men united under an American flag.

A man assists a woman to dispose of the body of her stepfather....

Publisher John Gillespie faces a financial crisis after his business partner skips town with all the firm's assets. Facing ruin, he reluctantly approaches a wealthy aunt for assistance but is met with a stony-faced refusal.

A mystery novelist meticulously creates an alibi to keep her husband from being convicted of murder.

Braggs, the young western settler, comes into view leading his broncho while he leads his little child on the horse's back. Placing the child on the ground and watering the pony, he takes his knife from his pocket to make an extra hole in the saddle strap. The knife slips and penetrates his wrist, severing an artery. His wife comes to his assistance, makes a tourniquet with strips of her apron, jumps on the broncho's back, bids her husband to care for the child and keep up courage while she rides to town for the doctor.

The lure of the white-top and the music of the band is food for the bronco buster and he is happy with plaudits of the gathered throng. The grand entry is on and all is agog with excitement as Tom and Jerry cut their capers. Just then Sheriff Ketchem rudely announces he has an attachment for an unpaid feed bill at Hebron, Ind., and proceeds to "sew" the show up.

The fascinating game of bridge has completely ensnared Mrs. Willis, the pretty young wife of a Wall Street clerk, and money that should have been spent to pay household bills is squandered on cards.

Down and out, Bob, an engineer, drifts into town. His condition excites Helen's sympathy. Using her influence, the girl secures him a position with the railroad. Rankin, Dalmore and Dougherty escape from prison. The men attempt to enter the Hobart Tower, but Helen, seizing a revolver, baffles them.

Brent, the night operator has been knocked unconscious by a piece of lumber projecting from a passing freight, and has been rendered temporarily insane. Meantime, a furious storm arises, a track walker discovers a washout and wires a warning to Helen, who sets the danger signal for the Limited which is due in ten minutes.

Brandt, a defaulting cashier, hiding in Lone Point in his effort to throw detectives off his track, cuts the wires of Helen's telephone to prevent her from calling for help, binds and gags her, and boards the outgoing Limited. Freed by Detective Sheridan, the two of them get into a gasoline speeder standing on the sidetrack and pursue the Limited.

Blake, a quarrelsome lineman, and a widower with two daughters, is in love with Helen, but she rejects his advances. Helen spies Myra, Blake's three year old daughter, who has ventured onto the tracks of the oncoming Elwood Express, and just in the nick of time, grasps the girl off the tracks, but in so doing, must leap off a trestle into a river thirty feet below

Attempting to prevent an armed robbery in the paymaster's office, Helen is bound and gagged, and the thieves escape on a hand car. With her feet still bound by wire, Helen endeavors to pursue on foot, but stumbles and falls across the rails of the track of an oncoming train.

Helen receives a cypher message about a jewel robbery and trails the yeggmen to their lair. Discovered, Helen is bound and gagged and thrown into a box car, but gets loose, and leaps to the ground from the speeding train. The crooks are captured, Helen's pluck wins Billy's heart, but, as usual, she refuses, with an eye on next week's adventure.

When Dick, an aeronaut is wrongly accused of shooting Dan, a trouble-making, quarrelsome cowboy, Helen aids his escape on the outgoing Black Diamond Express.

Whispering Smith, a railroad detective, is sent to Medicine Bend to suppress the looting of cars.

Helen, the telegraph operator at Lone Point, receives a telegram for Sydney Wayne, superintendent of the Graham Gravel plant, advising him that the plant has changed ownership and that Stanton Grey accompanied by his daughter Edith, is on his way to Lone Point to inspect the property. Wayne is startled because he has gambled away the company's money and realizes that his books will not balance. Fortune appears to favor him when Grey is carried into the station unconscious as the result of an automobile accident. He extracts Grey's wallet from his pocket but Cole, the gambler, who has trailed Wayne gets a photograph of him in the act. With the photographic evidence, the gambler tries to blackmail Wayne.

When informed by Helen that the rival railroad proposes to cross the Salt Lake's tracks, McKay, Division Superintendent, rushes a guard of men to Lone Point. This temporarily blocks the rival road's plan, but only until its force of men has been strengthened.

Their demand for money having gone unheeded, Garibaldi and his gang wreck Number One. Howard, who attempts to interfere, is battered into insensibility. The criminals then place a note in the man's pocket warning the railroad officials to heed their demands in the future.

Following the wreck of the pay-car, it is rifled by a band of conspirators. All but one of the band later succeed in making their escape from the town by automobile, but this one is forced to jump aboard a freight train to which is attached the wreck train and huge crane.

Tony, a half-breed Mexican is kicked from pillar to post, but he grasps a chance for revenge on society when he peers through the station window and sees Helen, the operator at Lone Point, opening the express company bag containing a valuable shipment to a local rancher.