From the life and criminal career of bushranger Dan Morgan, leading up to his violent death at the hands of police.

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!

As an escaped convict, Captain Midnight is welcomed into the Hellville band of bushrangers.

After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.

When a gang of outlaws put Andy Clyde's ranch house under siege, daughter Alice Day recruits college heart throb Ralph Graves to save daddy.

Johnny Arthur has been ordered to spend a year out west to toughen him up, so he and butler George Davis head out. The cowboys at the ranch don't like him, so Johnny and they play practical jokes on each other. However, when Virginia Vance is kidnapped, it turns out to be real desperadoes.

When wild horse Emma (Trixie the Horse) keeps opening the gates and freeing horses, ranch owner Molly (Molly Malone) hires Jimmie (Jimmie Adams) to deal with the problem. When he tames Emma, however, jealous ranch hands tie him up and kidnap Molly, so it's Emma to the rescue!

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.

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.

Outlaw Sam Hemp attempts to induce homesteader Lang Rush, faced with foreclosure due to drought, to rob the bank as restitution. The exchange escalates into a gunfight leaving Sam and his wealthy friend, Drayton, dead. Fleeing to the mountains and the refuge of a deserted shack near Singing River Lang prospects for silver. Another former homesteader, Bert Condon, trails Lang in the hope of collecting a $5,000 reward, but befriends the fugitive and assists in filing Lang's claim when he strikes ore. On his return to town, Lang rescues the sheriff's daughter, Alice Thornton, from Hemp's gang and defeats their leader, L. W. Bransom, in a fistfight. He then clears himself of the murder charge and wins Alice.

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.

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. ...