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.
Gene is the foreman at the ranch owned by wealthy rodeo owner Maureen. She will lose her rodeo contract unless sales improve.
Peterson has a plan to obtain all the ranches in the valley. He gives Carson a phony Spanish land grant and has him pose as the Mexican owner. When Fred and Fuzzy have their cattle stolen by Peterson's men, they quickly become involved in the scheme.
In the midst of the Civil War, Lassiter has a plan to get control of California. Working out of St. Joseph, he plans to send forged messages to the troops on the west coast via Pony Express. First he attempts to bribe Pony Express ride Roy Rogers. When Roy refuses he turns to the outlaw Johnson and his gang and this leads to trouble.
Tex and his sidekicks arrive to help out his friend Jeffers, a railroad owner, only to find that he has been killed. They quickly run into trouble with an outlaw gang in their attempt to find the mysterious ghost train that supposedly runs on Jeffer's line.
President Lincoln personally sends Bill Gibson west to see if he can stop the holdups of the needed shipments of gold. There he meets his boyhood friend Foster. When all others refuse to take out the next gold shipment due to the killings, Bill volunteers. Jeannie, afraid for his safety, tells Foster of Bill's secret route not knowing Foster is the leader of the outlaw gang.
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.
Roy returns home to fine a range feud between the cattlemen and the sheepmen. When his friend is killed he finds the rifle had a defective pin. He learns the rifle belongs to a ranch hand named Barker and that a third party has caused the feud. When he captures outlaws trying to blow up a dam, he claims Barker was the killer. But Barker has switched rifles and the outlaws now accuse Roy and Roy finds himself in trouble.
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.
His horse Champion steals the show from Gene when what's at stake is a horse race and a bull fight.
Gene Autry hunts bank robbers Al Bartlett and Trot Lucas with his old friend Mike. Bartlett, to throw off his pursuers, kills Trot and his own brother. When Kitty Bartlett comes to town claiming to be the slain Bartlett's widow, Gene has to save her from the irate townspeople who are not aware that her name isn't Bartlett but she really is the daughter of a law officer slain by Al Bartlett. Ben Luder, a local hood, tricks Bartlett back into town by saying he has to fixed to have Doc Larry Taylor do plastic surgery on him. En route they meet Doc and his assistant Helen Ellis and Ben's ruse is exposed. Bartlett kills Ben and forces Doc to drive him to the railroad. Gene, in a fight atop a runaway train, captures Bartlett.
When Tasker kills Roy Rogers he takes one of his young sons. Fifteen years later the other son Roy arrives buying a ranch in the valley where Tasker now controls the water supply. Roy organizes the ranchers for a showdown with Tasker not knowing that his brother is Tasker's chief henchman.
A singing cowboy and his sidekick rescue miners from a bad deal.
The fourth of 12 singing Westerns starring the "Silvery-Voiced Baritone," Fred Scott, Melody of the Plains begins peacefully enough with Scott, as cowboy Steve Condon, warbling Don Swander and June Hershey's "Albuquerque." The story quickly takes a rather grim turn when one of Steve's colleagues is shot and killed after selling out to a gang of rustlers. Mistakenly believing he fired the deadly shot, a dejected Steve, along with sidekick Fuzzy, goes to work for Bud's father, a rancher nearly forced into bankruptcy by a crooked land developer.
A greedy rancher is charging excessive prices for access to the area's only water supply, extorting the smaller ranchers in the area. A water diviner teams up with a cattle buyer to force the villain to share the water with his neighbors.
Finding Indians stealing from his ranch, Gene learns they are suffering from malnutrition. Store owner Martin is cheating them and now he is after the Chief's valuable necklace. When the dying chief is found, having been attacked and robbed, Martin blames Lakhona who would become the new chief. When Gene helps Lakhona they soon find themselves fleeing from the law.
Bantam-weight western star Don "Red" Barry certainly deserved his designation as "The Cowboy Cagney" in Republic's Desert Bandit. Barry is cast as two-fisted Texas Ranger Bob Crandall, who after being dishonorably discharged heads to the Mexican border to start life anew. He falls in with a gang of gun runners, headed by corrupt lawman Largo (William Haade). It turns out, of course, that Crandall's "disgrace" was merely a ruse to allow him to work undercover in bringing Largo and his minions to justice.
Radio star Gene Autry returns to his home town of Gold Ridge at the request of his old friend Pop Harrison, who wants Gene to straighten out his wayward son, Tex Harrison, whose gambling and drinking threaten to bankrupt the rodeo organization which he heads. News photographer Clementine "Clem" Benson and reporter Hack Hackett are ordered to follow Gene. The group finds quarters at the "Bar Nothing" dude ranch, winter quarters for Tex's rodeo group, and Tex soon tangles with Hackett in a quarrel.
Join Little Joe and his rootin' tootin' French pea brothers on an adventure that will take them from an abandoned mineshaft all the way to Dodge Ball City--with Little Joe's faith being tested every step of the way! It's a Wild West yarn that teaches us to keep the faith when facing hardship because, in the end, god can work all things out for good. Yee-haw!