Plot

Hall is after Dennison's land. The Marshal sends Tex to help Dennison while Hall hires the Shooting Kid to finish off Dennison. But the Kid has been helped by Tex in the past and changes sides. He, Tex, and the other hands then try to get Dennison's cattle past Hall's barricade and on to market.—Maurice VanAuken <mvanauken@a1access.net>

A movie either written, directed or produced, or a combination of all three, by Robert Emmett Tansey always contained several Tansey "trademarks" and this one is no different; one of his favorite devices was to write in a secondary character, usually costumed flashier than the lead actor, that was bordering on being an outlaw, but changed sides before the finale, and ending up somewhat dead. And this role was always played by some obscure actor such as Archie Ricks, Gene Alsace/Rocky Camron,(pre-Lash) Al La Rue or, in this one, Charles B. "Chuck" Wood, and they all had two things in common; they were short and, to be kind, none too good looking. This time out, Tex Allen (Tex Ritter), trailing the Shooting Kid (Charles B. "Chuck" Wood),because Tex had promised the Kid's mother back in Texas he would try to keep him on the straight and narrow, catches up with him just in time to save him from hanging as a horse thief. Tex produces ownership papers on the horse in question and tells Marshal "Happy" Jack Martin (Hal Price) that he had given the Kid the horse. The Kid rides off, promising to go straight, and the Sheriff figures Tex is just the man to help find the gang that is trying to ruin Speed Dennison (Kenne Duncan as Kenneth Duncan) and offers Tex the job. Tex gets a job on the ranch run by Dennison and his sister Laddie (Ruth Rogers) while the Kid, breaking his promise to Tex, is hired by rancher Jeff Hall (Vic Demourelle Jr., another of Tansey's short-and-ugly finds) to kill Dennison. Hall wants Dennison's ranch and Dennison will be ruined if he can't get his cattle shipped and sold by a certain date. The Kid then has a mandatory-Tansey change of heart and joins Tex and the Dennison cowhands in trying to push the cattle through a pass controlled by Hall and blocked by barbed wire. The Kid's good-guy efforts are ended by a bullet from Hall, while Tex does the same for Hall's bad-guy efforts. Tex explains to the Dennisons and the Sheriff that he is a trouble-shooter working for the railroad and Hall was an agent buying land for the railroad but wanted to keep the railroad money for himself while acquiring the Dennison land cheaply.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>