It's time for the big rodeo and it's Bob of the Allen ranch against Luke Williams of the Barns ranch. With Bob leading after the first day, Sands and Trigger kidnap him to keep him from winning.
Hero Jeff Strong (Starrett) comes to the rescue of a group of victimized ranchers. The villains are a gang of crooked gamblers, who demand a valuable dam as payment for a $50,000 debt. The ranchers hope to earn the money by getting their cattle to market on time, but head bad guy Cash Fenton (Kenneth MacDonald) and his flunkey Lobo (Dick Curtis) intend to prevent this.
Hall is after Dennison's land and hires the Shooting Kid to finish him off. The Marshal sends Tex to help Dennison, but the Kid has been helped by Tex in the past and changes sides.
Dean, the Bailey County Judge, is the boss of both the outlaw gang and the Sheriff. He utilizes the state law that Sheriffs have jurisdiction only in their own county. After a raid the gang merely returns to the safety of Bailey County. The Governor sends Lawyer John Hayes. When he has no success as a Lawyer he leaves town only to return disguised as an outlaw with a scheme that will nab all the culprits.
Talbot uses a phony land grant to rule thirteen million acres, taxing everyone heavily and evicting those who won't pay. The Three Mesquiteers becomes mysterious "night riders" to fight this evil.
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.
Lightning Bill Carson and sidekick Magpie are after Burrows, the man that killed a friend of theirs. Burrows is after the Arden ranch and his gang are rustling their cattle. Bill is robbing Burrows while posing as the mysterious Phantom and it's not long before the two collide.
Ray Whitley and his Six-Bar Cowboys Band are working for a rancher named Pop, who has a weakness for goldmines. He trades his ranch for a worthless mine, but Ray and his boys, with the aid of a chorus girl named Mitzi, manage to get his ranch deed back.
Hoppy goes undercover as a gambler from the East when Bar 20 cattle are stolen by unknown rustlers. Brennan/Talbot are twin brothers (one a casino owner, the other a rancher) and Hoppy believes they provide alibis for each other while one is out committing crimes. Hoppy gets a job in the casino to learn more but is exposed when a gambling gunslinger notices him.
In this North western, a brave Canadian Mountie pursuing a gang of fur thieves finds himself drummed out of the RCMP and forced to run a gauntlet of Mountie whips. When the gang learns of this, they convince him to join them.
The bank has been robbed, the night watchman killed and the safe opened. The townspeople want John as he was the only one with the combination. Clint gets John out of town but before the mob turns ugly but the deputy is shot when he and Clint go to get John at the shack. Things look bad for John, but Clint does not believe that John did the robbery and he will look for the real crooks.
Roy and Gabby return to Gabby's Texas ranch, after fighting with the Confederate military during the American Civil War, to find that a blustery Union Colonel whom they have previously hassled is now their district commander. Unbeknownst to the Colonel, however, is that the soldiers he believes have been sent to assist him are actually Union Army rejects who have come to loot the civilian populace under the guise of reinstituting normalcy to the former Confederate district.
A "special" by Monogram standards, Lure of the Wasteland was lensed in a not inexpensive process called Telco-color. Grant Withers takes a break from his duties in the "Mister Wong" series to play Smitty, a US marshal assigned to track down $250,000 in stolen bonds.