Broncho Billy, through a notice posted on a tree, learns he can go free if he will give himself up. He keeps the notice, and, as he rides away, comes upon a little girl, who wandered from her mother, when an accident happened to the stage coach in which the two were riding. The mother, frantic, starts in search of her child, and meanwhile the coach drives on.
This is a story of a wealthy young man, accustomed to the gaieties of café and club life who falls in love with and marries a poor girl, who is infatuated with him. After marriage, however, the young man fails to give up his fast friends and continues to live his gay life. The wife is unhappy and one night when her husband returns home intoxicated, she packs her grip and quits the house. She goes to a railroad station and while waiting for a train, faints. She is taken to the station hospital. The husband awakens and finds his wife gone.
Jim Maitland loses his last cent gambling the Double Stamp saloon and gambling hall, and shortly after it closes, he robs the proprietors "Keno" Bates and "Wind River"are robbed, at gunpoint. After the surprise, they track Maitland down, and Keno shoots him dead on self defense. Keno goes through his belongings and finds a letter and a locket; the letter announces the arrival of the deceased's sister, and the locket has a cameo picture of Doris Maitland. Thus, Keno tells Wind River they must do a heap of lying. Meeting the girl at the stagecoach's arrival, Keeno feels responsible for the innocent and attractive Ms. Maitland; he tells her a white lie, that her brother was a good man, "killed in a mine accident," who had left her a cabin and money - and Keno turns his own cabin over to Doris. Keno and Doris began to fall in love. Anita, a dance-hall girl, aggressively tries to seduce Keno.
Pinto Ben is a pink-nosed cow-pony. A hundred head of cattle are rounded up for beef to be shipped alive to Chicago. Ben and his master, with Segundo Jim, are put in charge. In the Chicago stockyards, men who don't know range-bred cattle from a herd of mountain goats, calmly inform Jim and Ben's master that the steers are to be driven into the big pen. At the same instant two or three stock hands run behind the herd and begin shouting and waving their arms to start the cattle. The beasts, a thousand strong, with horns and hoofs beating the air, bellowing their rage, glaring with bloodshot eyes, thunder into the chute. The two men in front prepare for their death ride. Suddenly Pinto Ben flattens himself before a high, iron-bound gate, and leaps. The pony cleans the gate. The great wave of scorching breath falls back on the other side. Ben's master finds himself sitting on the ground, the head of his dying horse in his lap.
Broncho Billy, while in a dance hall, goes to the assistance of the girl who is playing the piano, when a patron tries to force her to drink. As a result, the girl loses her position. A few days later Broncho Billy finds her wandering about the streets. She tells him the sad story of her life, and how through her innocence, she was led into a shameless life. Broncho Billy falls deeply in love with her, and shortly after asks her to become his wife.
Billy Milford, Harvard graduate, goes west to seek his fortune. In Addertown he secures a position as stationmaster of the L. & R. Railroad, but is forced out because of his drinking habits. He accidentally meets Gunhild, an emigrant Norwegian girl, as she arrives in Addertown to take up her home with Jan Hagsberg, the town's saloonkeeper. Seeking revenge on the railroad, Milford joins Jim Dorsey in a scheme to hold up the road's paymaster on his way to pay the employees of the company's mine.
Jim and Molly are set to get married when Molly finds out about her fiancé's criminal past. Bill Carey weasels his way into Molly's heart in the interim, eager to relieve her of her savings.
Because he believes in education, a ranch owner hires a school teacher from the east and opens a school for his cowboys. The teacher is admired by all of the cowboys, and by one in particular, an outlaw, who frightens all the pupils one morning by writing "school" with bullet holes on the blackboard. Broncho Billy steps in and sends him over the county line.
Jeanne La Roche lives alone with her brother in the great northwestern country. Jacques is a ne'er-do-well and has fallen under the suspicion of the mounted police, two of whom are dispatched to arrest him for robbery. The stolen goods are found in his home. Jeanne is too young to be left in their lonely cabin, so she is taken to the post, where the wife of the proprietor welcomes her and gives her a home. Several years later, Donald McLean wins her for his wife. Meantime Jacques escapes from prison, eludes his pursuers and takes refuge in McLean's home.
Broncho Billy, engaged to the girl, becomes jealous of a newcomer, and in remorse, gets intoxicated. He takes hack the girl's ring and frightens the tenderfoot out of a general store. Mounting his horse he pursues his frightened rival and, after many miles of galloping, overtakes him and brings him back to town, where he flings him in the girl's arms, saying, "Here's your tender foot. Try and make a man of him." Two years later, her husband dead, the wife is at the point of death, half-starved and with a small child to care for.
Urged on by his wife and daughter and against his better judgment, Texas cattle-baron Maverick Brander, finds himself in Washington D. C. as an elected congressman. However, when the Brander family arrives in Washington, they are met at every junction by snobbery and ridicule. Then an investigative committee arrives from Texas to check up on how Maverick is representing their interests.
Paro, a half-breed Indian, overcome with liquor, encounters Grace, the pretty daughter of James Lathrop, a mine owner. She is sorry for his condition and gives him a cross of black jet. Dick Graham is a ne'er-do-well, who has been sheep raising in the low lands and lost his fortune.
Tom Wallace lives with his uncle, John Higgins, and Tom is the sole heir to his uncle's wealth. Joe Watkins, the sheriff, and Higgins are life-long enemies, and when Higgins discovers that Tom is in love with Fern Watkins, he threatens to disinherit Tom.
"Bat" Peters, reformed gunfighter turned prospector, travels to Chicago to collect on a business deal with a mine promoter who turns out to be crooked.
Broncho Billy wins out over his rival for the hand of a sweet country girl. Later he meets a girl from the city and falls in love with her. He goes to his fiancée and asks her for his ring back. She gives it up, though she is brokenhearted. Then Broncho goes to the city to visit the girl who had flirted with him while she was on a vacation to the country.
Broncho Billy has exhausted every foot of ground which might have held gold for them and he makes ready to strike new territory. Their little boy gets his hands on some nitro-glycerin. He has dreams of discovering some gold where his father could find none. He "plants" the explosive but it doesn't go off. Then his sister resets it and it explodes in her face. She is knocked unconscious. The girl proves not to have been seriously injured. Out on the ground, by the newly blasted hole, lies the little son, sobbing because he has hurt his sister.