Broncho Billy, an express rider, is married to Stasia Wynn, daughter of Grant Wynn. John Mackey, a gambler, comes to town and Wynn loses all his money to him. Broncho Billy buys his wife a scarf pin, which her father steals and loses to the gambler. Mackey is caught cheating and is driven from town.
Jim Cameron becomes desperate at his failure to get work, and resolves to hold up the stage in order to provide necessities for his wife and sick child, Mildred.
The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several 2-reel westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty daughter (Agnes Vernon), much to the dismay of a sullen mine office clerk (Chaney), who is also smitten with the girl...
Broncho Billy is a foreman on Roger Newman's ranch and is in love with his daughter, Mae. Newman finds this out, discharges Broncho Billy and sends Mae to visit her brother in the east. Broncho Billy kidnaps Mae from the stage coach and they marry, squatting on Newman's land.
Jan, the hunter, is in love with Marie, a French-Canadian girl. The same charmer has captivated Otto, the driver of the Wilderness Mail, a vengeful and selfish individual. Mane has a half-sister, Joan, a decided contrast to her, a sweet lovable girl not ordinarily bold or aggressive, but when aroused firm to a finish.
Broncho Billy, a cowpuncher, is elected to the office of deputy. The sheriff is in love with Gertrude Scott and fears that his deputy is smitten with her. An outlaw has been terrorizing the town and the sheriff determines to capture him. He meets the outlaw in the woods, gives him money and promises him his release the following day if he will give himself up.
Slippery Slim uses his position as postmaster in order to hold back all the invitations to Sophie's birthday party, except, of course, his own and that of the parson.
Drink makes a brute of Broncho Billy and he does not realize what he is doing when under its influence. His wife and children are mortally afraid of him when he is in this condition and keep out of his way. At the saloon one day he provokes a quarrel with the one doctor of the town and wounds him with a shot from his gun.
Pete Larson is a brute whose battered wife, Anne, finally finds courage to leave. The woman gets lost in the wilderness and is taken in by a young hunter, who later proposes marriage. Mistakenly believing her husband to be dead, Anne accepts only to find her first husband returning to perform a bit of blackmail.
Broncho Billy had promised Marguerite that he would never drink again. She agreed to marry him. That afternoon, one of the village gossips sees Marguerite with Boy Turner, a surveyor, and hastens to inform Broncho of it. Marguerite's sweetheart threatens to kill the surveyor, but finally suggests a duel to be fought ten minutes later. Marguerite hears of it, hastens to the minister's home, where she gets him and takes him to Kelly's saloon.
Carnos, a greaser, is sent to jail. He is a very refractory prisoner and swears to get even with the sheriff when he is liberated. On the day of the greaser's release, the sheriff had captured Broncho Billy, an outlaw, and was bringing him to justice, when he is suddenly pushed from his horse by the outlaw, and is left to wend his way across the plains afoot. Broncho Billy escapes on the sheriff's horse and unknowingly stops at the sheriff's home for food. Looking through a window he sees the greaser about to take the life of the sheriff's wife.
Lieut. Wallace leaves his fiancée, Dorothy West, to cross the border with his troops into Mexico. Later he is wounded, captured and taken to the hacienda of the Mexican officer, Senor Paranze, where his wounds are dressed by Senora Paranze. The latter falls in love with the American when he defends her from her brutal husband.
Dave and Phillip Hull, twins, are totally different in character. Dave is steady, slow to hate and true in love. Phillip, the gay and popular gambler, is perhaps more lovable on the surface, but shifty and flare-tempered underneath. Dave loves little Meg, daughter of Hardy, a cattle rustler. Dave does not know that the father is a cattle rustler, however.
William Young and his daughter, Mildred, settle in the west, with the intention of investing their money in a mine. True Boardman, a mine shark, knowing that Young will be easy money, salts the mine and sells it to them.
Wally Bristow is a wealthy young chap infatuated with a heartless society girl. He discovers that she is not true to him and leaves her. At the club he runs into an argument among the members to the effect that none of them could start out with nothing and return in a year, married and successful. Wally takes his friends up on the bet. Wally goes west and secures employment on a ranch. He becomes the butt of the cow punchers jokes, and his employer's daughter thinks him a prig until, one day, she observes him thrash a ranch bully for ill-treating a dog. Soon after she promises to be his wife. The society girl, meantime, hears of it and starts west to break up the match. Arriving in the neighborhood she sends a note to her rival saying that the man is untrue to her and to go to a certain place and she will see him with another woman.
The firm of John Sterling and Sons bad been organized by his father, and when son Gilbert was old enough, he took active part in the management. Gilbert's love for the high life led him away from his duties, and it was nothing unusual for him to spend six nights out of the week with questionable company. Early one morning, intoxicated, Gilbert finds his way to his home. His father reprimands him and finally puts him out of the house, telling him "never to return."