Twelve renegades dressed as Indians kill the parents of two brothers. The brothers who have similar birth marks then separate. Ten years later a man known as the Rawhide Terror is murdering the renegades who are now town citizens. Everyone is after the Rawhide Terror and the two brothers are destined to meet again.
Jerry Mason, a young Texan, and Jake Benson, an old rancher, become partners and strike it rich with a gold mine. They then find their lives complicated by bad guys and a woman.
Imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, John Brant escapes and ends up out west where, after giving the local lawmen the slip, he joins up with an outlaw gang. Brant finds out that 'Jones', one of the outlaws he has become friends with, committed the murder that Brant was sent up for, but has no knowledge that anyone was ever put in jail for his crime. Willing to forgive and forget, Brant doesn't realize that 'Jones' has not only fallen for the same pretty shopgirl Brant has, but begins to suspect that Brant is not truly an outlaw.
James Kincaid controls the local water supply and plans to do away with the other ranchers. Government agent Sandy Saunders arrives undercover to investigate Kincaid's land swindle scheme, and win the heart of one of his victims, Fay Denton.
In Kentucky just after the Civil War, the Hayden-Colby feud leads to Jed Colby being sent to prison for 15 years for murder. The Haydens head for Nevada and when Colby gets out of prison he heads there also seeking revenge. The head of the Hayden family tries to avoid more killing but the inevitable showdown has to occur, complicated by Lynn Hayden and Ellen Colby's plans to marry.
Clint Belmet (Gary Cooper) is a bit of a firebrand and is sentenced to at least 30 days in jail, but his partners, Bill Jackson (Ernest Torrence) and Jim Bridger (Tully Marshall) talk a sympathetic Frenchwoman named Felice (Lili Damita) into telling the bumbling, drunken marshal that Clint had married her the previous night. Clint is released so he can accompany Felice on the wagon train heading west to California.
Western pardners Jeff and Cash find a baby boy in an otherwise deserted emigrants' camp, and clash over which is to be "father." They are still bitterly feuding years later when they own adjacent ranches. Bill, the foundling whom Cash has raised to young manhood, wants to end the feud and extends an olive branch toward Jeff, who now has a lovely daughter. But during a mining venture, the bitterness escalates. Is Bill to be set against his own adoptive father?
While building an irrigation system for a Southwestern desert community, an engineer vies with a local cowboy for the affections of a rancher's daughter.
With little luck at keeping a job in the city a New Yorker tries work in the country and eventually finds his way leading a herd of cattle to the West Coast.
Don Diego Vega pretends to be an indolent fop as a cover for his true identity, the masked avenger Zorro. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
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...