Wrongfully convicted rancher Jack Bowen (Neal Hart), imprisoned through the machinations of Dick Thompson (William Quinn), escapes from prison just as the warden (Charles Wellesley) is about to pardon him. Caught after rescuing the warden’s daughter, Betty (Barbara Kent) from her runaway carriage, Bowen is released despite the escape attempt and moves to Calgary to compete in the Stampede. Thompson tries to have Bowen killed during the competition but failing that takes Betty as a hostage and flees. Bowen, Betty’s father and others give chase.
The story is set in Africa, where a band of cowboys, headed by Mix, embark on a search for their missing employer. They are accompanied in this venture by the boss' daughter, played by Sally Blane (sister of actress Loretta Young).
Bill Mathews mistakenly comes to believe that his sweetheart, Sally Brown, prefers the company of his brother, Henry, to that of his own and dejectedly goes to the city, where he finds work driving a truck. Six months later Bill returns home; that very day, the Delno gang robs the bank and kidnaps Sally. Bill follows the outlaws in a plane and parachutes into their mountain hideout; he captures Delno's men and rescues Sally, who quickly convinces him that she has never loved another.
Hal Doyle, son of the prison warden, falls in love with a portrait of Mollie Dare, who runs a reformatory for ex-convicts where they may work for honest wages. To win the girl he poses as the notorious Tucson Joe and goes to the reformatory where his reputation causes the other men to fear him. The real Tucson Joe arrives but does not reveal his identity.
A young woman named Remington (Ann Howe) arrives out West and soon meets the old man known as Wilbur (Val Harris). Soon after the brief introductions we get Wilbur's stories on romance and women while Remington does a dance.
An otherwise honest gambler, played by Jack Holt, begins to cheat at cards in order to put his son John Darrow through mining school in this lavish Zane Grey adaptation produced by Paramount. The callow foster-son pays back the noble gesture by running off with Holt's mistress, Olga Baclanova.
After a work crew stringing telegraph wires across the Great Plains is slaughtered by Indians, Pat O'Leary, the company superintendent, must take out another supply train to make the dangerous trip across open country. The Indians attack and are driven off. On the day the wires are finally strung, the settlers gather to hear the first message from the East.
A boy's father is an unjustly accused fugitive, and the boy's scheming uncle plots to become the youngster's guardian and take over the family fortune.
When easterner Jack Steel gets into trouble with the law again, his father sends him to his ranch out west. There he and Alice Duncan become attracted to each other. Cowhand Slim was planning to marry Alice and now kidnaps her. When Slim's girl friend learns of Slim's interest in Alice, she tells Jack where Alice is and he heads out alone to face the three kidnapers.
Bob and Jim Whitely are twin brothers. Bob, an army veteran who suffered shell shock in the war, escapes from a sanitarium and holds up the Express train, for which Jim is mistakenly arrested. Jim soon escapes from jail in order to find his brother. However, his task is complicated by a crooked sheriff who pins a holdup and murder on him that the sheriff himself actually committed. To make matters worse, the murder victim was Tommy Wilkins, the brother of Jim's fiancee, who now thinks that Jim killed her brother.
Tom Hardy (Tom Mix), a pony express rider, is carrying government gold in a coach to Wassatch accompanied by Alice Calhoun (Sharon Lynn) , the daughter of the US telegraph survey station. The gold is to pay for the US Telegraph Survey and it is to be delivered to the survey chief, Jim Calhoun (Thomas Lingham). The coach is attacked by bandits led by the Slade (Duke Lee) and Kane (Mark Hamilton).