When a bounty hunter kills an outlaw for the reward, he has to deal with both a man falsely claiming he made the kill, and the revengeful brother of the dead man.
The fourth of 12 singing Westerns starring the "Silvery-Voiced Baritone," Fred Scott, Melody of the Plains begins peacefully enough with Scott, as cowboy Steve Condon, warbling Don Swander and June Hershey's "Albuquerque." The story quickly takes a rather grim turn when one of Steve's colleagues is shot and killed after selling out to a gang of rustlers. Mistakenly believing he fired the deadly shot, a dejected Steve, along with sidekick Fuzzy, goes to work for Bud's father, a rancher nearly forced into bankruptcy by a crooked land developer.
Mix is Grant Malvern, a rancher who befriends scientist Quentin Durant (Tom S. Guise) after rescuing him from a trio of Chinese crooks. The crooks want to find Durant's Arizona gold mine, and the map to the location is contained in a pair of rings. After the crooks track down Durant and kill him, one of the rings winds up with Durant's daughter, Helen (Adams), and the other falls into Malvern's hands.
In a near future, a woman hitchhikes alone in the desert towards the promise of a Utopian dome on the horizon. When she negotiates a ride with strangers, we learn to trust no one on the road to the Neo-Dome.
The cast of six young partying guys and gals visit a sleepy Texas lake town for what they think will be a couple of days of drinking, boating, swimming and skiing and what they find is killing. What ensues is a series of events beginning with fun and frolic and ending in blood and death, as the curse is unleashed on our unsuspecting group. How was the legend born? Who cast the curse? Who gets the GOLD? Who gets the girl? Who gets dead? Everyone thinks Santa Ana was trying to win at the Alamo for his country but he was really looking for his stolen gold.
An aging lawman is convinced a mysterious stranger arrested in his small town is innocent. His investigation stirs up a hornet's nest that will change the town forever.
Paul is practicing the art of being a cowboy. He consults a book before firing his gun, climbing onto a saddle on top of a chair and then falling off and dressing his wounds. He then gets back on his 'saddle' and fires his gun again, this time in the direction of another man who has just entered the room. Paul leaves abruptly and rides into town on a horse, and straight through a crowded saloon. A town marshal sees this as act act of bravery and rewards Paul with a sheriff's badge immediately. A fearful rival makes his mark when he lights his cigarette by tossing it into the air and shooting at it to ignite it!
An impending gunfight moves from a conventional confrontation to a confrontation with audience expectation as camera action predominates. A film in which the less you see of what you expect - the more there is exposed.
Jim Rose is a young ranch hand in love with the boss' daughter, Mabel. The rancher, King Brentwood, who is being sued for breach of promise by a local widow, opposes the match. Learning that the annoying woman is coming to pay him a visit, Brentwood has his men fake a holdup of her stagecoach.
Harley Hennage, a gambler, loves Marie but remains silent when he realizes that she is in love with Oliver Corblay, a prospector. After Corblay and Marie marry, Harley moves to the distant town of San Pasqual and does not see his old sweetheart until her husband is killed while staking a claim in the desert.
Don Pablo Salazar steals a fortune in jewels from an Indian tribe and an Aztec medicine man puts a curse on the jewels until they are returned. Years later, an American insurance man promises to deliver the Salazar fortune to the rightful heir...
Raymond Beahan, a young chap from the city, pays a visit to his uncle, John Purcell, the sheriff. The day after he arrives, he dresses up in his uncle's hat, cartridge belt, chaps, etc., and is about to take an old gun from the wall to put in his belt when his uncle asks him not to take the gun, as he prizes it very highly. He then tells the boy the story of how the gun came into his possession. The story is so vivid to the boy, that when his uncle leaves him to round up some bandits, and he is left alone in the cabin, he falls asleep and dreams the same story his uncle has just related to him, only HE is the hero.