A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Amid the high country of the North Island interior, wild horse roam and breed. With the trees gone, Dan Mitchell and the Sullivan brothers, turn to the wild horses as a source of income. With rope and snare - and the help of an experienced horse catching team - Sam and Sara's example, the rough ex-loggers learn to respect a delicate balance between the wild horses and their catchers. The best stallions are left to breed and their riding horses are retired back into the wild herds.
After a six-year absence, Ned Blessing returns to his hometown with his sidekick, Crecencio. There he finds a lawless hell-hole governed only by six-shooters and fists. No one in town is willing to stand up to the Borgers, a despicable clan that rules the town with brutality and bullets. Into this charged atmosphere ride Ned and Crecencio to take on the Borgers with only the help of a mysterious Indian and the town coward.
Chip of the Flying U was Johnny Mack Brown's first western entry for 1940. Brown essays the title role of Chip Bennett, foreman of the Flying U ranch. Before the second reel has tumbled over the spools, Chip finds himself falsely accused of robbery and murder. The actual miscreants are in the employ of a band of foreign gunrunners, who speak in heavily Teutonic accents. Rest assured that Chip makes short work of these bush-league Storm Troopers before the sun sets in the West. Musical interludes are provided by a group calling themselves the Texas Rangers, even though they actually hailed from Kansas City.
Tubercular Frank James has become a born again and retired from his career as an outlaw with his family but a look-a-like outlaw causes suspicion to fall back on him.
Learning that Montana is about to become a state and that property values will rise rapidly, Caldwell is using his outlaw gang to force the ranchers off their land.
Cowhand Ken Clark is stranded in Chicago, and temporarily takes a job as a sharp-shooter entertainer in a night club, with the intention of getting enough money together to get back to his beloved Arizona. Frank Gordon, while drunk, is about to be rolled by the club bouncer, but Ken interferes and earns Clark's gratitude. Gordon gets a telegram from Kay Burke, the daughter of his partner in Arizona, notifying him that her father, Jim Burke, has been killed by rustlers.The ranch has a U.S. Army contract to furnish horses, but she sees little hope of being able to make good because the stock is being rustled, and she asks Gordon for his help.
When mild mannered Friendly Fields is sent to the Blair ranch to work, he is mistaken for the notorious outlaw Blackie Burke. When a drought develops and the ranchers look for new grazing land, he plays the part and forces them to give he best plot to his boss Miss Blair. But no sooner than his mother arrives to expose the hoax, the real Blackie also arrives.
Mortimer builds a fence for the cattle brought by Ken Morley. To retaliate, Slater who wants access to the land, builds a dam cutting off Mortimer's water supply. When Ken confronts Slater, he is captured. Then lightning destroys the dam and Ken, imprisoned in a shack, is in the path of the oncoming water.
Bill Dane and Banty quit Kell's outlaw gang. When Dane prevents Kell and his men from getting a bullion shipment, he is made Sheriff. Learning Dane is Sheriff, Kell and gang return, force Dane to give them the bullion, and make Dane a prisoner. Escaping, Dane trails the gang and engages them in a gunfight while his horse Tarzan goes for help.
A drought is about to end the cattle business. The owner of a canning factory wants to buy all the remaining cattle cheap. He plans to ruin the cattlemen's plans to ship water by train and to seed the clouds for rain. Roy is sent by a packing house to investigate.
Jim and Buddy decide to follow their pal Tater-bug who left them for another job. No sooner do they arrive than Tater-bug gets shot in the back. Jim suspects Joe Weller but has no proof.
In the Kentucky mountains, Ken McTavish comes to Kettle Creek looking for the killer of his father. When he learns that it was Abner Harland, he fakes the killing of his friend Rusty, puts Abner in a coffin, and takes off. Lem Harland, seeing Rusty alive, realizes what happened and the chase is on.
Wealthy Henry Hanley takes his family to a dude ranch. But his daughter Gloria's boyfriend Eric is waiting and he is after Hanley's money. Ken overhears Eric's plan and abducts Gloria to stop the elopement. The outlaw Lacrosse and his henchman then catch Ken without his guns, take off with Gloria, and leave a tied up Ken in a burning shack.
Mountie Tim O'Hara is sent to Indian River to investigate a fur trading racket. But he quickly finds himself in trouble when he is accused of shooting a prisoner in the back and is then put in jail by a fellow Mountie.
When an oil discovery is reported at Paxton, Oklahoma, Marshal Rex Allen immediately suspects that where there is oil, there is trouble. Rex arrives just as a band of desperadoes stage a bank hold-up and escape with $25,000 which ranchers have invested in prospective oil drillings.
As a young couple are courting, they are rudely interrupted and split up. The man is seized and is turned over to a gang of toughs who want to hang him. Though she is greatly outnumbered, the young woman wastes no time in making a determined effort to rescue him.