In what scenarist C. Gardner Sullivan misleadingly called “The Romantic Adventures of a Woman of the ’50s,” this story has Hart play Jim Brandon, who has just robbed the Wolf Creek stage of a payroll meant for Frank Wilding’s Lost Hope Mine. Fearing another holdup, Wilding reluctantly entrusts his daughter Edith with the next payroll. Confident of his concealed identity, Brandon comes to town, orders drinks at the local saloon, and hears that this is “payday” for the mine. Outside, he realizes Edith will be carrying the payroll and follows her onto the stage. When it stops at the Mountain House Restaurant, Brandon protects Edith from a man forcing his attention on her, which forges an unacknowledged bond between them. A Mexican thief later stops the stage, tosses Brandon’s revolver over an embankment, takes his watch, and steals a kiss from Edith, who slaps him. The thief takes Edith with him on horseback to a deserted shack, forces her into a bedroom, and strangely leaves her to barricade the door. Meanwhile, Brandon recovers his gun, follows the horse’s tracks on foot, and finds the thief trying to break the door in. In an exchange of gunshots, Brandon kills the thief and takes back his watch. Edith entrusts the payroll to Brandon, but, after escorting her near the mine, he returns it, so she can deliver the money safely to the waiting miners.
The first reel is remarkable in a number of ways, especially because this was only the second film Hart directed, and was shot in just five days. Brandon’s cabin interior exemplifies Hart’s concern for “authentic detail” in the overturned barrel he uses for a table, the pouch of stolen gold he hides in the fireplace, and the can used to brew coffee. That “authenticity” also has one of the Inceville Sioux play the Indian maid washing dishes in a background room of Wilding’s office, but contrasts with the industry convention of often having a non-Mexican play a Mexican (here, unusually, the actor is Japanese-American). Hart also begins to set the characters he plays apart, with his knee-length black coat and embroidered vest, his skill in striking a match on his thumbnail, and the “stone face” he adopts as a mask throughout. Not only does clear intercutting set up the parallel plot lines that introduce Wilding and his daughter and then Brandon, leading to Brandon joining her in the stage, but Hart’s steely looks and centered stance outside Wilding’s office slowly register his growing awareness of how the payroll will be delivered. Finally, in the restaurant Brandon gets the owner to support him against the threats to Edith with a quick sure shot that hits a sign on the wall, twinned with a witty intertitle.
The second reel begins with Hart doing some stunt work, rappelling down a cliff to retrieve his gun and later, his face dotted with sweat, sliding down a hillside to spot the thief’s cabin far below in a valley. In an unusual series of shots, Brandon slowly cracks open the cabin door and sees the Mexican reflected in a window, which allows him to fire before the thief can. Edith’s offer of the payroll comes in a relatively close shot, accentuated by camera movement. After they share looks, a pan isolates Brandon as he turns away; another returns to Edith as she holds out the payroll pouch; a third reframes them as he turns to take it from her. He leads her on horseback along a barren road until they spot the mine buildings far below. Now he returns the payroll pouch and kisses her hand, then watches her slowly ride off toward the mine before turning and walking off alone. This ending establishes a familiar trope in Hart’s westerns: a lone figure, having disavowed love, looking or walking into the background of an unknown future.

Richard Abel