“Draw” Egan leads a large gang of horsemen pursued by an equally large posse. Holed up in a cabin during a gunfight, the gang escapes through a trapdoor and tunnel, but not before Arizona Joe runs off alone and is captured. Later, as a “stranger,” Egan enters the saloon in Broken Hope and, displaying his fast draw against a bully, impresses Mat Buckton, who offers him the job of sheriff in nearby Yellow Dog. Now named William Blake, he meets Yellow Dog’s Reform League, falls for Buckton’s daughter, Myrtle, and begins to establish “law and order” in the town saloon, rejecting the advances of Poppy, “Queen of the Dance Hall.” Having fled prison, Arizona Joe shows up and teams with Poppy to undermine Blake, and Joe threatens to reveal his “bad man” past. Blake at first refuses to confront Joe, who has taken over the saloon; but when Joe tries to order the Bucktons and half the townspeople to leave, he finally intervenes. Accepting Joe’s revelation of his past, Egan promises Buckton to give himself up, but only after he has it out with Joe at sundown. In the gunfight, Egan loses his hat, but he kills Joe with a sure shot. When Egan tries to fulfill his promise, Buckton asks him to remain as sheriff and friend; when he refuses and tries to leave, Myrtle runs after him and persuades him to stay.
This print comes from a 1923 Tri-Stone reissue, with new intertitles, whose humor may or may not jibe with the originals. The film introduces Egan in a wanted poster offering a $1,000 reward for him, dead or alive. After a long sequence of large groups of horsemen riding over hills and through canyons, sometimes in high-angle extreme long shots, the gunfight and clever escape follow — in a relatively close shot, one man is shown crawling into the narrow, darkened tunnel toward daylight. Wearing a “peculiar daisy bedecked vest,” according to Motion Picture News and admired by fans from earlier films (actually, the design resembles stylized horseshoes), Blake accepts the sheriff’s job, in medium close-up, with a slight, ironic smile. In a similar medium close-up, he is stunned on first seeing Myrtle approach through a doorway, which moves him to act as a lawman, single-handedly holding off a crowd of rowdy cowboys in the Yellow Dog saloon. In relatively unusual scenes for a Hart film, Blake and Myrtle’s courting is framed by flowers and trees; when they later ride together on horseback, he embraces his pinto before embracing her! August deploys several notable lighting effects, without relying on tinting: a night scene of the cowboys carousing outside the saloon and timely sunset shots to set up the final confrontation. In the studio interiors, artificial light creates the effect of slanting sunlight on Blake’s office table and then on Joe in the saloon. When Joe hides behind large, stacked barrels outside the saloon in the climactic gunfight, Blake spots his position mirrored in a window (repeating a tactic from In the Sage Brush Country) and aims a deadeye shot through a small opening between the barrels.
Several comments in Motography are worth noting. The owner of a 1,500-seat theater in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was enthusiastic: “one of greatest western shows I have ever seen [.…] capacity business.” A theater manager in Seattle created his own special lighting and sound effects. He turned out the theater lights during the first gunfight and had the organ imitate the gunshots; in the ending street duel, he again darkened the theater and had the orchestra blast out the gunshots. “People left the theater,” he said, “feeling that they had lived through the story.”
As a surprise, look for the inserted short scene found in the 35mm print from the EYE Filmmuseum.

Richard Abel