The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several 2-reel westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty daughter (Agnes Vernon), much to the dismay of a sullen mine office clerk (Chaney), who is also smitten with the girl...
Priscilla’s husband Lee makes her life unhappy because of his unfounded jealousy. She warns her old college buddy Eddie not to pay any attention to her at the dance which they are to attend. Eddie loves the wealthy Estelle but is always getting mixed up in some scandal. Estelle finally declares that one more escapade on his part will finish everything. When Priscilla and Eddie greet each other at the dance as old friends, the other two become jealous. Estelle and Lee determine to make their partners jealous but make a mess of it until all is straightened out in the end.
The husband and his wife live alone in the mountains, where he is working out a claim. A stranger from a distant mine is injured in the vicinity. The husband nurses him back to health. During his convalescence the stranger persuades the wife to elope with him.
Lillian is an unfortunate woman. After leaving her baby at the door of a hospital she meets David, the author of her misfortune. It is a case of starvation or the "easiest way." She chooses the "easiest way." After eighteen years she again shows up, a social outcast and a tool for David's black profession.
The Chief's son, Silver Water, returns from college and is met at the station by the tribe. The Indians make merry to celebrate his homecoming. Hal Benton, an easterner, rides on to ask his way to the hotel, where he is stopping with some friends, among them his fiancée, Veda Mead, and her father. Knowing that the Indian ceremonies will interest his friends, Hal obtains permission to come the next day and bring his friends. The Chief calls Morning Star, an Indian maiden, telling his son that she is to be his squaw. Silver Water is pleased with her. The next day Hal Benton and his friends arrive. While the others inspect the camp, Veda Mead amuses herself with Silver Water and ere long is thoroughly infatuated with him, while the Indian's vanity is touched by the attentions of the society coquette, and he promises to meet her the next day. Their little tete-a-tete is cut short by the entrance of Morning Star.
The wife takes with her their small daughter, leaving the son to the care of the father. The forlorn woman wanders into a fishing village, and is taken into a kindly fisherman's family. To more surely separate herself from the world that knows her. She assumes her maiden name. Many years afterward the father and the son, now grown, pass through the village. The son becomes acquainted with his own sister, knowing nothing of the relationship, and falls in love with her. He persuades his father to spend his season at a summer resort nearby. Later, the son and the daughter are secretly married. The girl leaves a note for her mother, telling her of the act. The mother follows to the parsonage, and then the summer resort, where she overtakes the couple.
Dorothy is a city girl who has chosen to teach school in the backwoods. Pierre is a product of the backwoods, a man who will allow no one to cross him in the most trivial matter, a man in whom the baser elements of character are predominant.
Jacques watched through an opening in the foliage and saw Gilbert of the mounted police and his own wife exchange pleasant greetings. From that moment he hated the police officer. Gilbert was too fine-looking.
Dorothy and her father have staked all their hopes on their mine. While they are awaiting the arrival of Mr. Reid, who is to report on the value of the mine, Pedro, a Mexican, makes familiar advances to Dorothy and is sternly repulsed. Reid arrives and a mutual attraction springs up between himself and Dorothy, to the chagrin of Pedro.
Randall is a rich mine owner whose business affairs cause him to neglect his somewhat frivolous wife. There is a mutual friend whom Randall carelessly allows to entertain his wife. As a result, the friend pays more than natural attentions to the woman. The three visit one of Randall's mines. The wife and friend go down the mining shaft in a bucket. While they are yet underground, a quantity of dynamite explodes. The mine is filled with poisonous fumes.
Bob Madden returns home slightly intoxicated and his father angrily commands him to leave the place and shift for himself. The next morning he goes, leaving his father a note: "Dear Dad, I am going out West and try to make a man of myself. I hope some day you will be proud of me. Your son. Bob."
An old arrowmaker's daughter, while at the stream, meets a brave from another tribe. They become enamored of each other in the sudden positive way of the savage, and agree to meet at sunset. The chief of the tribe to which the girl belongs, covets and demands her of her father. The father consents, but the girl rebels. At sunset, she meets her lover and tells him what her fate is to be. He tells her that when the moon shines, he will come for her and take her away.
Lieut. Wallace leaves his fiancée, Dorothy West, to cross the border with his troops into Mexico. Later he is wounded, captured and taken to the hacienda of the Mexican officer, Senor Paranze, where his wounds are dressed by Senora Paranze. The latter falls in love with the American when he defends her from her brutal husband.
Much to the delight of the simple old father, his daughter becomes engaged to a big-hearted mountaineer. He builds their hut in the wilderness, and she is happy, though she often dreams of the great world outside. Then comes the intruder from the city, a man of the world. He obtains hoard at the girl's home. He blinds her eyes to the beautiful things of the; woods with his talk of pretty places and things of the great world without. He tempts and wins her away from the big-hearted backwoodsman. The young mountaineer, who has been working on his cabin, returns and finds the old man dozing and the girl gone.
Potts, the detective, with his pupil, Pan, are called by a mother to save her child. They go to the spot, accompanied by their hound, in a dog grip, and find the broken-hearted mother, who gives them a shoe and a little shirt as the only means of identifying her child. They see the cub reporter, who has been sent to the neighborhood on a lost child story, and think that she is the kidnapper. Potts enters the saloon, after he sees the reporter enter. She has gone to report on the telephone to her editor. Potts holds up the whole room, and then he and Pan proceed to search the premises. One particularly large person threatens them with a bungstarter. While Pan is waiting for Potts, he scrapes acquaintance with the reporter. When the detectives return from their fruitless search they see the big fellow playing the piano. The distracted mother comes in, and seeing the piano player she recognizes him as her child. Potts takes one look at the tiny shoe and the shirt and gives up the case.
Two men meet in the desert. One is in search of gold and the other seeks solace and heartsease for an unrequited love. Although they are unknown to each other, each loves the same girl, Ray, the prospector, is the chosen suitor and around his neck he carries the girl's picture. They live together in the wilds and become friends, until one night Tom sees the picture in the locket around Ray's neck. Tom's jealousy prompts him to kill Ray, but gentle thoughts of Ethel restrain his hand.
Almost a Rescue is a 1913 movie starring Donald MacDonald and Roscoe Arbuckle.
Swift Wind, a young chief, loves Dancing Fawn. In their ramblings, they too, see white wolves, which is an object of fear and veneration among the Indians, and return to the village. The two are betrothed by the old chief, but old Red Nose, the medicine man, demands her hand for himself. The chief, fearing his magic powers, considers. Dancing Fawn runs away to her lover. Swift Wind is taught a secret by an old trapper, "If a trap is baited with an animal's own hair the iron jaws will never fail to catch it." The Indian decides how he will overthrow his rival. At his instruction Dancing Fawn cuts off a lock of hair from the sleeping medicine man. With it Swift Wind baits the trap. The next day a wolf is caught and as the Indians approach the trap the beast turns into the medicine man. The hand of the great father has proven his love again and Swift Wind and his sweetheart are united.
Frank Graham, rich mine owner, is fatally injured by an explosion. On his death bed he confides to his friend, Jim Blake, all his plans concerning his daughter, Angela's, future. He makes him promise to watch over her. His fortune he places in the hands of his brother, a New York banker, to be held in trust for his daughter until her wedding day; the fact of her being an heiress to be kept secret in order to insure her safety from fortune-hunters.
Daniel Lyttell is very ill, but Doctor Bozel assures Clara that the crisis is over and that her husband will eventually get well. In the dead of the night, a burglar enters the Lyttell home. His silent footsteps reach the ear of the sick man. Clara, too, hears mysterious noises. She pacifies Daniel and tells him to rest and sleep. Softly she steals out of the room to investigate and soon discovers the burglar. Quickly rushes to the telephone, but finds that the wires have been cut. For a moment she hesitates and fears, fears for her husband. Goes to his bedside and rejoices to find him asleep. Hastily dons a wrap and envelops her head in a black veil, leaves the room and busies herself rummaging in the drawers of a desk. The burglar comes upon her but is unable to intimidate the brave little woman. Clara tells him she, too, is a thief; only she came to steal very important letters. When the man attempts to go into the bedroom for his "haul," she commands him to stay where he is.
