The U.S. Army and the Indians sign a peace treaty. However, a group of surveyors trespass on the Indians' land and violate the treaty. The army refuses to listen to the Indians' complaints, and the surveyors are killed by the Indians. A vicious Indian war ensues, culminating in an Indian attack on an army fort.
Set during the American Civil War, Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-willed son. The son is forced, at gunpoint, by his father to enlist in the Confederate army. He is terrified by the war and deserts during a battle. The film focuses on the son's struggle to overcome his cowardice.
When Reverend Robert Henley and his sister Faith arrive in the town of Hell's Hinges, saloon owner Silk Miller and his cohorts sense danger to their evil ways. They hire gunman Blaze Tracy to run the minister out of town. But Blaze finds something in Faith Henley that turns him around, and soon Silk Miller and his compadres have Blaze to deal with.
Steve Denton, rich from years of prospecting, is fleeced by the citizens of Yellow Ridge. In his rage, he kidnaps the woman most responsible and makes her his slave in a desert hideaway.
Colonel Crewe, in charge of a fort near the Mexican border, receives word that some Chinese are about to be smuggled across the line. He details Lieutenant Hurd to attend to the matter. Hurd, with a few soldiers, succeeds in capturing the Chinese, among whom is a Christianized girl, Moon Chew. She falls in love with Hurd.
Avis and Franklin Hilliard are the spoiled, overbearing children of a wealthy father who has just died. Lord Cecil Oakleigh, a fortune hunter, is Avis's fiancée, although there is no love between them, he marrying her for her fortune and she marrying him for his title. Mr. Hilliard has left the superintendent of his mine in full charge of his fortune.
A small town marshal’s secret past as an outlaw comes back to haunt him when an old associate shows up and threatens to expose his former dark deeds.
Jules Ingram ( William Desmond ), the sole survivor of an old Puritan family, seeks solace and forgetfulness in drink. Unable to pay his debts, Jules is driven from his house when banker Rufus Moore ( Robert McKim ) forecloses on the mortgage. Offered shelter by Mercy Reed ( Margery Wilson ), a woman who in her youth naively sinned and has remained rejected by the community ever since, Jules begins to reform. Climbing his way back to respectability, Jules attends church with Mercy, causing a storm of protest. Moore's wife Agnes urges the mob to violence, and as they attempt to tar and feather Jules and Mercy, Mercy delivers an eloquent speech condemning Moore as her betrayer. The mob then takes Moore as their victim, leaving Jules and Mercy in peace.
The heroine, Peggy Cameron, is a high-society debutante with a mind of her own. After making a public spectacle of herself once too often, Peggy is bundled off to Scotland, where she is to be looked after by her no-nonsense uncle Andrew Cameron (William H. Thompson). If Peggy's family had hoped that she would straighten up and behave herself in Scotland, they were sorely mistaken. Restored in 2018 by the Academy Film Archive with restoration funding provided by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation.
D'Artagnan leaves home travelling to Paris to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although D'Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately, he befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age: Athos, Porthos and Aramis and gets involved in affairs of the state and court.
Molly Ashley, a child of the slums, is charged with being an accomplice to a shoplifter. Although innocent, she is convicted of shoplifting and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Jim Tracy, the leader of a band of gangsters, rescues Molly. The following morning Detective Stone is assigned the task of locating and running down Jim Tracy's gang. In order to secure evidence against the gang, he disguises himself as one of the gangsters, runs into their place and pretends that the "cops" are after him. Tracy and the gang take him in. Molly falls in love with Stone and discovers his true identity. One of the crooks gets sore at Jim Tracy and betrays them to the police. Jim accuses Molly of betraying them. Stone resents his accusation.
Jim Houston, the "Shootin' Iron" Parson, comes to Barren Gulch to reform the morals of the frontier community.
Jim Morrison is an English army officer who comes from a very old and prominent family. He marries the ravishingly beautiful but unscrupulous Cleo, who has no qualms about using her sexual allure to get the luxuries her husband can't provide. When Jim is sent off to war, Cleo embarks on a series of affairs, one of which results in her becoming the love slave of a German spy, the very spy that her husband has been assigned to track down.
When Ashley Hampdon becomes the target of a scheme to ruin him by his daughter's suitor, Hampdon sends for his old friend Bob White. Bob discovers that the suitor, Gregg Lewiston, cannot hope to win Lina Hampdon while her father's wealth remains intact. Lewiston hopes that if her family becomes destitute, she will turn to him. But Bob White is there to upset the scheme.
The pride of his aristocratic Southern family, a young man shatters his family's hopes by marrying a Broadway vamp known as "The Moth." The young man's father then plots to rescue his unwitting son from "The Moth's" clutches, but at great sacrifice.
Because White Dove, daughter of the Indian Chief, and Moccasin, her half-breed husband, are baptized by Donald McTavish, the new minister of Gray Rock, Ariz., they become subject for the vengeance of the Medicine Man.
Wealthy John Steele has a handsome young son, Frank, on whom he pins his hopes. But riches lead Frank not into social standing and duty, but into depravity, drug-addiction, criminal activity, and finally to tragedy.
Mr. Burns, a student of Theosophy, has a dream in the hammock. He sees himself, his wife and her admirer, in a previous existence.
Antone Tojetti and his pretty daughter, Maria, are street musicians in Venice. John Strom, an American millionaire, makes love to Maria, and finally persuades her to leave for America with him. Her father sees them just as they are leaving, but she will not return to him. Two years later, Maria, abandoned by John, returns to her father, who has now become a guide in the mountains. She dies and Antone vows vengeance. Some time after this, John Strom, now married, is touring Europe and he and his party seek a guide to visit Vesuvius. Antone takes the position. John not recognizing in him the father of Maria.
Family relationships of a New Mexico family are just one part of this silent cowboy western about a war veteran who finds a goldmine. He wants to earn enough money to take care of his young son, but crooked officials swindle him out of the mine, and then his son is killed. He swears vengeance and joins up with Mexican bandit, "Pancho Zapilla", who intends to destroy his whole town.
