Helen Roberts, who's on probation, goes back to work as a waitress at Torre's Fish Palace, a San Francisco waterfront dive. The customers are low characters trying to make time with Helen and ex-rum runners trying to make a dishonest dollar. Some of the latter, including Helen's unwelcome suitor Martin Rhodes, are after a mysterious, valuable hidden "cargo"; when violence erupts, Helen finds herself innocently involved, and is soon on the run from both cops and crooks.

A young boy is forced to leave his family in the South and move in with relatives he doesn't know in New York.

The Buck Jones western The Fighting Ranger utilizes its familiar plotline with excellent results. When Jones' kid brother is killed by the villains, our hero quits the Texas Rangers and sets off to seek vengeance on his own. He ends up just below the Mexican border, where bandit leader Cougar (Bradley Page) lives high off the hog, knowing he can't be extradited.