Arizona range rider Lon Gilchrist helps stagecoach passengers fight off attacking Apaches. After rescuing a baby and binding her bleeding forehead with his handkerchief, Lon receives a reward that allows him to buy a ranch. Many years later, the rescued child, Lizzie Mayberry, is a waitress in a cheap restaurant, where she meets Lon, who, now wealthy, courts and marries her. Because he is so busy, Lon has his friend Del Beasley look after her. After a misunderstanding, Lizzie has Del take her to the railway station. Thinking that they left together, Lon pursues them.

A sheriff and his posse shoot it out with a gang of robbers headed by Bad Jake Kennedy. The surviving robber, Buckshot John, won't tell where the gang's loot is hidden and gets 30 years in prison. Halfway through his sentence he "gets religion" and in order to save his soul, decides to tell where the gang has hidden its stash of gold. However, a phony clairvoyant, The Great Gilmore, finds out about John's intentions and tricks him into revealing where the gold is. When John finds out what happened, he decides to break out of prison and take care of matters himself.

Accompanied by his dog Skookum, artist Richard Alden goes to work painting the beauty of Laguna Beach. There he courts a city woman, much to the delight of a whimsical waif who weaves fantasies about the lovers. The idyll is interrupted, though, when Wyant Van Zandt, an ambitious millionaire, steals the artist's sweetheart. Alden marries the waif, who later bears him six children. Years pass, and Van Zandt's son falls in love with Helen, the artist's daughter. Indignant at the unsuitability of the match, the millionaire forces his son to break with Helen. Thinking that his daughter's honor has been compromised, Alden attacks and chokes the youth, but at young Van Zandt's bedside, all are reconciled. An allegorical epilogue contrasts the lots of Van Zandt and Alden. To the left, the millionaire embraces a skeleton in black, while, to the right, the artist holds his wife. -From TCM.com Database, powered by the AFI.