In an attempt to try and tame young city girl Charlotte Rowland, Bill Coryell, a young rancher, plans a fake kidnapping party from which he is to rescue her. However, a bully interferes and incites her against Bill, but Charlotte discovers the ruse in time to save herself and Coryell.

An outcast who runs a road house of ill repute leads his mother to believe him dead. His only friend, a doctor, falls for a married woman.

Barry Gordon, the older son of a Virginia colonel, inherits a taste for alcohol--a habit that caused his father's death. His brother, Tom, falls in love with Muriel Beekman, their guardian's daughter. Barry also loves her but feels rejected. Three years later, after extended travels, Barry learns that Tom, having been sent to Morocco by Mr. Beekman, has been captured by desert marauders and is being held for ransom. He begins a search for him and in Tangiers encounters the Beekmans and Kitty Van Ness. Barry and Muriel discover their love for each other, but he refuses to commit himself while Tom is still alive.

Returning to his father's cattle ranch after the excitement of serving in combat overseas, Bud McGraw becomes restless, and his father decides to send him to an old friend who commands the Border Police in Texas. On the way he meets Peggy Hughes, accompanying her Uncle Graham, a customs inspector, and he retrieves her hat from the rails of a train. At the headquarters, numerous scrapes and fights win him the admiration of, and friendship with, the men. Lazaro, a Secret Service agent, invites Mrs. Graham and Peggy, who are staying at the border station, for an automobile ride, and they are captured by bandits and held for ransom. Bud and his pals deliver the ransom and discover that Lazaro is the bandit chief. Lazaro refuses to release Peggy, but a jealous rival, Nita de Garma, causes his downfall and shoots him as the Border Police arrive to rescue the party.

Jack Norman is an office clerk who falls in love with co-worker Kate Blair, a stenographer. He gets fired from his job but before this can really sink in, he suddenly inherits 80 million dollars from a financier who once loved his mother. The financier, Glyde, was murdered, so Norman also inherits a load of troubles involving the blackmailers who want to killed him. In his attempt to outwit them, Norman poses as a valet, and has a friend impersonate him.

William Fielding, a young widower, is living in Shanghai with his little boy, David. A young Chinese woman looks after the child, and Foo Chang, a trader, lusts after her. Because he believes she is David's mother, he kills Fielding. Fielding's faithful secretary, Li Clung, takes the boy to San Francisco to be raised by his grandfather. As an adult, David (also played by Gilbert) fights against opium trafficking with Li Clung's help.

A naive young Swede is repeatedly victimized by predatory women. When finally he meets a young woman who seems sincere and true, he wonders if he can trust her.

A fortune teller tells a store clerk with a romantic disposition that she was a Spanish noblewoman in an earlier life. The girl begins to live the part of the Spanish noblewoman and romance and comedy ensue.

Blizzard, deranged from a childhood operation in which both his legs were needlessly amputated after an accident, becomes a vicious criminal, and eventually mob leader of the San Francisco underworld.

In a day and age when interracial marriages were considered taboo, film star Sessue Hayakawa rarely got the girl in his pictures. The issue of prejudice is broached here -- and Hayakawa still doesn't get the girl, who in this case is society girl Marion Halstead (Doris Pawn).

Honest Arizona rancher Sam Gardner, goes with his motherless son Billy to the city, where he is cheated out of ten thousand dollars by a band of crooks. Taking up residence in a boardinghouse where he meets Jane Ingraham, Sam decides that the only way to regain his losses is by gambling. To achieve this, he makes friends with gambler Kittie Hinch who takes him to Jack Bloom's gambling house. When Bloom begins flirting with Hinch's wife Florry, the injured husband kills his rival and the evidence points to Sam as the killer. Jane tries to provide him with an alibi, but fails. Just as things look grim for the rancher, a wire arrives from Hinch, now in Mexico, confessing to the crime. His faith in mankind thus rewarded, Sam is free to marry Jane

Chinese merchant Wing Lung and Elizabeth Mendall, an American, marry and have a son named Jang Lung. Because Elizabeth wants Jang Lung to be raised as a Christian, Wing Lung locks her in the cellar and she becomes insane. Jang meets Marcell Matthews at an Eastern university, and she returns with him to San Francisco to be married.

Catherine Montour, a striking half-breed Indian princess, and mistress of King George III aspires to become the first Queen of America when the revolution breaks out.

Eve Edgarton decides to devote her life solely to her love of botany, but unexpectedly falls in love with a man who shares none of her intellectual interests.