Tim Holt is a well-known Western star whose father also starred in Westerns and other movies, beginning in the silent era. In fact, Tim's first listed role came in a 1923 silent film named Hollywood playing the young son of his actual father, Jack Holt. Tim was no more than 4 at the time.
In this film, Tim and his sidekick, Chito are heading toward a town looking for ranch work, admiring the telegraph wires on a line being constructed to California. They come to the aid of a woman hanging upside down from the top of a telegraph pole, shooting to get attention, and she seemed rather belligerent, demanding to be released quickly from these gentlemen who might have been inclined to leave her hanging because of her rude attitude...but they released her anyhow. She is Terry Muldoon (actress Gail Davis of Annie Oakley fame), the daughter of the man who has the contract to construct the line.
Later, our heroes come upon a group of six men destroying a camp for the company constructing the telegraph lines. Tim wounds one of the men in the leg, but all six escape. They follow the bad men's trail, well, two of them after the gang split up, to town and to a saloon where the two men went in for help from their leader, Ward Cleaver...I mean Hugh Beaumont, who owns the saloon and hired them to destroy the telegraph materials. He had a dual purpose, one helping his "friend" Paul Manning, who has put all of his money into materials needed by a nearby army outpost, but now faces bankruptcy because the post will be shut down due to the telegraph line making their presence unnecessary in the area.
To complicate matters, in an early scene we see that Beaumont's character, Brad Roberts, is not happy about the upcoming wedding between Manning and the singer in his saloon, Stella Scott, because she used to be his girl and he wants Manning out of the way so he can get back together with her.
For those who only know Beaumont as the Beaver's dad, he was in a lot of Westerns, and I think was usually a bad guy businessman-not a noted outlaw or a rancher or the town doctor or anything like that, but a businessman. He does a fine job acting in these dramas. One thing I caught in his intro scene in his office was as Manning and Stella were about to leave his office, he was smiling in the background. I don't know if this was in the script because he was not at all the focal point of the shot, but the couple stopped to kiss before leaving and just as they started to kiss, Roberts (Beaumont) suddenly dropped his smile and looked a bit unhappy.
All the plot I've given comes in the early portion. We move on to all sorts of plot twists, including a shoot-out, a stage coach hold-up, a murder, basically everything the Western genre features regularly except a schoolmarm and an Indian attack.
You need to pay close attention to follow this plot. Overall, this was a decent, not great Western.
But the score I give is lower than the main part deserves because of sidekick Chito. I know sidekicks cannot be seen as being smarter than the hero, but Tonto, California (Hoppy's sidekick), Gabby, and all the others may be a bit foolish, too talkative, unfocused on what they need to do to go after women, and other things, but Chito takes the cake. He does all these things so repeatedly, he is much more than just annoying. He continues this throughout the movie, in almost every scene, and he finishes leaving me with the conclusion that as portrayed, his character is the DUMBEST sidekick in the history of horse operas.
He boasts of being Irish, but has a heavy Spanish accent from his mother's side of the family. So he alternates between calling the women Senoritas or Colleens. He is constantly on the prowl to talk to any female in sight, not caring about what Tim wants him to do. In one scene, he wants to jump in the stage coach to go on the honeymoon with the couple right after their wedding because he has "never gone on a honeymoon."
Thus I can only give this one a 5.
