The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several 2-reel westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty daughter (Agnes Vernon), much to the dismay of a sullen mine office clerk (Chaney), who is also smitten with the girl...
Daniel Lyttell is very ill, but Doctor Bozel assures Clara that the crisis is over and that her husband will eventually get well. In the dead of the night, a burglar enters the Lyttell home. His silent footsteps reach the ear of the sick man. Clara, too, hears mysterious noises. She pacifies Daniel and tells him to rest and sleep. Softly she steals out of the room to investigate and soon discovers the burglar. Quickly rushes to the telephone, but finds that the wires have been cut. For a moment she hesitates and fears, fears for her husband. Goes to his bedside and rejoices to find him asleep. Hastily dons a wrap and envelops her head in a black veil, leaves the room and busies herself rummaging in the drawers of a desk. The burglar comes upon her but is unable to intimidate the brave little woman. Clara tells him she, too, is a thief; only she came to steal very important letters. When the man attempts to go into the bedroom for his "haul," she commands him to stay where he is.
The husband and his wife live alone in the mountains, where he is working out a claim. A stranger from a distant mine is injured in the vicinity. The husband nurses him back to health. During his convalescence the stranger persuades the wife to elope with him.
Randall is a rich mine owner whose business affairs cause him to neglect his somewhat frivolous wife. There is a mutual friend whom Randall carelessly allows to entertain his wife. As a result, the friend pays more than natural attentions to the woman. The three visit one of Randall's mines. The wife and friend go down the mining shaft in a bucket. While they are yet underground, a quantity of dynamite explodes. The mine is filled with poisonous fumes.
The girl has three suitors: a young Mexican, who symbolizes love, a cripple, who symbolizes devotion, and a wealthy haciendiero, who symbolizes wealth. Despite the protests of Love and the pain of Devotion, the girl is given in marriage to Wealth by her father. A year lapses and the girl has suffered by her father's choosing. Wealth is faithless to her and heaps upon her head humiliation and indignity and finally brutality. Love returns to her and after listening to her story swears that he will kill Wealth, but Devotion restrains him with the advice that if he kills Wealth he can never have the girl. To insure the girl's happiness Devotion kills Wealth himself and then takes his own life.
On her deathbed, Renee's mother confides to her daughter the troubled history of her life. She was wealthy and she was loved alone for her riches. She was to be married; on her wedding day the bridegroom married another woman he really loved. She married her second choice of men and after two years, he left her.
A cartoon from Pat Sullivan featuring Charley Chaplin.
Bob Madden returns home slightly intoxicated and his father angrily commands him to leave the place and shift for himself. The next morning he goes, leaving his father a note: "Dear Dad, I am going out West and try to make a man of myself. I hope some day you will be proud of me. Your son. Bob."
Bess's pet donkey Sammy, has just died. Her three cowboy lovers call to propose, and as they all arrive about the same time, Bess is in a quandary. Her recent bereavement sharpens her wits. She tells them she would marry the first one that brings her a white donkey, just like her dead Sammy.
Dick Lee, while hunting, meets James Gordon, an old rancher, who invites him to his cabin. Here he meets the rancher's daughter Mary. They soon become fast friends, and the girl's heart is almost broken when, at the end of the boy's holidays, he is to return to the city. Mary makes him promise to write. Back in the city, Dick tries to forget the country girl, and, as he is engaged to Lillian West, life is very gay indeed. Somehow, he cannot forget the little girl back on the ranch. The promised letter, however, is never written. Mary looks every day for the letter that does not come, and her father is very sad to see her pine away. At last he cannot stand it longer, and makes up his mind to go to the city and hunt Dick up.
Hubby can't stand his wife's cooking and he goes to the employment agency and gets Sweedy as a new cook. They arrive home and dinner is about to be served. Sweedy never reaches the table, however, for her foot slips and the expected dinner flies away. Sweedy then starts to clean house, but she gets in wrong by raising clouds of dust. Sweedy now starts to do more cooking, but gets a note from the iceman saying he will meet her on the comer and go for a lark. Sweedy takes the wife's new gown and goes to keep the appointment. Hubby discovers the note, thinks his wife is false, follows and brings Sweedy home, where, in the parlor, he protests against such treatment and declares his love in hot terms, which is overheard by the wife. She steps in and the astonished husband discovers his terrible mistake.
Professor De Risque, anxious to escape for a time the too solicitous attention of Madame De Risque, arrives at Roaring Gulch and, noting that the town numbers some very pretty girls amongst its population, he hangs out his shingle announcing the fact that he teaches the piano and violin. The professor is charming and the young ladies are impressionable, they readily desert the constant cowboys for the professor. The cowboys get their heads together and plan a counter-move.
Wally Bristow is a wealthy young chap infatuated with a heartless society girl. He discovers that she is not true to him and leaves her. At the club he runs into an argument among the members to the effect that none of them could start out with nothing and return in a year, married and successful. Wally takes his friends up on the bet. Wally goes west and secures employment on a ranch. He becomes the butt of the cow punchers jokes, and his employer's daughter thinks him a prig until, one day, she observes him thrash a ranch bully for ill-treating a dog. Soon after she promises to be his wife. The society girl, meantime, hears of it and starts west to break up the match. Arriving in the neighborhood she sends a note to her rival saying that the man is untrue to her and to go to a certain place and she will see him with another woman.
Wallace's mother is the faded rose, his wife the pink rose and his mistress the red rose.
Held and Brady are fellow officers of the mounted police, and both love the same girl, while Brady's affection is overshadowed by a deep hatred for his rival. The two men are dispatched into the surrounding forests to look for timber fires.
Dorothy is a city girl who has chosen to teach school in the backwoods. Pierre is a product of the backwoods, a man who will allow no one to cross him in the most trivial matter, a man in whom the baser elements of character are predominant.
A story of the inside life of nomads who live in the shadow of civilization, worshiping their own goods and clinging to their ancient rites.
Joe Mayfield and Sue Jarvis are the children of two families in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which have been at variance for years. Brady, Dorothy's brother, has had an affair with a simple mountain maid. She, unable to care for the child, lays it with a note, at what she thinks is Brady's door. In reality, she has taken it to Mayfield's cabin. He finds it, but out of love for Sue, and to spare her the reflected disgrace, he cares for it himself, keeping silent as to its parentage. The love between himself and Sue ripens. Sue is ready to forget the feud and marry him. In order to prevent this, Brady, not knowing whence the child came, accuses Mayfield of being its parent. The accused is silent and Sue turns away. Mayfield, in the meantime, is unable to stand the fruits of injustice and the taunts of Brady. He tells Brady the true parentage of the child. Brady is softened. He tells Mayfield he is going to find its mother and "Make it right."
Jacques watched through an opening in the foliage and saw Gilbert of the mounted police and his own wife exchange pleasant greetings. From that moment he hated the police officer. Gilbert was too fine-looking.
