Summary
A velvet-gloved cattle baron masquerading as a rootless jester boards a belching locomotive, trades thunderous words with a stranger, and—after a fierce suffragette in silk scolds him—feels the ground tilt beneath his hand-tooled boots. One bender later he stumbles upon the same woman, lashed like a parcel inside a pine-scented cabin; gallantry ignites, whiskey fumes evaporate, and he learns she is en-route with her prospector father to an alpine spa stitched from moneyed dreams. With the devil-may-care grace of a riverboat gambler, Billy Jim sticks up a poker den, converts the illicit haul into a coughing automobile, and races moonlit switchbacks to reach the resort before her parasol touches its veranda. At the snow-dusted mining camp he faces claim-jumping wolves, disperses them in a ballet of flying fists and ricocheting bullets, and saves the family’s ore-rich earth. The sheriff’s star arrives to clap him in irons for the train-car heist, only for the velvet glove to slip: deeds reveal vast herds, rivers of cash, and a pedigree older than the territory itself. Billy Jim rides off into sagebrush anonymity, but the woman charges after him, revolver in hand, returning the weapon he left behind like a calling card; their silhouettes merge against a bruised horizon, and the frontier exhales, newly mythologized.
Synopsis
Billy Jim, a wealthy westerner posing as a happy-go-lucky cowboy, gets into a dispute with a man aboard a train. A girl berates him for his actions, and he loses his heart to her; later, while drunk, he finds her bound to a chair in a cabin and after releasing her learns that she is traveling with her father to a resort. Billy Jim holds up a card game, hires a car with the money taken, and arrives at the resort ahead of her. At her father's mining camp Billy Jim succeeds in routing claim jumpers and saving the property. When the sheriff arrives to arrest him for holding up the card game, it is revealed that he is a wealthy cattle owner. Billy Jim departs, but the girl follows to return his gun, and all ends happily.
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