Summary
A rugged tableau of pastoral betrayal and urban machination, The Man from Montana (1917) charts the odyssey of Duke Farley, a sentinel of the frontier thrust into the viper’s nest of Eastern duplicity. When his partner, Dad Petzel, falls prey to a nefarious swindle involving the Busy Bee mine, Farley abandons the sprawling vistas of the West for the claustrophobic corridors of the metropolis to reclaim their stolen heritage. The narrative thickens as Summers, a predatory grafter, discovers that Farley’s secondary claim—the Worm—has yielded a subterranean fortune. In a desperate bid for total hegemony, Summers weaponizes Meta Cooper, an unsuspecting ingénue, to ensnare Farley in a manufactured violation of the Mann Act. The gambit backfires when Farley’s chivalry culminates in a marriage of protection, thwarting the legal ambush. The conflict escalates into a maritime nightmare as Summers resorts to the archaic brutality of shanghaiing Farley. On the salt-sprayed deck of a merchant vessel, a serendipitous reunion occurs: Petzel and his loyal ranch hands, having been similarly abducted during their search for Farley, join forces for a kinetic reclamation of agency. The film culminates in a high-stakes mutiny and a race against time to dismantle Summers' empire and restore the sanctity of the domestic sphere.
Synopsis
When Dad Petzel is swindled out of the Busy Bee mine, his partner, Duke Farley, ventures East to capture the crooks. Meanwhile, Summers, one of the grafters, learns that Farley's other mine, the Worm, has struck gold and determines to take control of it, too. Using Meta Cooper, an innocent girl to whom Farley is attracted, Summers frames the cowboy for the Mann Act, hoping to force him into selling the mine, but Farley thwarts Summer's plan when he marries Meta instead. Undaunted, Summers hires a sea captain to shanghai Farley. At sea, Farley discovers that Petzel and the rest of the cowboys on their ranch had come East looking for him and were shanghaied by the same captain. Together, they take over the ship and return to land in time to save Meta and arrest Summers.
