Summary
A lanky cardsharp with a conscience as wide as the Mojave, Jack o’Diamonds shuffles charity and chance beneath the sagging awning of his Oxode saloon until a Bible-tottering missionary slams the collection box shut on his blood-stained greenbacks. Into this moral dust-devil stumbles Colonel Ransome, flush with cattle money and rot-gut bravado, begging for the grandest fleecing the desert has ever witnessed; Jack obliges, scooping up deed, dollars, and destiny in one icy hand. A stray bullet—fired not by the gambler but by the colonel’s own serpent-eyed foreman Anastacio—drops the rancher like a sack of ore, yet the smoke-blinded town pins the guilt on the only man who ever smiled while winning. Disgusted, Jack trades baize for barbed wire, determined to deliver the stolen spread to its rightful heir: Virginia Ransome, finishing-school polish wrapped in silk and scorn. She arrives, mistakes her benefactor for a cowhand, and promptly installs the true killer as her strong right arm. Mutiny ferments; whispers of patricide ferment faster. Jack, exiled, gallops back with the cavalry of conscience, snatching the ingénue from Anastacio’s branding iron just as the rangers crest the ridge. Truth, late but luminous, exonerates the gambler; Virginia, chastened, offers the ranch on a silver platter. Jack counters with a partnership—one half the land, one half her hand in marriage—dealing himself the only jackpot that ever mattered.
Synopsis
Jack o' Diamonds and his partner, Two Spot Hargis, are known as square sports in the desert town of Oxide. Jack gives liberally to all charities, and is surprised when one day a pioneer missionary refuses to take his money as he considers it ill-gotten. About this time Col. Ransome enters Jack's gambling place. The colonel, a big ranch owner, intoxicated and loaded down with money received in a cattle deal, insists on a game for the highest stakes. Jack consents, wins the colonel's money and also a deed to the ranch. In the fight that follows Colonel Ransome is shot by one of his own foremen, Anastacio, who has previously planned to rob his master and hates to see the money get away from him. The onlookers think that Jack killed the colonel, but as there is a general shooting no fuss is made about the matter. Jack becomes disgusted with his present mode of life and quits the gambling game. He takes up the ranch that has been deeded to him by the dead colonel. When Jack and his partner, Two Spot, arrive at the ranch they discover that the colonel has left an only daughter, Virginia Ransome, who is being educated in New York. Jack determines to put the ranch in order and hand it over to the rightful heiress. When things are in shape he writes to Virginia to come west. When Virginia arrives she treats Jack as a hired servant. He still keeps on with the work around the ranch, but is hampered by Virginia's attitude, as this encourages Anastacio and the hands to almost open mutiny. After plotting to dethrone Jack and secure both the ranch and Virginia for himself, Anastacio tells Virginia that Jack Diamond is the murderer of her father. Virginia dismisses Jack and makes Anastacio her foreman. Jack and Two Spot leave the ranch, but determine not to leave "the little lady" to the mercy of Anastacio. Jack dispatches Two Spot to the nearest fort for the rangers and returns in time to rescue Virginia from Anastacio and the rangers arrive in time to clear up the ranch. One of Anastacio's associates tells Virginia that her father was shot by Anastacio and not by Jack. Virginia apologizes to Jack for her past unkindnesses and offers to turn over the ranch to him as rightful owner. Jack will only entertain a proposition that involves a half ownership, and eventually wins Virginia as his wife.
