Summary
Timber barons, thunderclaps and clandestine arson ignite the celluloid nightscape of Western Firebrands, a 1926 potboiler that smolders like a pine-knot bonfire. Victor Lanning—slick as lamp-oil in his city duds—arrives from the moneyed East, pockets bulging with Richard Stanton’s buy-out cash, intent on snatching the debt-bled Shasta Lumber Co. at fire-sale prices. With his greasy confederate Pete Carson he orchestrates a rash of incendiary sabotage, torching virgin forest and cattle range alike, reducing the valley to a smoldering funeral pyre meant to terrorize shareholders into surrender. From the ashes rides Billy Fargo, taciturn cow-puncher whose herd has been barbequed by Victor’s plot; he hauls the Stantons—railway-wrecked and rain-soaked—from a derailed Pullman, thereby earning the shimmering gratitude of heiress Mildred, a porcelain doll in a ten-gallon world. Jealousy flares hotter than the blazes themselves; Victor’s hired riff-raff abduct Mildred beneath bruised skies, while Red Feather, a Pawnee beauty shackled to Victor by appetite and shame, slips through the sagebrush to spill the scheme. Cue a tempest-tossed showdown: lightning forks, river swells, fists fly, and the villain’s perfidy is stamped out like a campfire at dawn. In the ember-glow, Billy claims both justice and the girl, leaving Victor hog-tied for the federal marshal and the forest to regenerate in Technicolor promise.
Synopsis
Victor Lanning is employed by eastern capitalist Richard Stanton to buy the Shasta Lumber Co. He conspires with Pete Carson to set forest fires so that he can purchase the company at a lower price and keep the remaining cash for himself. While investigating the fires that killed his cattle, Billy Fargo rescues Richard and his daughter, Mildred, from a train wreck. Victor becomes jealous of Mildred's attention to Billy, and hires a gang to kidnap her. Following Mildred's disappearance, Billy is informed of the plot by Victor's lover, a Native American girl named Red Feather. Billy rushes to Mildred's defense during a raging storm and defeats the kidnappers.
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