User Reviews

Marshall Reed is the Texas Kid. He's ready to quit Edmund Cobb's gang of road agents, and when one of them shoots his father, Reed guns him down and makes it as far as Robert Fiske's new-bought trading post, run by Shirley Patterson. Fiske is an amiable fellow, willing to help out the ranchers whose payrolls are falling prey to Cobb's gang. No one knows that Fiske and Cobb are in cahoots, gaining control of the area because a line is going to go through.

Wait a minute, you say. Isn't this a Johnny Mack Brown western? Yes, it is. It's his eleventh of the year and his sixth for Monogram under his new contract. Being spread thin that way, he enters the story at this point. He and Raymond Hatton are US Marshalls, out to clear up this mess and they don't know whether to trust Reed or not.

Despite Lambert Hillyer being the director, this story is a bit of a mess. The audience, having followed Reed from the beginning, should know what is going on. This makes Brown and Hatton seem a bit dull-witted, even though they should be forgiven for not having seen the entire movie up to this point; besides Brown's ten movies, Hatton was in six others. It's enough these fellows have been making all these movies. Expecting them to have seen them al is unreasonable. Fortunately the situation is sorted out in time for the big finale.

It's not one of Hillyer's more distinguished westerns. Still, he directed four other westerns that year, plus one serial and the aerial sequences of BOMBARDIER. Given the hectic schedules involved, we can give this one a pass.