Rainbow Ranch

After knocking out his opponent in a middleweight championship bout aboard the U.S.S. Maryland , seaman Ed Randall goes ashore to a San Pedro dancehall, where he instigates a brawl over an attractive woman. Ed is thrown in the brig, but when he receives a telegram from his Aunt Martha urgently requesting him to come home to Granite City, he is granted leave. On the train home, Ed meets blonde Molly Burke, who also lives in Granite City, but he is disappointed to find that she wears an engagement ring. Upon his arrival, Ed learns from his aunt's ranch hand Johnny that rancher Marvin Black has put up a fence blocking the road to Rainbow Ranch, his aunt's home, and also has cut off the supply of water from springs for his aunt's cattle. At the ranch, Martha cries as she tells Ed that her husband Jack was shot and killed the previous week and that Black has bought up every ranch in the area except hers and the Burke place, which he plans to get by marrying Molly, to whom he is engaged. After changing from his sailor's suit to a Western outfit, Ed meets Black on the trail. Black refuses to grant an extension on the note Martha owes and then makes an insulting remark about Molly. Ed fights him until two of Black's hired men arrive, but Ed fends them off and rides to the Burke ranch. Molly and her father convince Ed to visit attorney Wilbur Hall in town. Hall determines that Rainbow Ranch was bought by Ed's uncle with perpetual water rights and that Ed would be within the law to get the water in any way he can. When Hall is about to tell Ed the name of the man he suspects killed his uncle, he is shot by a man listening through the door. Ed fires too late, and when the sheriff arrives and finds his gun smoking, he arrests Ed for Hall's murder and goes to get the judge for a quick trial. After hearing Black and his men try to stir up anger against Ed, Johnny rides to get help from Burke. Molly returns to town with Johnny and helps Ed escape. While she distracts the crowd in the street, Ed steals dynamite from a nearby store and rides to Black's dam. Black and the townspeople pursue Ed, but when the sheriff returns, he learns from the coroner that Ed could not have killed Hall because the bullets that killed Hall and Ed's uncle came from the same gun, a ".41" calibre. The sheriff and Molly ride to find Ed, who has pulled a gun on Black's guard by the dam. As Black and his men watch helplessly, Ed blows up the dam, but he is then captured. However, the sheriff arrives and after examining Black's gun, the first ".41" calibre he has seen in years, tries to put Black under arrest. Black rides off, but his horse trips, and he dies from a broken neck received in the fall. Afterward, Ed cuts the barbed wire separating Rainbow Ranch from the Burkes's and when Molly objects, he kisses her.