Lasca of the Rio Grande

At her Rio Grande gambling house, sensuous dancer and proprietress Lasca flirts with Jose Santa Cruz, a wealthy, half Portuguese, half-Indian ranch owner. Jose gives Lasca a ring from his finger that she has admired, but he warns her that she will "die nine lives if she is unfaithful to him." Disappointed when Jose becomes preoccupied with a card game, she dances with Texas Ranger Miles Kincaid, who is passing through on his way to a ranger station in Los Hermanos. After the jealous Jose and Miles trade barbs, Lasca is accosted by a drunken saloon patron outside. They struggle and Lasca flees after fatally stabbing the man. Miles, told of an altercation, shoots at the escaping killer on horseback, realizing it is Lasca only after superficially wounding her. After a doctor tends her wound, Miles tells Lasca he must uphold the law and arrest her for murder. As they camp that night on the way to Los Hermanos, Miles falls in love with her. The next morning he decides to set her free, asking for her word of honor that she stay on the other side of the Rio Grande and not see Jose again. She promises, reluctantly, and then departs. At the ranger station in Los Hermanos, Captain Jim Hansen orders Miles arrested for releasing his prisoner. During his three-month imprisonment, his friends, "Crabapple" Thompson and Jehosophat Smith, inform him that Lasca has reneged on her word, and they help him escape. At Jose's hacienda, Miles abducts Lasca, who tries to explain that she does not love Jose, but was forced by him to return. Captured by Jose's men, Miles is confined, while Lasca is told by Jose he will marry her the next day, not for her love, but because his "hacienda needs a mistress...and Lasca needs a master." After Jose informs her that he will also kill Miles the next morning, Lasca plots his escape, unaware that Jose is outside eavesdropping. She tells Miles she loves him and tosses Jose's ring out the window, where it lands at Jose's feet. Convinced of her sincerity, Miles embraces Lasca, fretfully realizing he cannot take her across the border. In her room, Lasca prays for Miles's safety, then observes Jose's men chasing him as he flees. Miles is struck by a bullet in the chase and Lasca tries to reach him before he collapses from his wound. A lightning bolt from an approaching storm causes the cattle to stampede across the path of Miles and Lasca. As he falls to the ground, Lasca covers his body with her own to protect him from the rushing herd. Made repentant by the heroic death of Lasca, Jose orders his men to carry the injured ranger to the United States, with a message to the rangers that he is being delivered "with the compliments of Lasca of the Rio Grande."