The Cowboy Enters the Movies

MODY C. BOATRIGHT

BY 1908, when the migration of the movies from the arcade to the improvised theater was virtually complete, the popular animus against the cowboy had disappeared, and the greatly augmented mass audience was ready to accept him as hero. Movies of cowboys were being produced, but other Westerns predominated. Films of white-Indian conflict, such as Pioneers Crossing the Plains (1908), in which the grandfather of the heroine takes the news of the Indian attack to her lover;¹ In Old Arizona (1909), in which the message reaches the cavalry by carrier pigeon; and Custer's Last Stand (1909)² are typical, and suggest the influence of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.

What is apparently the first stellar role played by a horse occurs not in a cowboy picture, but in a story about Daniel Boone (1907). Boone is taken prisoner by the Indians and is bound to a tree to await burning at the stake in the morning. During the night, when the Indians are asleep, his horse gnaws his bonds loose. Boone mounts and rides for the stockade, the Indians in hot but unsuccessful pursuit.³

Several cowboy pictures were produced in 1909: Stampede, “praised for its accurate depiction of Western ranch life,” Pet of the Big Horn Ranch,⁴ and The Range Rider, Tom Mix's first picture.⁵ But the man who claimed with some justice to have invented the role of cowboy as screen hero was G. M. Anderson, who in 1903 had played in the history-making The Great Train Robbery. In 1948 he recalled that he had ridden a horse (he failed to ride him upon first attempt), been a passenger on the train who was killed, as well as the bandit who shot him, and as fireman he had fought with another bandit.⁶ This exceedingly popular three-minute show, filmed in New Jersey, combined several elements that were to become the stock-in-trade of the horse opera: there was a violent crime; men were killed; there was a chase (a mounted sheriff's posse pursuing mounted criminals); the criminals were apprehended and brought to justice.

After acting briefly for other companies, Anderson, in partnership with George K. Spoor, founded the Essanay Company located in Chicago. In 1908 Anderson opened a studio at Niles, California, for the production of Westerns. He was looking for an actor to play the lead role in a succession of pictures—one who would be recognized by the audience and whose name would draw a crowd. Failing to find such an actor, he took the role himself. By appearing in chaps and spurs and by adopting the screen name of Broncho Billy, he proclaimed the cowboy. He was the first of the cowboy screen heroes. Between 1908 and 1915 he produced nearly five hundred one- and two-reel Westerns, more than anyone else, establishing the genre.

Important, too, was his decision to establish a studio in California. First, the atmosphere was then clear and smogless, and little time was lost on account of bad weather. Second, space was available without paved roads and telephone poles, and the scenery itself had an appeal independent of the story—an appeal later to be exploited by color films. A third advantage was the availability of cowboys from the ranches, expert riders and ropers who could be hired cheaply to form outlaw bands and posses. Harry Stephens remembers doing such work for the old Bison Company. He and other cowboys would ride over the hills as fast as their horses could run, shooting ahead for a while, and then turning to fire behind them. When the film was cut and put together, they were both the fleeing outlaws and the posse.⁷ Anderson, never an expert rider, employed a cowboy for the distance shots, appearing only in the closeups. A cowboy could be hired to fall off a horse for a dollar, and bulldog another rider for two dollars.⁸ With these wage scales, there was no reason to ration the number of redskins and bad men who bit the dust.⁹

In opening a studio in California, Anderson was abreast of the trends. William Selig had visited Los Angeles and decided to move there from Chicago. Other companies established branch studios at San Diego and Santa Barbara. The concentration in Hollywood began in 1913 when Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn), and Cecil B. DeMille rented a barn on property fronting on Sunset and Vine.¹⁰

Most of the Broncho Billy films have been lost. Enough reviews and summaries of these and other cowboy films of the period remain, however, to indicate the development of the genre. As the most popular and prolific actor and producer Anderson was a primary influence in defining the roles the cowboy hero was to play. These roles are the ones that a cowboy might play without losing his identity—ones in which he could ride a horse, dress in cowboy garb, and use a six-shooter. Sometimes he drove cattle, but such work, if it occurred at all, was, except in a few early documentaries, purely incidental.

The three principal roles were the Good Bad Man, the Mounted Officer of the Law, and the Knight Without Armor.

1. The Good Bad Man. This character is in the tradition made popular by Bret Harte. Underneath the bad exterior lies a nobility that needs only to be awakened by the love of a good woman, a child in distress, a community terrorized by a brutal bully. The Good Bad Man may reform and be forgiven, or he may sacrifice his freedom or his life for another.

2. The Mounted Officer of the Law. He may be the sheriff, the deputy, or the Ranger who eventually gets his man.

3. The Knight Without Armor. The cowboy who, as private citizen, protects and avenges the weak, especially women.

These are the standard roles as they had evolved by 1913. There were also what were later to be called “off-beat” pictures, particularly comedies, in which the cowboy was the anti-hero, often the victim of the tenderfoot.

In order to illustrate the sources of information as well as to indicate what the movies meant to their reviewers, I shall quote rather extensively from contemporaneous reviews containing summaries of the action.

1. THE GOOD BAD MAN

The Outlaw and the Child (1911). A story which has for a background the great Mojave desert in California. The principal character is a little girl, scarcely more than a baby, daughter of the sheriff. She is found by an outlaw [Broncho Billy] whom the sheriff is pursuing and is taken to her father's home. The terrible sufferings in the desert are too much for the man and he succumbs before he can be aided. The ending is commended. It never seems quite right for a sheriff to break the law by allowing an outlaw to escape, as has been represented in some cases, merely because he performed some service for which the official might have felt indebted to him. This ending is more satisfactory. The sheriff is left under no obligation and the outlaw is removed from the society which he menaces.¹¹

The implication of the review that the bad man usually escapes punishment is borne out by the files of the Motion Picture World. More typical is Broncho Billy's Redemption (1910).

She gives him a cup of coffee and he rides away. She takes her father to a deserted shanty, where Billy visits her. Her father is in need of medicine for which she has a prescription. Billy takes it, promising to send her the medicine. He meets a Mexican to whom he gives the prescription and money. The Mexican, however, tears up the prescription and pockets the money.

Later Billy sees an unattended herd of cattle, and he cannot resist driving them away. He has not gone far, however, when he sees the wagon again and finds it empty. He abandons the stolen cattle and hurries to the shanty. There he finds both father and daughter unconscious. He places them in the wagon and drives speedily to town and stops at the doctor's office.

Other exemplifications of the Good Bad Man include Man to Man (1911), in which the bad man under arrest joins in fighting off an Indian attack, and, having the only unexpended bullet when the Indians are driven off, hands his gun to the sheriff, who lets him go;¹³ Jack Mason's Last Deal, in which a gambler, finding out that the man he has ruined is the father of a girl he loves, plays a last game in which he lets his victim win back the money he has lost;¹⁴ and Why Broncho Billy Left Bear County (1911), in which the bad man assumes guilt for a robbery committed by the father of “the girl who appealed to his heart and his rough chivalry,” restores the stolen money, and, responding to the love of the girl and to the message of the Bible she has given him, changes his way of life.¹⁵

No detailed explanation is given for how the Good Bad Man becomes a criminal, but the implication is that he is basically a good man who needs only to be confronted with a situation that will call forth this latent goodness: a child or a woman or a sick man in distress with no other help available, the law and the outlaw attacked by a common enemy, the love of a good woman. The intensity of the internal conflict between the desire to remain free and the demands of humanity or love cannot be determined by the synopses. Nevertheless such conflict is assumed, and is especially evident in Broncho Billy's Redemption, in which the crucial decision is made.

2. THE MOUNTED OFFICER OF THE LAW

The Smuggler's Daughter (1912). Silas Gregg, a western mountaineer, makes a living by smuggling goods from Mexico. His pretty daughter, Vedah, loves young Brant Graham [Broncho Billy], who is about to be sworn in as deputy sheriff. The opening scene shows him telling Vedah of his appointment, while Silas Gregg, in an adjoining room, listens to the story. Brant then leaves for the sheriff's office to get his badge. Silas comes into the room where Vedah stands happy over her lover's good fortune, and she tells him about it. Silas then joins his confederates in the barn.

Brant's first assignment is to identify and break up a gang of smugglers. He avows his love for Vedah, but she will not accept his ring without her father's consent. They go to the barn to look for him. Peeping in, Brant sees him and his companions handling smuggled goods. He tells Vedah that her father is the head of a gang of smugglers and that his oath and duty compel him to arrest him. He enters the barn with drawn pistol, and the smugglers hold up their hands. Then Vedah pinions his arms, and he is taken by the outlaws. Silas takes Vedah to the house, tells her that Brant must die, returns to the barn. Vedah mounts her horse and rides for the sheriff.

There are other suitors, but Steve seems to be winning until

In A Romance of the Rio Grande (1911) the hero is a Texas Ranger on the trail of a gang of Mexicans who are smuggling liquor across the border and selling it to the Indians. Finding that the drunken Indians have captured a rancher and his daughter, the Ranger's sweetheart, he gathers a posse of cowboys and arrives in time to save the rancher from burning and to overtake the captors of the girl.¹⁸

The role of the sheriff in On the Mexican Border (1910) is to prevent the cowboys of the Bar-B-Bar Ranch from lynching the Mexican abductor of the ranchman's daughter, whose sweetheart is not the sheriff, but the leader of the cowboys.¹⁹

In this respect the sheriff is not typical of the good peace officer of the movies of the period. For in the majority of my samplings the lawman is somehow emotionally involved. If the criminal is the father or the brother or the uncle of his sweetheart, he must undergo an internal struggle of love versus duty. Duty must always win, but the action is so contrived that the loved one or his sweetheart escapes punishment through no dereliction on the part of the officer. Thus he has his cake and eats it too. If the crime is committed by his rival in love or by a criminal not related to the girl, his urge to duty is reinforced by love, and when the guilty man is brought to justice he is likely to enjoy the double satisfaction of having done his duty and won his lady.

3. THE KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR

Circle C's New Boss (1911). Ethel Hanna resides in the East. Her Uncle William is a wealthy ranchman living in Arizona. One day a lawyer comes to Ethel and gives her word of her uncle's demise, and the further information that she is his sole legatee. With beating heart she calls her maid and packs her belongings and sets forth on a long journey to the West to claim her inheritance.

Her uncle had died in a wild paroxysm of rage brought about through the conduct of his foreman, Steve King, and some disorderly cowpunchers of the place. Steve, who is an unscrupulous fellow, is quick to take advantage of his employer's sudden death, so he immediately sets about confiscating some valuable documents, including the last will and testament of the old ranchman. The assistant foreman, however, one Harry Newton, a young cowpuncher of sterling worth, frustrates the evil designs of the foreman, and rescues his late employer's property from the hands of the villain.

Ethel arrives at the ranch in time to witness a quarrel between Steve and Harry. She interferes. Steve, unaware of her identity, brutally challenges her right to interfere. He does this to his sorrow, for the next minute he is discharged, and driven from the place by the cowpunchers under orders of their new mistress.

Harry is now made foreman, having won favor in the eyes of the girl from the East. He, in turn, appoints Jack Wilson his assistant, and Jack straightway falls in love with Hanna [sic] Ethel's maid, who has accompanied her on the trip to the West. In the meantime, the villainous exforeman plans to circumvent the new mistress and get her in his power. By a subterfuge he succeeds in getting her away with him on horseback. Then comes a wild ride, with Harry Newton and the rest of the boys in a fierce chase. Subsequently a fight to the death occurs, between King and Newton, in which the latter is victor. It is not to be wondered, then, that the fair Ethel bestows her hand and her fortune on the dashing Harry.²⁰

The New Cowboy (1911). A Western picture the principal feature of which is the sound thrashing a bully gets because he forces his unwelcome attentions upon a girl and attempts to compel her to marry him. Her lover is informed of what is transpiring by her little brother. There is a wild ride and a good pommeling for the persistent suitor at the end. It is a novelty to see cowboys use their fists instead of firearms.²¹

The happy marriage of the girl rescued and her rescuer may be regarded as the normal ending of the two-reel films of the period. But the sentimental novels of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Augusta Jane Evans, and their like were still being read; gift books containing “sad” poems were still to be found on parlor tables; young men and women still gathered around the parlor organ to sing “I'll Be All Smiles Tonight” and “They tell me, father, that tonight you wed another bride,” or played “Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven” on the phonograph; and unlettered folk sang “Barbara Allen” and “Little Joe the Wrangler.” It is not surprising, then, that the cowboy Knight did not always arrive in time.

In Broncho Billy's Love Affair (1912) Billy, a cowboy on the Circle C Ranch, and the foreman, Dan Wild, are both in love with the ranchman's daughter, Winnie Allen, who favors Billy. Wild gets Billy discharged, steals Winnie's engagement ring, and forges a note breaking the engagement. The unsuspecting Billy leaves the country. Several years pass. Wild takes Winnie's few remaining dollars, goes to town, becomes involved in a quarrel, kills a cowboy, and is himself wounded. Broncho Billy, who has now returned and been elected sheriff, arrests him. Wild, knowing that his wound is fatal, confesses his treachery. Broncho promises to see that Winnie will be taken care of.²⁴

But the rule was for the Knight to arrive in time and save the woman. Sometimes, as in The Mesquite's Gratitude and The Arizona Kid, in both of which the women are Indian maids, the victim is a stranger to him, and his intervention is therefore prompted by a disinterested chivalry.²⁵ But generally he has loved the woman before the crisis, and has a personal as well as a chivalric and humanitarian motive in defending her.

THE COWBOY AS NON-HERO

Not all cowboys in cowboy movies are heroes. When the cowboy is a Good Bad Man, a Mounted Officer of the Law, or a Knight Without Armor, another cowboy may be the villain, and others may be subordinates of the hero and villain. There is little in the early movies to support the primitivistic idea that living in the great open spaces, riding a horse, and working with cattle will in themselves produce nobility of character.

The cowhand's provincialism, his rusticity, furnished a basis for comedy. Three basic plots exemplify this theme: (A) The Triumph of the City Slicker, (B) The Taming of the Bully, (C) The Tenderfoot Makes Good. These are illustrated below.

THE ANATOMY OF THE EARLY COWBOY FILM

There was probably more variety in the early two-reel cowboy pictures than in the features that succeeded them. Trends toward standardization, however, are clearly discernible in a structural pattern and a set of conventions. When Anderson began making his Broncho Billy movies, there was still a lively interest in mere motion—in a picture that moved. There was an interest in the western landscape, and Congress and the public were responding to President Roosevelt's demand for the preservation of virgin forests and natural wonders. There was also a popular interest, both promoted and exploited by Buffalo Bill, in horsemanship. The scenario writer or director could appeal to all these interests by providing a simple plot with plenty of riding through scenic country. In a few pictures the plot was nothing more than an occasion for presenting a rodeo on the screen. In one such picture, Frontier Day in the Early West, the exhibition of riding is followed by a horse race, suspense for which is created by one contestant's drugging the jockey of the young lady whose horse is reputed to be the fastest entry. The climactic scene shows her dressed as a man riding her own horse to victory.²⁹ In another, The Broncho Buster's Rival, a strange cowboy attracts the favorable attention of the heroine by his exhibition of bronc-riding. The hero shows him up as a bad man, and “the usual chase follows.”³⁰

The “usual chase” was in most Western films the most conspicuous and exciting part of the action, the chief variety being whether the spectators’ sympathy lay with the pursuer or the pursued. The massive pursuit was typical of the military picture in which the cavalry, flag flying, arrived just in time to drive off the Indians with considerable slaughter, as the pianist pounded out martial music. In the cowboy pictures there were posses, but not infrequently it was one rider against another. A knowledgeable scenario writer need not limit himself to one wild ride. In The Smuggler's Daughter, already cited, there are three, but no pursuit. The girl rides to notify the sheriff; the sheriff and his posse ride to the smuggler's barn, arriving just as one of the outlaws is about to pull the trigger and send Broncho Billy to his grave; the chief of the smugglers, the girl's father, rides to make his escape into Mexico. Riding under an extreme handicap is illustrated by Indian Pete in The Girl of the Triple X, who with both hands tied behind him mounts his horse and reaches the ranch in the nick of time to prevent the lynching of an innocent man framed by his rival in love.³¹ The running fight, although more common in the military Western, occurs also in the cowboy movie. In The Half-breed's Plan, the girl learns that the half-breed plans to rob her father as he returns with money from the sale of cattle.

Obviously the chief setting was the out-of-doors. The saloon, usually without the dancing girls, was an important interior, but it had not become universal. More frequent was the ranch home of the heroine. Barns, cowboy shacks (line camps), hotel lobbies, and schoolrooms occur.

The hero, whatever his role, did not have to be a paragon of puritanical virtue. He might drink and gamble and perhaps engage in the innocent pastime of shooting up the town. In The Attack on the Train, a cowboy being sent to jail for such an offense is rescued by his comrades, who hold up the train and release him. In Broncho Billy's Last Spree,³³ drunken and disorderly conduct is again treated with comic indulgence. Billy rides into town with his savage war whoop, staggers into the saloon, drains a bottle, and goes down the street. He rips off the coat of an old ranchman, makes an Englishman dance to the tune of his six-shooter, sends the hotel guests flying from the lobby, and breaks up a church meeting. The sheriff is notified, and Billy mounts the nearest horse and flees ahead of the posse. The sheriff finds him at home sleeping off his spree.

In the meantime an elderly lady arrives from the East looking for her son, William Jones. A photograph she carries shows that her son is Broncho Billy. The sheriff pretends that Broncho is sheriff and he the prisoner. The old lady gives him a Bible and admonishes him not to drink and to be a good man like her son. The sheriff goes on vacation after appointing Billy to serve as deputy for the duration of his mother's visit.³⁴

Another film, however, is little more than a temperance tract. “A cowboy, committed to a two-year probation period by his sweetheart after a drunken debauch which resulted in his prospective father-in-law's death, becomes a parson and returns to marry the girl.”³⁵

The woman in the early cowboy movie existed primarily to provide the love interest, but she was not merely a passive creature to be awarded the hero at the end. My investigations confirm the finding of George Fenin and William Everson that the woman of the early Westerns “was shown as the full-fledged companion of the pioneer and possessed an inner strength that made her his superior.”³⁶ The conventions of the cowboy movie demanded nubile women. Matrons are few, and mothers of marriageable daughters fewer. When they exist they either furnish opposition to the cowboy suitor, as in The Cowboy and the Easterner, in which the mother's opposition ceases when the eastern man is exposed as a coward, or they comfort the erring daughter as in The Cowboy and the Artist.³⁷ But more often the mother is just not there. The heroine is a ranch girl keeping house for her widowed father or unmarried uncle. The removal of the mother simplifies the action and implies a close relation between the girl and her father or unmarried uncle. It explains her love of the land, her joy in the out-of-doors, and her expert horsemanship. She rarely uses firearms, however. One of the few exceptions is in Western Girls, in which two sisters returning from town see two stage robbers dividing their loot. They slip away unseen and ride to the ranch, but finding no one there, they put on cowboy clothes, return, get the drop on the robbers and are bringing them into town with nooses around their necks when the sheriff arrives.³⁸ In another movie a girl being held for ransom effects her own escape, not only from the bandits but from the boarding school to which she was being unwillingly sent.³⁹ In another the schoolteacher insists upon a trial, which she conducts in the schoolroom, and prevents the lynching of an innocent man.⁴⁰ This is one of many movies in which the girl saves her man, usually, as here, her lover, but sometimes her husband or father or uncle. Most often she achieves this by a wild and desperate ride. In The Mesquite's Gratitude it is an Indian girl whom the hero has protected who takes a note to his friends.⁴¹ In The Cowpuncher the girl sees her lover and brother under Indian attack and rides to the ranch for help.⁴²

The villain as an artist in evil who glories in his art for art's sake is less frequent in the early cowboy movies than readers of the dime novels would expect. The most common misdeeds are crimes against property prompted by greed. Cattle rustling, strangely enough, is rarer than robbery. One scenario writer managed to bring in claim jumping, a tradition of the mining West, by making oil the mineral.⁴³ A character rare in her time, but one to become well known to later moviegoers, is the female gold digger. This one seduces a married man and drives him to the verge of suicide. His brother marries her, not for love of her but for love of her victim.⁴⁴

About a third of the crimes attempted and committed are motivated by passion, equally divided between love or lust and revenge. The offenses of men against women include various kinds of unmanly conduct—excessive familiarity and the like, seduction, attempts to compel marriage, and extreme cruelty and wife desertion, examples of which occur in synopses already given.

Seekers of vengeance are usually rejected lovers or discharged cowboys or foremen. I find no example of the criminal returning to do in the officer who sent him up. The common acts of vengeance are kidnapping and framing. The victim of the kidnapper is usually, though not always, a woman, the female member of the love triangle, or the ranchman's wife, niece, or daughter, as in Circle C's New Boss, already cited, and A Red Man's Bravery, in which a friendly Indian overcomes the kidnapper and returns the girl to her sweetheart.⁴⁵ In The Cattle Rustlers, a couple of cowboys steal cattle and frame the foreman—the foreman who has discharged them,⁴⁶ and in The Angel of Contention, the sheriff makes a false charge of murder against his successful rival in love.⁴⁷

Excluding racial conflicts to be noted later, the crimes and misdemeanors of the early cowboy movies are overwhelmingly individual crimes, individually motivated. Social conflict is apparent in only one film in my sampling. In The Invaders, a story based on a novel by John Lloyd, which is based in turn upon the Johnson County War of 1892, the conflict is between the large ranchman and the settlers. The writer, unlike Owen Wister, takes the side of the settlers. The cattlemen import a killer; a stranger, a tenderfoot from the East, appears and aligns himself with the settlers. The killer soon learns that the stranger is more than his match and plans to shoot him from ambush. At this point the cattlemen decide to import a hundred gunmen from Texas and drive the settlers off the land. The battle is beginning when, in accordance with historical fact, the army intervenes.⁴⁸

The early cowboy movies show little hostility to Mexicans and Indians. There are Mexican criminals on the border and a half-breed Indian bandit, but even criminal Mexicans are capable of gratitude. In The Lucky Card, for example, a member of a gang of bandits, recognizing a victim as a man who had been a good Samaritan to him years before, helps him escape at the risk of his own life.⁴⁹ The majority of evildoers are Anglos. Hostile Indians provide crises to furnish suspense and afford opportunities for heroic action, as in the case of Peaceful Jones and Man to Man. But when Indians appear as individuals they are good, as in The Girl of the Triple X, Red Feather's Friendship, The Mesquite's Gratitude, and A Red Skin's Bravery. In The Kid from Arizona the gratitude of an Indian girl whom the hero befriended is the source of complication. As a token of gratitude she hands him a handkerchief which enfolds stolen money. Rather than betray her he flees, but when he is taken and charged with theft, she confesses.⁵⁰

It is clear that violence was stock-in-trade for the cowboy Western from its beginning. Yet as one reads the synopses, he is impressed with their comparative moderation. In The Invaders casualties are limited to two men and a woman shot by mistake; in The Red Devils, a story involving an acrobatic troupe, cowboys, Indians, and cavalry, we are told that the soldiers “scattered” the Indians, but not how many if any were killed is indicated.⁵¹

In Peaceful Jones the Indian dead total eleven. In The Half-breed's Plan all, an unspecified number, of the desperadoes are captured or wounded. In The Cattle Rustlers one rustler is killed and one escapes. Pistol duels to the death occur as in Circle C's New Boss and The Sheriff's Sisters, in which the victim draws first, but there are no sundown or high-noon ultimatums and no walkdowns with tense spectators waiting to see the show.

In a majority of the films a solution is achieved by something short of death. In Broncho Billy and the Maid there is a mutual wounding followed by a reconciliation; the fist fight, later to become a convention, is emergent. In The Kid from Arizona the hero, challenged by the bully to take off his gun, does so and wins the fight. Several innocent men barely escape lynching, one guilty one is lynched, and two sheriffs prevent lynching of guilty men.

In the early cowboy movie there is a rough, but only a rough, approximation to poetic justice; it was not yet a morality play in which the right always won, in which the good were rewarded and the evil punished. It has been shown already that “sad” endings were permissible, and that bad men sometimes went free as a reward for some noble act with or without an implied reformation. Death or imprisonment was by no means the universal doom of the wrongdoer. If he was the father of the heroine he almost invariably went free, though he might be removed from the community by a flight to Mexico. The girl in The Blotted Brand who altered the brand on her father's calves to that of her lover's, in order to hasten the time when her lover's herd would equal a third of her father's and he would consent to her marriage, received parental blessing.⁵² Both the sheriff who gambled away the money he had recovered from a stage robbery and the robber who kept his promise to go to jail, but did not promise to stay there, went free. The gold digger came off pretty well in marrying her victim's brother. The Indians who were incited to hostility by liquor bought from a smuggler were punished, but the smuggler went free.

In On the Border Monte Joe, an Anglo, and Monte Pete, a Mexican, have been rivals in love. Pete is the winner. Later in Mexico Joe falls into Pete's power, and Papinta, the woman, helps him escape. “Joe realizes that it would be folly to leave the girl behind, so induces her to cast her lot with him. A thrilling dash for freedom closes this excellent story.”⁵³ It is not clear whether Papinta will get a divorce, commit bigamy, or live in sin. Had a moral solution been demanded in those pre-Hays times, it would have been a simple matter to have Joe make her a widow.