Disguising himself as a milquetoast Easterner who writes Western novels, Hoppy enrolls in a dude ranch in order to unmask the murderer of the owner's husband.

Before changing his name to Richard Powers, cowboy hero Tom Keene spent the waning days of his stardom at Monogram, churning out westerns like Riding the Sunset Trail. When ingenue Betty Dawson (Betty Miles) and her kid sister Sugar (Sugar Dawn) are cheated out of their cattle ranch, Tom Sterling (Keene) and his sidekick Mendoza (Frank Yaconelli) vow to get the ranch back for the girls. This requires Sterling to cross six-guns with Pecos Dean (Gene Alcase), a former friend who'd turned bad.

On a passenger train passing through the desert, Louise offers to pay the fares of Happy Hobo and Collie. The boy Collie accepts, but Happy continues on foot and finds on a dying man a map to a gold mine and a photograph of his daughter, who is none other than Louise.

Jim and Buddy decide to follow their pal Tater-bug who left them for another job. No sooner do they arrive than Tater-bug gets shot in the back. Jim suspects Joe Weller but has no proof.