This is a very early John Wayne western released in 1934. The opening scene has the good guy, played by John Wayne, sneaking into the hotel and finding a cubbyhole to hide in and rest. The sheriff played by Gabby Hayes comes in next and is looking for a dry place to spend the night he is looking to catch the Poky dot bandit who has terrorized the country. The sheriff is put up in the manager’s room that has a hole in the floor that enables him to see all of the room below.
The next people to come through the front door are the passengers on the stagecoach. They get their rooms and away up the stairs when the driver comes into the lobby to get a room and place the payroll for the Lost Lode Mine in the safe over night. The Poky Dot bandit sees the combination threw the window. Later in the night he sneaks in and opens the safe and takes the money. As he is leaving he makes some noise and awakens the first person that came to the hotel. He is seen by the sheriff threw the hole in the floor but runs away as the sheriff comes down the stairs.
Like most old movies it seems that the dialogue and actions were slow and unreal to the way people really talk and act. Part of it is the cameras used and the recordings done. The moviemakers must have thought their audience was very slow and needed to be shown everything.
The true plot is finally revealed in that the bad guys are trying to get all of the homesteaders to leave town and their homesteads so they can buy up there land and have the hidden gold under their property. The story moves along and the girl is kidnapped after the bad guys kill her father. The events continue and several more things happen but in the end the good guy John Wayne gets the girl and they ride off in the sunset together.
I enjoyed seeing this very old western. Every body knew how to ride a horse or drive a buggy. The hats were all very tall. John Wayne rode a white horse. I was amazed by the long pistol shots that brought down and killed various people. Most of these shots were taken from moving horses
