Come on Danger

This was one of the most-often used plots of the B-Western genre, and this film is the third time RKO utilized it as the studio had used it in 1932's "Come On Danger" starring Tom Keene and also in 1938 as "The Renegade Ranger" starring George O'Brien with Rita Hayworth as the leading lady, and Tim Holt also appeared in the O'Brien film in a secondary lead as a hot-headed young Ranger. Holt's starring version has him as Texas Ranger Jack Mason assigned to arrest Ann Jordan, head of a rustler gang, for murder. On his way, Jack routs an attack of cattle thieves on a girl herder and two of her riders, but the cattle are lost to the gang headed by Ott Ramsey, a dishonest tax collector who is the actual murderer of Jim Ellsworth, Ann Jordan's alleged victim. At Manzanita Jack finds Ramsey and his men playing poker and sees Russ enter and upbraid Ramsey for threatening a foreclosure and the youth is killed during the row. Jack, with his pals Smokey and Whopper approach Ramsey under the pretense of seeking employment, when Ann arrives with her men and stages a hold-up to recover the value of the stolen cattle. Jack realizes that she is the girl he was sent to arrest. He and his pals join her as she escapes, and she tells him she is falsely accused. Jack delays making an arrest, but his identity as a Texas Ranger is discovered just as Ramsey and his men bring the sheriff to Ann's hideout to arrest her, which forces Jack to claim state jurisdiction over the prisoner. While Ann, feeling betrayed, fumes in jail, Jack breaks into Ramsey's office to seek evidence against him, and overhears Ramsey discussing how he killed Ellsowrth and his plans to kidnap Ann from the jail and silence her forever. Jack, Smokey and Whopper battle the Ramsey gang and clear Ann and her men.