Dust Be My Destiny

Joe Bell, who has become a hardened cynic because he has served a prison term for a crime he did not commit, is searching for a place to settle down when he is picked up as a vagrant and sentenced to a county work farm. There, he meets Mabel Alden, the sympathetic stepdaughter of the brutal and drunken prison foreman, Charley, and the two fall in love. When Charley catches his daughter with Joe, a fight ensues in which the foreman is rendered unconscious. Panicked, Joe and Mabel flee the work farm and cross the state line, where, unable to afford the cost of a wedding, they agree to accept a free ceremony on a public stage. Immediately after completing their vows, they learn that Charley has died and that Joe is accused of his murder. Fearful that their marriage publicity will lead the police to them, they must constantly be on the run from the law. During their travels, they are befriended by Nick, who gives them a job at his diner, but when the police track them down, they hit the road once again. Joe is so desperate that he is on the verge of pawning his one possession, his camera, when he stumbles upon a bank robbery and captures it on film. Impressed with the pictures, newspaper editor Mike Leonard offers Joe a job on the paper, and Joe confesses his predicament to him. Mike covers for Joe and later, when members of the gang threaten Mike unless he returns the negatives, Joe saves his life. Joe's heroism attracts the attention of the newspapers, and as he prepares to flee once again, Mabel, aware that a life on the run is destroying them, turns in her husband. At his trial, the fugitive at last finds justice when he is acquitted and pronounced an innocent man, free to return to Mabel and his life.