Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles between the rebels and the Mounties. Through it all Dusty is determined to bring Corbeau back to Texas (and April, too, if he can manage it.)

Paul Kriza is a cashier of a bank in a small town, and the happy husband of Anna and the father of four children. He is sent to New York to deliver some securities for the bank. There, he is tagged as easy-pickings by a con-game gang and Mary Brown, gang accomplice, proves he is. Waking up in the morning he discovers he has been robbed of the securities and, when he confronts the gang, he is hit on the head and taken out to be left on a railroad track. He comes to, struggles with the henchman and the man is killed when a train comes roaring by. Paul escapes but his watch is found and he is reported as the dead man. But he can't go home again.

Betty Bryant is an ambitious newspaper reporter in love with Dan Barton, a member of a big-city Emergency Squad who are trained to deal with riots, cave-in, explosions, fires and other emergencies where lives are at stake. Slade Wiley, an unscrupulous tunnel builder, finds that his low bid on the Newford Tunnel project is causing him to lose a lot of money, and has underworld leader Nick Burton set off blasts to frighten the stockholders into selling their shares at a low price so he can buy up the stock. Betty is investigating the deal when Wiley and Burton take her on a "tour trip" to the tunnel.

Two men searching for black pearls are marooned on an island when their crew mutinies. There they run into a beautiful girl who had been washed up on the island in her childhood. They must fight angry natives and a typhoon in order to survive.

A young South Seas native boy is sent to the U.S. for his education and returns to his island after his father dies to try to stop a revolution.

June McCarthy has unwittingly aided an undercover Nazi naval officer with acquiring a "mother ship" for German submarines in the Atlantic.

A high-school student in a small town becomes smitten with the sophisticated new girl who's just arrived from Chicago. Based on Booth Tarkington's story.