A 15-chapter Western serial. The serial involves the mystery of the murder of William Stillman (Wells) and the finding of the heir to his fortune. Silent Joe (Farnum) arrives in an effort to discover the murderer and prove that he is the true heir. He and the heroine Lou (Anderson) have their adventures in the mountainous terrain with its "vanishing trails." They are aided by The Shadow (Orlamond), a demented scientist with his trained dog, and several remarkable, death-dealing inventions.
One of a multitude of short Westerns directed by D.W. Griffith in the early days of film has the distinction of being the screen debut of Western star Harry Carey in a minor role.
A mountaineer, who has been shot by a pursuing sheriff, is concealed by a mountain girl in her cabin. When the sheriff arrives, she gives him whiskey, while secretly removing the bullets from his gun.
The hero's mother is desperately ill and the young fellow, while going afoot for a doctor, stops a mail carrier and forces him- at the point of the pistol- to give up his horse.
The new foreman falls in love with the ranchman's daughter, and notes with jealousy her joy over a letter which her father receives.
Dismissed from the church because of his seemingly undue intimacy with the schoolteacher, the young minister becomes an evangelist and, after an incident in which he thrashes the drunken sheriff, is appointed sheriff by the mayor. In the girl's home he sees a picture of her father, whom he recognizes as identical with that on a circular calling for the arrest of Idaho Mac, a notorious desperado. He promises the girl that he will never use his gun against her father, but sends his deputy, the ex-sheriff, to apprehend Idaho Mac at the border. The bandit, badly wounded by the deputy's bullets, reaches his daughter's house, and she thinks the sheriff false to his word.
Out of the talk at the Sportsmen's Club arises a wager between the globe-trotter and his friend, who bets that he will not be able, within a fixed time, to find his way out of an isolated mountain location to which he will lead him.
Two road agents hold up the stagecoach and rob the passengers. In making their getaway, one of the road agents is shot by the stage driver. They stop at a lonely cabin, where a miner's widow lives with her little daughter, and ask for aid.
The sheriff, Dan Beckham, and his deputy, Bud Cameron, are posting signs offering a reward for the capture of Cheyenne Harry, accused of holding up a Wells Fargo shipment. Shortly after they have tacked the sign to a tree Cheyenne Harry removes it.
A serio-comic tale shows wherein the East and the West strangely mingle despite Kipling's declaration that: "Never the twain shall meet."