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A small town, somewhere out West ... rather an insignificant spot,
actually, so a stagecoach delivering the mail, only stops by twice a
month. Of late though, the stagecoach is regularly robbed, but the robbers
are not out to get their hands on the gold shipment, but want the actual
letters to the locals. Now this is bad, because most of the locals expect
cheques, assayer's letters, land deeds and the like that will help them
carry on, since they are all indebted to the local bank. The local banker
Hayden (Steve Darrell) is a generous man however and is quick to extend
the locals' leases - but he is in every position to be generous, because
he seems to own half the town anyways, and it's only a question of time
(and not even all that much time) until he'll own all of it. Of course,
it's soon revealed he's in cahoots with the mail robbers, but only to the
audience ... One of the locals, Fuzzy (Al St.John), has called in his
good friend Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) to help investigating the
mailrobberies, and Billy and Fuzzy soon stumble upon a stolen mailbags,
with all the letters still in there but the cheques and deeds and whatnot
gone. They find another clue when one local (Roy Brent) is shot dead after
accusing Hayden of blackmail, but there are too many witnesses claiming
the killing was just self defense to pin anything on Hayden. But it puts
Billy and Fuzzy on the right trail. Eventually, Billy and Fuzzy try to
lure Hayden out into the open by leaving him some letters from their found
mailbag every now and again, just to let them know someone's onto him ...
but then Fuzzy pretty much spoils the plan when he lets his romantic side
take over and hand a loveletter from her boyfriend to a local girl (Mady
Lawrence), and before you know it, he's arrested as a mailrobber, but he
manages to make an escape. Billy figures the stolen cheques, deeds and
whatnot have to be in Hayden's safe, so Fuzzy creates a distraction by
challenging Hayden to a duel of marksmanship, which Fuzzy loses by a
landslide ... but it helps Billy to open the safe undisturbed and convince
the sheriff (Budd Buster) that Hayden's the baddie of the piece with what
he's found. Hayden and company are promptly arrested ... Rather
routine B Western rather obviously shot on the cheap and based on a rather
unimaginative script - but once again, Buster Crabbe and Al St.John prove
themselves to be one of the best cowboy-sidekick duos or their time,
basically because Crabbe actually can act and St.John is not only the
moron doing funny stuff but actually does his share to move the story
along.
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