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The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty daughter (Agnes Vernon), much to the dismay of a sullen mine office clerk (Chaney), who is also smitten with the girl. The clerk is actually a member of the outlaw gang and uses a mirror to signal his associates. It is the mirror that eventually gives the gang away. This picture was released by the Nestor Company, one of the many producing entities filming at the not-then officially opened but already busy Universal City lot.