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His Pony Express job having come to an end due to the new telegraph, rider Sunset Carson joins telegraph operator Martha Taylor (Pat Starling) and her brother, Tom (Al Terry), who are being terrorized by a competitor in this ultra low-budget effort from Walt Mattox' Yucca Pictures Corp. As it turns out, Martha's superintendent, Dawson (Stephen Keyes), is in cahoots with Spade Gilbert (Pat Gleason), a local rancher conspiring to reroute the telegraph line through his own property. When Martha's crew run out of poles, Sunset and Tom ride to protect a new shipment from Gilbert's henchmen, Trigger (Lee Roberts) and Pete (Forrest Matthews). Defeating the outlaws and returning with the shipment, Sunset warns Martha that she is harboring a traitor and that Dawson is the most obvious candidate. A search of Gilbert's ranch reveals the rancher's plans to take over the contract and that Dawson and his men are about to attack the work site. Riding hell bent for leather, Sunset and Tom arrive just in time to defeat the Dawson gang and reveal the foreman as a murderer. Filmed in 16 mm Kodachrome color at least a year prior to its April 1948 release, Deadline was the third of four low-budget Westerns that Carson would make for Yucca.