The Desert's Price on AllMovie

Once again the battle between cattle ranchers and encroaching sheep farmers takes center stage in a silent western, this time with an added touch of Romeo and Juliet. Returning from college, Wils McCann (Buck Jones discovers that the long-standing feud between his family and their neighbors is actually the fault of the nasty Martin brothers. In love with neighbor girl Julia Starke (Florence Gilbert), Wils succeeds in setting the record straight and disarming the villainous brothers. This average western benefitted by an unusually strong cast that included Canadian-born flapper star Pauline Garon, as Julia's sister and the wonderfully hammy Montagu Love as one of the nasty Martin brothers. Love is perhaps best remembered as the lecherous stranger killed by Lillian Gish in the late silent masterpiece The Wind. Although far from original, The Desert's Price was remade twice, as The Ivory Handled Gun (1935), again starring Jones, and as Law of the Range (1941), featuring Johnny Mack Brown.