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Having learned the tricks of the trade appearing in the action series The Hazards of Helen back in the mid-1910s, Leo Maloney later eked out a comfortable living producing, directing, and starring in scores of low-budget silent Westerns. In Don Desperado, Maloney plays the deputy sheriff in a small Western town terrorized by a masked stage robber known only as the Black Bandit. Leo arrests a vagrant, Frenchy (Bud Osborne), who matches the description of the outlaw. But when the citizenry, headed by Nathan Jessup (Frederick Dana), the father of Maloney's girlfriend (Eugenia Gilbert), favor a quick lynching instead of a trial, the law-abiding Maloney escapes with his prisoner. A lawyer, Blaisdell (Charles Bartlett), agrees to help, but Frenchy manages to disappear. There is another stage robbery and this time the townsfolk turn against Jessup's son (Morgan Davis). Luckily, Maloney proves that the real bandit is in reality Blaisdell, who has been paying Frenchy to attack the stagecoach line.