Having signed with producer Thomas Ince as a director, formidable stage actor William S. Hart learned the ropes of filmmaking by appearing in a couple of Western two-reelers such as this one. Hart played Pete Larson, a brute whose battered wife, Anne (Clara Williams), finally finds courage to leave. The woman gets lost in the wilderness and is taken in by a young hunter (played by the film's director, Thomas Chatterton), who later proposes marriage. Mistakenly believing her husband to be dead, Anne accepts only to find her first husband returning to perform a bit of blackmail. Hart chafed at having to play second fiddle in low-budget fare such as His Hour of Manhood, and Ince quickly lined up the more prestigious The Bargan, a five-reel Western once again co-starring Hart with the sturdy-looking Clara Williams.
by Hans J. Wollstein
synopsis
