AllMovie

Wintering in Southern California 1910-1911, D. W. Griffith and the Biograph stock company filmed this western melodrama, which has been preserved by the Library of Congress. Recovering from nervous exhaustion, a noted novelist (Wilfred Lucas) takes a job as a ranch hand. When the pacifist writer refuses to fight the crooked foreman (Dell Henderson), he is branded a coward by the rancher's daughter (Blanche Sweet), with whom he is in love. The writer redeems himself, however, when he selflessly ignores a quarantine to care for an Indian stricken with smallpox. Filmed on locations at El Monte, California, this typical melodrama was based on a novel, Hero of the Lost Dog Ranch, by Emmett Campbell Hall.