One of the best and most clever of John Wayne’s 1930s B-westerns from Lone Star Pictures. It’s a crime story with cowboy hats. Here Wayne’s an escaped convict with a false murder charge to his name. While dodging the law, he joins up with a gang of robbers, but can’t bring himself to take part in their heists. Instead, he quietly sabotages them from within. In just fifty-three minutes this one gives you everything: a lot of action, a smidge of romance, some thrilling horsemanship, and at least one unbelievably dangerous stunt (by the great Yakima Canutt) executed with no camera tricks. This film ages well because director Armand Schaefer takes a more cinematic approach than many of his low-budget contemporaries. A lot of B-movies from this period suffer from a stagey presentation, but Schaefer moves his camera around, crafts clever scene segues in editing and doesn’t slow the pace for a lot of exposition when he can tell us all we need to know about a scene through visual cues or body language from the actors.