The Desire of the Moth

Penny arrives in the West by aeroplane. She is considered a suspicious character and thrown into jail. Kurt Walters, a ranch foreman and deputy sheriff, discovers that she is the same girl that his friend, Jo Gary, met in Chicago. Gary fell in love with her, but she confessed she was a thief. Since Penny claims she wants to reform, Walters releases her and sends her to live with Mrs. Kingdon. In spite of her teasing and taunts (or perhaps because of them), Walters finds himself falling in love with Penny.

A little girl and her father are among the settlers in a small western town. The father is very friendly with the neighboring Indian tribe and is presented with a quaint piece of metal representing a dragon's claw, the tribe's good luck omen. Some time later, while traveling with his daughter, he is held up by a band of bandits and shot dead. A bandit takes from him this dragon's claw. Years pass. The little girl has grown into a beautiful young lady. She marries. Their love is very real and their life most happy. He decides to go out west to see a mine that yields the richest gold and his wife expresses a desire to go along with him. The mine is christened "The Dragon's Claw," because of an Indian charm the man owns. While out on a western desert, he shows the dragon's claw to his wife. She then recognizes it as the kind her father possessed when he was killed. She has understood it to be the only one of its kind. She now believes it is her husband who killed her father.

Harley Hennage, a gambler, loves Marie but remains silent when he realizes that she is in love with Oliver Corblay, a prospector. After Corblay and Marie marry, Harley moves to the distant town of San Pasqual and does not see his old sweetheart until her husband is killed while staking a claim in the desert.

For Nita Valyez, who is half-Spanish and half-Irish, Carlos represents potential violence and danger, two things to which she is both attracted and repelled. In contrast, she has only a passing interest in Big Jim, the town's honest, good-hearted sheriff. Then, after Carlos kills a faro dealer, he forces Nita to make an escape with him.

As a baby, John Ermine is stolen from a wagon train by the Crow Indians and is adopted by Chief Fire Bear. John grows to manhood, ignorant that he is a white man until his parentage is disclosed to him by Crooked Bear, a white hermit who is on friendly terms with the Crows. Crooked Bear teaches John the language and customs of the white man's civilization, impressing upon him that it is his sacred responsibility to keep peace between the white men and the Indians.

Drifters Tom Williams and Joe Morgan have a chance meeting with the sheriff's daughter and learn that her brother Jim is being held prisoner in Line Hollow by Wolf, who aspires to be the next sheriff. They aid the sheriff in finding the outlaw gang and rescuing Jim. Tom decides to stop drifting and stay near the sheriff's daughter.

Miner Dan Stuyvesant finally strikes it rich, but on his way to report his claim, he is shot. When Jack Dedlow, the head of a gang of outlaws, hears this news, he rides to Stuyvesant's cabin intending to secure the claim for himself. There the outlaws find Stuyvesant's daughter Hilda, the sweetheart of Tom Flynn, and are about to draw cards for her when Dago Sam pulls out his guns and spirits her out the door. Because Tom is his only friend, Sam determines to protect Hilda from the gang, but when Tom suspiciously questions his intentions toward Hilda, Sam decides to live up to the town's poor opinion of him.

Jack Darling of the North West Mounted Police is ordered to track down and arrest murderer Alec Young, whose girl, Dancing Pete, performs in the Nugget dance hall. En route to Nugget, Jack meets Hope Ross, who is caring for her sister's baby. Although the two fall in love, the outlook for a happy romance appears hopeless, because he believes that she is a married mother, and she thinks that he is an outlaw.

Evelyn Nelson portrays the character Frances Powell in this story that centers on themes of justice and personal vendettas in the old West.

John Ashby and Allene Houston, two neighboring ranchers, are in love, but their parents' violent dispute over the route of the new X. Y. Z. Railroad eventually drives them apart. Colonel Houston and the elder Ashby are killed in a fight, leaving John and Allene to continue the feud, John accepting a job with the railroad company and Allene swearing never to cross their property.

Following his mother's death, John Gregory becomes the "Eagle," a thief determined to get even with the mining company that stole his family's fortune. Breaking into the company’s head office he discovers that another robber has preceded him and killed the night guard. When he is falsely accused, Lucy the girl he loves, discovers a written confession from the real killer just before John is to be hanged and rides wildly to the jail to save his life.

A Playboy inherits a Western ranch on the condition that he shall run it properly for 6 months. A villain makes an attempt to distract him from reaching the goal, but he, no longer the wastrel of yore, persists and becomes full owner of the property.

A story of greed and lust driven by gold fever. Rapacious Kate Kent abandons her daughter Betty to run off with Tom Romaine, her husband’s killer during the Gold Rush. A quindecinnial later Betty heads to California and partners with Tennessee, a freind of her father’s, in the Golden Princess Mine. Kate and Romaine try and dupe Betty into believing he is Betty’s father to get control of her portion, but Tennessee reveals the truth and after an attempt on their lives all works out as it should.

Campbell is disgraced and removed from the service. He saves the girl who was being carried off and rounds up the crooks.

The Jaws of Steel is a 1922 Silent Western.