A Via dos Celerados

There are cattle rustlers on the trail from Bearcat to Abilene, so the ranchers are afraid to move their cattle north to market. Charles Starrett and Smiley Burnette investigate, with Burnette going undercover with the rustlers. Meanwhile, Starrett talks the ranchers into driving their cattle north, while he goes along as himself.... and his spare white horse and Durango Kid outfit are close at hand.

Starrett was one of the most popular B western stars of the period, and doubtless Columbia's practiced productions and distribution networks contributed to that, but the script could be very good, and this one by Michael Simmons is one of them. Smiley sings a few songs, including "Froggy Went A-Courting" with the Georgia Crackers providing some decent music.

No studio reworked stock footage from their other western films more than Columbia Pictures, other than Warners/Vitaphone did when making a new Short out of footage from three other shorts, or a Short from a feature western. Vitaphone and the Warners' shorts department sold exhibitors the same footage as many as five different times under a different title.

And Columbia re-used their plots over and over again as plots in all of their early series-westerns , starring Buck Jones or Tim McCoy, were made over again (and again) in the series starring Ken Maynard, Bob Allen, Charles Starrett, Bill Elliott and Russell Hayden. The only Columbia western series that didn't rely on dusting off previously made films was the Ken Curtis-Hoosier Hotshots series.

But for this film, Columbia did a re-work of one of their A-westerns, 1941's "Texas" that starred Claire Trevor, William Holden and Glenn Ford. They, of course, dumbed it down, simplified it and altered it to fit The Durango Kid character, but bottom line the primary plot was essentially all "Texas", with similar characters and professions among the bad guys, and also inserted a few incidents and some of the dialogue from that film. And the climatic cattle-stampede through town from "Texas" was used in full.

Of course, subbing George Chesebro for the Edgar Buchanan and Frank Sully for the George Bancroft characters does tend to lose a lot in transition.

Steve Haley suggests to the ranchers that they band together and drive their herds to Abilene, Kansas and get full price. Steve's friend Smiley "joins" the rustlers to learn who their leader is.

Grady henchman Doc Walker asks Steve to help break up the cattle drive, and he agrees in order to keep tabs on the rustlers. The gang makes several attempts to take the trail herd but Steve, in his guise as the Durango Kid, intervenes and saves the cattle.

Some good shoot outs and an exciting cattle stampede, but nothing else to make it standout. It's rather average and passable. Smiley gets more screen time here and four songs.