The Con Line
With the railroad making its way towards town Shear Williams (Francis McDonald) comes up with a devious plan to con the residents out of their money. Using a fake railroad agent the locals are told that if they want the railroad to come through town they will need to raise the funds to pay for a bridge. But local Nugget (Eddy Waller) saw that there was something suspicious when it came to the agent when he arrived, trouble is having been known to tell a tale or twenty, no one believes Nugget. That is no one except Rocky Lane (Allan Lane), a railroad marshal who is not only suspicious about the fact the town needs to raise funds for a bridge but believes Nugget when he says he saw the real agent being attacked by a group of men on horseback.
"Powder River Rustlers" is a routine sort of western where we have corruption, bad guys masquerading as officials and of course Allan Lane playing the heroic Rocky Lane who with Eddy Waller showing up as Nugget is there to save the town. There is nothing really wrong with it as the story nicely trots along to fill 60 minutes and whilst not once taxing on the brain does certainly entertain in the right places be it Waller giving us whiskery comedy or minor moments of action such as Lane's crafty sending of a telegraph having stripped two wires.
But there are a couple of things about "Powder River Rustlers" which makes me smile. The first of which is the fact that the second billed Black Jack was in fact Lane's horse and the rest of the cast couldn't have been that impressed to be lower billed than a horse. The other thing is who came up with the name "Powder River Rustlers" as there is no rustling going on in this western. Of course when you have watched as many westerns as I have you know that the titles rarely related to the movies but this one really doesn't.
What this all boils down to is that "Powder River Rustlers" ends up an ordinary Allan Lane western which is entertaining enough but not overly memorable.