The Snowbird

Margaret Talliaferro is the spoiled but adoring daughter of financier Warren Cook. Cook is undergoing some financial pressures and has to sell off his half-interest in a logging site in Canada. He sells it to Miss Talliaferro's suitor, James Cruze. Cook's copy of the sales document is held in the office of the local magistrate up in Canada. He reports that he lost the copy in a fire, and the current owner is Edwin Carewe, the son of Cook's partner. He refuses to provide his copy. Cook, having turned things around, offers Cruze his money back, but Cruze tells him he's going to throw Cook in jail for fraud unless he convince Miss Talliaferro to marry him.

Nyah hah hah! Miss Cook heads up north to try to talk Carewe into doing the right thing, but Carewe is a nasty piece of work to the local women, and heads to his cabin. Miss Talliaferro follows him, and he thinks, in her heavy, winter-resistant gear, she is a boy. He's amiable about it, but when she refuses to do her share of the work, he whips her, and he discovers her sex. Meanwhile, Cook and Cruze are on their way.

There are some holes in the story provided mostly by an unreliable local narrator, Arthur Evers, and the sexual misconduct angle is erratically handled, kinkier in outline than in visual execution. Carewe's is a potentially interesting character, except his neuroses yield rather quickly.... there's less than ninety minutes to wrap up the story, which Carewe also directed. This was his last appearance as a screen actor. His directorial career was going great guns through the end of the silent era; then three talkies, the last in 1934. He died in 1940, aged 56.