Plot

June Martin is a dishwasher in a California logging camp boarding house. Steve Blake fights Jed Malone for her and loses, thus casting suspicion on himself when Malone dies under cloudy circumstances.

Veteran logger Steve Blake helps city-bred Jed Malone obtain a job with the logging crew of Boss Whittaker. Jed falls in love with June Martin, the pretty dishwasher at the boardinghouse ran by Mother Manning. Steve is also in love with her, but pretends not to notice. Steve and Jed, employed on the same cutting machine, become good friends and Jed saves Steve from injury one day when the defective machine fails. Jed asks June to marry him and she agrees. Before the wedding, the saw fails again and Jed is killed. Steve hammers the machine to bits in a rage and, after breaking the news to June, flays Whittaker for not replacing the defective saw. To cover up his own negligence, Whittaker accuses Steve of killing Jed out of jealousy and then smashing the saw in an effort to cover up the crime. Steve is jailed for murder. June testifies on his behalf and the conscientious Judge Hanley aids in freeing Steve. The townspeople and loggers still believe him guilty and make him feel like an outcast. A forest fire breaks out and Whittaker, leading a party of loggers into the woods to fight it, manages to get his men and himself trapped by the blaze. Steve, who knows the woods well, refuses to rescue the men, until persuaded to do so by June.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>

Jed Malone, a city boy who wants to be a lumberjack, seeks employment at Boss Whittaker's lumberyard, but is turned away because he appears to be too delicate for hard labor. However, when Steve Blake, a worker at the plant, learns that Jed has picked up an injured dog along the way, he appreciates the city boy's heart and convinces Whittaker to take him on. Jed proves his worth almost immediately when he saves Steve's life in a sawmill accident, but they soon have a falling out when Steve discovers that Jed has won over his secret love, June Martin, a beautiful dishwasher at the town's boardinghouse. When Jed and June announce their engagement, Steve tries to hide his broken heart, but, at a party thrown in honor of the couple, he nearly kills Jed in a friendly wrestling match. June breaks up the fight, and soon the whole town begins talking about Steve's jealousy. After spending more time with Jed, Steve begins to soften, and eventually he gives Jed his blessing to marry June. On the afternoon of their wedding, Jed is hurled to his death when a mechanism on the saw fails. Steve, witnessing the tragedy, flies into an angry rage, smashes the machine to bits and blames Whittaker for failing to replace the defective saw. To cover his negligence, Whittaker hints that Steve killed Jed out of jealousy, and Steve is jailed for murder. At the trial, June testifies on Steve's behalf, and although the jury acquits him for lack of evidence, the townspeople still believe that he is guilty. Just as Steve takes to the road to start a new life somewhere else, June receives a distress call that a truckload of men are trapped in a mammoth forest fire and need Steve's help. Steve demonstrates his true nature by risking his own life to brave the blaze and rescue the men, and his act of heroism lifts the cloud of recrimination that has hung over him. All ends happily as he and June are married.