The Sheriff's Blunder is a silent Western.
Tom Mix
as Hal Whitcomb / Steve Whitcomb
Victoria Forde
as Mary Turner
Sid Jordan
as Sheriff Randall
The citizens and near-by ranchers of a western town are being besieged by a gang of rustlers and robbers, and a plea is made to the governor to send a troop of rangers. Shortly, thereafter a dude-costumed cowboy shows up but he only asks a lot of dumb questions and does a lot of stick-whittling as he wanders the streets and hangs out in the saloon with the regular barflies. The citizens mark him down as being 'tetched in the head.' Also, shortly after the whittler arrives, a mysterious black-masked rider begins to make life a bit tougher on them than it had been.
A young cowhand befriends a disreputable gambler and pulls him out of some trouble. Hoping to square things with his new friend, the gambler seeks to warn him about the cowhand's fiancée, about whom the gambler knows some unsavory details.
Robert Ryan plays an aging sheriff responsible for law and order in a frontier cattle town. Virginia Mayo plays his fiancee. As if handling wild cattle drovers isn't enough, a crooked casino operator from Ryan's past comes to town. An early scuffle in the casino leaves Ryan with vision problems that interfere with his duties. Jeffrey Hunter who came to town with a cattle drive encounters Ryan, who killed Hunter's father when Hunter was young. Feelings of animosity soon change as Hunter begins to sense Ryan is telling the truth about his father. What follows is a plot that continues to thicken to the inevitable showdown.
Stan travels to the small town of Hot Dog to collect an inheritance. He learns his late uncle left him everything - but in the event of Stan's death it all goes to his two outlaw cousins.
Some of the most sanguinary feuds in America have been fought out, not in the mountains of the south, but on the deserts of the great west, where cattlemen and sheepmen often dealt out death to each other with the aid of their old friends, Winchester and Colt. Such a feud is in progress between the men of the desert when Jack, a nomadic cowboy, wanders into the scene. He is outspoken against the outlawry, and the sheriff, in jest, hands him his badge and asks him if he can do any better. Jack accepts the challenge and arrests one of the most recent slayers.
The sheriff of Gunlock is planning to hang Sam Hall, who shot three farmers found on cattle land, at sundown. At the casino, betting is 8 to 3 he won't make it. The cattlemen are set to rescue Sam; the farmers hope to lynch him before he can be rescued; and Hall schemes for escape with his girl Nellie. But Sheriff Jorden is most concerned with finding out who hired Hall: a leading suspect is the sheriff's future brother-in-law.
Sheriff Lester Sands travels to Lindsborg in the hope of finding a gang of outlaws operating in the region. He suspects that they hide there because recently they raided the bank of a neighboring village. And during the robbery, the director was wounded. His daughter Miriam, accompanied by five bank guards has followed the trail of the assailants there. With this event and the attitude of the village mayor, the sheriff and his suspicions are confirmed and he expects that sooner or later he will face these gunmen.
A posse's pursuit of bank robbers ends with loot missing and a sheriff (Broderick Crawford) wounded.
Tenderfoot Chauncey Day arrives in the small Southwestern boom town of Rawhide where Jackson Grade, the recorder of deeds, is accumulating his own fortune through falsifying documents. Authorized to offer miner Joel Brand $100,000 for his claim, Grade attempts to pocket $95,000 by bidding only $5,000. When Brand refuses the offer, Grade attempts extortion by faking his own murder at Brand's hands. Then Grade's accomplice Marsh threatens to have Brand arrested until the White Rider appears with proof of Grade's infamy, thus exposing the crooks. Justice served, the Rider reveals himself to be Tenderfoot Chauncey Day and wins the heart of Brand's daughter Jewel.
A man falsely accused of murder is helped by a dog and horse.
As the sheriff of a small western town, Autry sings his way into a relationship with Eleanor, a singer from a Chicago nightclub who earlier witnessed a murder.
Bill Mathews mistakenly comes to believe that his sweetheart, Sally Brown, prefers the company of his brother, Henry, to that of his own and dejectedly goes to the city, where he finds work driving a truck. Six months later Bill returns home; that very day, the Delno gang robs the bank and kidnaps Sally. Bill follows the outlaws in a plane and parachutes into their mountain hideout; he captures Delno's men and rescues Sally, who quickly convinces him that she has never loved another.
Larrabie Keller, a homesteader, is accused of being a cattle rustler, and when Keller refuses to fight Phil Sanderson, whose sister, Phyllis, has struck his fancy, he is insulted by Bill Healy, to whom he administers a severe drubbing. Phyllis, finding Keller beside a branding fire, believes him guilty; and when he is wounded by Healy, she takes Keller to Yeager, another homesteader, who cares for him and to whom he reveals that he is a Texas Ranger.