Billy the Kid Outlawed (1940)

In the first of the six films Bob Steele made in PRC's "Billy the Kid" series, gun law rules in Lincoln County, New Mexico in 1872, where Sam Daly and Pete Morgan operate a general store. Daly expects to be elected sheriff and he and Morgan intend to bring off a final big coup and then disappear. To further their plans, they have local ranchers such as the Bennett brothers killed. Billy Bonney and his friends Fuzzy Jones and Jeff Travis, driving a cattle herd and friends of the Bennetts, engage in a gun battle with the killers that frightens the stage horses. Billy gives chase and rescues Judge Fitzgerald and his daughter Molly. The judge has been sent by Washington's Department of Justice to take over the law enforcement in Lincoln County, but is murdered by the Daly/Morgan henchman. Sheriff Long deputizes Billy and his friends to bring in the killers, but Daly is elected sheriff, and promptly brands Billy, Jeff and Fuzzy as outlaws. Billy, now known as Billy the Kid, retaliates by holding up a pack train carrying goods intended for Morgan's store, and big money rewards are being offered for his capture. Morgan and Daly, using Molly and her sweetheart, Dave Hendricks, as the go-betweens in their plan to capture Billy by saying that if Billy will turn himself in to the former Sheriff and Hendricks, he will be pardoned by the Governor. Billy suspects a trap and he can Fuzzy go to town and capture Daly and Morgan. Molly, waiting at the rendezvous spot, sees a buckboard approaching and assumes it is Billy and his attorney. But it is fired upon from ambush by the gang's henchmen and their bullets kill Morgan and Daly who are Billy's prisoners in the buckboard. Dave tries to convince Billy that the pardon from the Governor was a genuine offer, but Billy the Kid has reached the point where he no longer trusts anyone, refuses the offer and rides off with Fuzzy and Jeff to whatever Fate has in store for them, while Molly and Dave watch sorrowfully as the three riders vanish in the distance.