Fan CastingThe Bounty of Ryder Part II

• misterwolf The Following Content is Rated "R": Contains Foul Language, Gritty Images, Dark Themes, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, and Graphic Violence. Viewer's Discretion Advised!

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• misterwolf Plot: In 1866, a combined group of bounty hunters and lawmen led by Franklin Willis, marshall of Cody, Wyoming, arrive in an abandoned farm after two hours of riding on horseback through a severe winter storm, following a failed capture for a gang due to being ratted out by one of their own. Willis and his best friend Harold McConnell are furious at their own inability to act when they were set up, but Clinton Ward assures them that it was not their fault; he decides to track down the gang's allies and interrogate them for information, and Charley Ryder accompanies him with the reluctant approval of her parents Maverick "Mace" and Susan "Sue". It is revealed that Charley is Ward's secret apprentice, learning the ropes of becoming a bounty hunter.

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• misterwolf Throughout the journey, Charley learns how to ride a horse and is eventually given Ward's spare revolver, as he tells her "I only need one anyway." Meanwhile, Willis' ruthless sheriff Harrison Rake and his twin brother Benjamin antagonize Mace and Sue, calling them incompetent for allowing a child to go with a bounty hunter when Mace is a lawman, only to be pushed away by Willis and McConnell, but Harrison's chief deputy William Mallory defends them and is inclined to agree about letting Charley go with Ward, although he admits that it was not incompetence.

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• misterwolf During the first interrogation, Charley and Ward learn from a disease-riddled gangster that their trust in Mallory may be misplaced. The two then ride for other small towns, but through every investigation, all they can learn about their rat is that they were a deputy. While Charley and Ward continue their mission, the alliance between the bounty hunters and the lawman begins to deteriorate as Mace, Sue, Willis and McConnell start losing faith in Mallory when he continuously sides with the Rake twins despite their increasingly violent ways, and this only worsens when Benjamin ambushes Sue, bruises her face, and accuses her of making a mistake.

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• misterwolf One week later, Charley and Ward have turned up empty handed so far, and they are currently staying at an inn until they can find somebody who knows exactly who the rat is; Charley receives a letter from Mace explaining what Benjamin did to her mother, and she breaks down into tears as her hatred for the twins increases because of this. She is comforted by a rather frail looking Ward, who then starts coughing up blood when he is out shopping for supplies. Charley helps him to a doctor, who confirms, to Charley's tearful horror, that Ward is diagnosed with stage four tuberculosis. Meanwhile, the group are attacked by the gang themselves and are forced to flee again, eventually retreating to a cave.

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• misterwolf Another letter from Mace is given to Charley as well as a map leading to their new location, while Ward finally finds another ally of the gang and learns that another deputy besides the rat is on their payroll. Charley and Ward depart for the cave and eventually arrive; they bestow this new information to Mace, Willis and McConnell. Later on, the group intervene in a train robbery while Sue is suddenly kidnapped defending Charley in the cave.

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• misterwolf After the robbery intervention ends with a gunshot causing Mace to fall off the train, the gang retreats and the Rake twins look for him, only to return and say that he likely either got killed or had to run away. They encounter Charley, who informs them of Sue's kidnapping. Their faith in Mallory is shattered when he once again sides with the Rake twins after they refuse to rescue Sue, but Willis and McConnell sends Ward and his friend Randall Overton to do so anyway, and Charley decides to go with them.

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• misterwolf Arriving at a docking station, Ward and Overton encounter Bennett St. John while saving Sue; he suddenly reveals that Benjamin is the rat just as Ward's illness gets even worse, before Bennett is knocked out by Sue, who then steals a horse belonging to one of the gang members and riding back to the cave. Following behind, Ward suddenly stops, before assuring Charley, Sue, and Overton that he will make it back with them, before telling them to go on ahead of him just as he gets back up on his horse and returns to the cave. He openly informs the entire group of Benjamin's treachery, which he denies; most of them side with Ward, especially Willis and McConnell, but Mallory and Harrison are oblivious to it, while Mace, who survived the group's earlier battle with the gang, berates both of the twins, revealing that they left him to die.

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• misterwolf A gunfight ensues, with Ward escorting Mace out of danger; having pushed everything he had against his disease, he tells Mace to run away and find Charley and Sue along with those who sided with them, before handing him his own hat and then his horse. As Mace rides away, Ward retreats back to the cave and is ambushed by a irate Mallory, and they both engage in a fistfight. When it reaches a stalemate due to the two being equally matched, Ward is then injured by Benjamin, who then escapes just moments before Charley arrives and knocks Mallory down. A dying Ward convinces Mallory to realize the kind of men the Rake twins are, and Mallory walks away in remorse. Charley tearfully thanks Ward for giving her the greatest adventure of her life and for being her closest friend, before he dies peacefully in her arms.

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• misterwolf Several months later, Charley has reunited with her parents, who have not seen the Rake twins since Ward's death. Mace and Sue have praised their daughter for going back just to comfort Ward and be the last thing he saw before he died. Meanwhile, Overton has become engaged to Jacqueline Thompson, who has been kind enough to hide them from the gang. However, when Mace learns that Benjamin is at large once again and has since joined the gang and become their leader, he decides to take on the life of a bounty hunter, and he departs with Willis and McConnell. Hunting down several of the gang members, they finally have the means to confront the remain gang itself and kill Benjamin, only to realize that when they return to Cody, Charley and Sue have been kidnapped by Benjamin, who had figured out that they were onto him.

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