Three Texas Rangers — Tex Wyatt (Dave O’Brien), Jim Steele (James Newill), and Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson) — ride into a small town.  They each arrive separately and they all sing while sitting on their horses.  They’re in town to help out Jed Wilkins, who was Panhandle’s superior officer during the Civil War.  Jed is having a nervous breakdown because a crooked surveyor (Jack Ingram) and shifty lawyer (Charles King) are trying to cheat him out of his land.  Jed thinks that he’s serving in the war again so Panhandle has to wear his old Confederate uniform to keep Jed from losing it any further.

The Texas Rangers starred in a series of B-westerns.  This one is mostly amiable, though I think modern viewers will probably have a more difficult time with the Confederate uniform than viewers did in 1944.    Having watched enough of these movies, I’ve lost track of the number of crooked lawyers that Charles King played over the years.  He was one of the great B-movie villains, that’s for sure.

I don’t really know what to make of the singing cowboy genre.  Why are they singing while riding through the wilderness and trying not to get shot?  Do all of the Texas Rangers sing or is it just these three?  This movie raises so many questions.  What’s odd is that the songs in this movie are actually really catchy.  I can still remember the tunes, if not all of the lyrics.  Don’t break the law, the Rangers sang as they rode out of town at the end of the movie.  Don’t break the law.