Rafael and Pablo are so strongly attracted to Carmelita that each desires her to be his wife. Carmelita does not care to choose between them, for, while she likes each and has coquetted with each, she is not in love with either. The young men are prosperous ranchers and call frequently upon Carmelita, her mother being present at the calls to preserve the quaint southwestern proprieties. One day as Pablo comes from the house of Carmelita, he meets Rafael at the gate and their jealousies burst forth in a quarrel. Nothing serious comes of it at that time, but the seed has been planted and later it bursts and grows. The bitterest break comes when Rafael interferes with the laborers who are at work irrigating Pablos fields. He holds that the water is his, not Pablos, while the laborers believe just the opposite. Under the leadership of their majordomo they put up quite a pretty fight, in which Rafael is aided by a party of his own ranch laborers. Pablo learns of the fight and presses home a quarrel with Rafael, who to tell the truth, hardly needs to have it pressed home. The young men agree to fight a duel and go to an open field behind a church for the purpose. There Rafael wounds Pablo; he is overcome with remorse and makes efforts to help the stricken man, but is met with curses. Pablo tells him that the angelus, which at that moment rings forth from the church, can never afterwards be heard without his thinking of the dying man on the field behind the church. Rafael is convinced that he has killed Pablo, and feels that he must flee the country to escape the penalty of his crime. He is not content to leave Pablo alone, however, and stops at the church to leave a note summoning the priest to aid Pablo. The priest gets this and shortly starts for the field of honor. Before he gets there, however, Pablo has sufficiently recovered from the wound, which is not so serious as he had thought, to crawl away. He crawls to Carmelitas home and there the girl and mother take him in and the girl nurses him back to health. While Pablo convalesces Rafael is far away, working on a cattle ranch. Daily he hears the angelus and daily the curse of the supposedly dying Pablo rings in his ears. Finally as he passes a roadside shrine one day he hears the call again. He stops and prays before the little shrine. As he prays there comes to him the solution of his troubles; he determines to return and confess his crime, standing the punishment and attaining forgiveness, if possible. Along the weary road back to his home he walks and late that afternoon he stands again outside the church door where he left the note to the priest. He calls the padre and begins a confession. The good priest lets him tell the whole story, then he tells him that Pablo did not die from the wound inflicted in the duel, but that he is recovering at Carmelitas. Thither go priest and repentant. There they find Pablo and Carmelita, whose feeling has ripened into love. Rafael asks and receives the forgiveness of Pablo, and as the angelus rings out again he joins the hands of the girl he loves with those of the man she loves and who also loves her, as behind them the priest recites a benison. — Moving Picture World synopsis