A mountain girl with an army-hating father, meets a handsome army captain, who teaches her how to love her country.

Mountain girl Jess Slocum, lives with her father in a cabin above an army camp. When his daughter questions his hatred of soldiers, Slocum admits to having been drummed out of an army camp years earlier for the crime of bootlegging. Slocum, still continuing his profession of moonshine, is tracked to his cabin by revenue officers, who fire their guns at him. Jess is hit and her father is sent to prison. Wounded, Jess is cared for by Captain Neville and his sister, but the ostracism of the neighborhood children sends Jess running back to her cabin. On the way home, she overhears Mexican bandits planning to seize the ammunition depot of the militia. Rushing back, Jess warns the camp in time to save the depot. Slocum then confesses that Jess is really Col. Tremain's daughter, stolen as a baby in revenge for being thrown out of camp. Jess is then reunited with her family and the young captain asks her to marry him.—Pamela Short

Jess Slocum, a mountain elf, lives with her dad, Jim Slocum, in a cabin high on the mountainside. She has been reared without companions. Old Jim holds a bitter hatred of the flag and the soldiers who drill in the valley town of Flagstone. Finally Jess makes him admit that he is embittered over the fact that fifteen years before he had been drummed out of camp on the charge of being a bootlegger. Jess meets young Captain Earle Neville. She begins to show an immediate interest in pretty clothes and coaxes her dad to buy her a new dress. She is happily trying it on when a bullet enters the cabin and wounds her in the shoulder. It had been fired by a member of Captain Neville's squad of secret service men who were pursuing Jim Slocum for "moonshining." Jess is taken to Captain Neville's home and nursed by his sister. The captain teaches her to love the flag and to sound the bugle calls. She is shunned as the daughter of a jailbird by the girls of the town. Jess starts back to the cabin and on the way meets John Reynolds, who has been fomenting border trouble. She sees him tear =down the flag and shoots him. She mounts a horse and hurries back to town, sounding the "call to arms." The home guards turn out to defend the town against the outlaws. Jim Slocum, in prison, confesses that he is not Jess's father. He had stolen the child as a baby from the home of Colonel Tremaine as revenge for being drummed out of camp. She finds a father and a sister, and a handsome husband.