Cowboy star Tim Holt resumed his popular run of series westerns for RKO when he returned from the war. He ended up making 46 of them in all, rarely changing the basic formula. Looking for work, Holt's cheerful hero and his sidekick ride into a situation of frontier injustice, often involving crooked attempts to steal a ranch or a farm. Holt's hero generally avoids gunplay and often hides his identity to unmask the villains. Although a pretty girl or two become involved, hardly a kiss is exchanged. In 1950's Border Treasure young Ed Porter (Tim Holt) and his pal Chito Rafferty (Richard Martin) help rancher Anita Castro (Inez Cooper) safeguard a relief expedition carrying money and jewels to aid earthquake victims south of the border. They're opposed by the crooked bar owner Bat (John Doucette), who uses bribery, force and the wiles of saloon singer Stella (Jane Nigh) to learn more about the relief mule train. Ed and Chito must move fast to out-fox the ambushers, led by Stella's outlaw boyfriend Rod (House Peters, Jr.). A record number of story reversals play out in the film's brief sixty-minute running time. Gravel-voiced John Doucette brings distinction to his stock baddie, while comic Vince Barnett, famous as the gangster in Scarface (1932) who doesn't know how to use a telephone, is a bumbling deputy named Pokey. Although Tim Holt's character name varies in each film, his comical partner Richard Martin is always called Chito Rafferty, a Mexican ladies' man character he created for the film Bombardier in 1943. Martin was Holt's steady sidekick for all 29 of his postwar westerns. Veteran director George Archainbaud directed just this one entry in the Holt series, and moved on to a great deal of TV work for Gene Autry and William Boyd. The critics praised J. Roy Hunt's excellent B&W cinematography on location in Lone Pine, California. They singled out as excellent one barroom brawl scene between Holt and Doucette, but thought the film lacked action overall. Variety was skeptical of the charity riches that Inez Cooper is able to collect in the one-horse Arizona town: "The silver and jewels that pour in would shame Cartier's."

By Glenn Erickson