Chip has inherited a supposedly worthless gold mine from her father and Craig Allen is about to buy it. Roy suspects the mine may be valuable and using a clue left by Chip's father, investigates. He finds the hidden shaft that contains the gold and with the posse chasing him on a trumped up robbery charge, races to town with ore samples hoping to get there before the ownership is transferred. Roy Rogers (Roy Rogers) and his sidekick Teddy Bear (Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams) have been prospecting for gold with no success. They decide ti give it up and get a job in town. On the way, Teddy finds a girl's charm bracelet, bearing the inscription "Chip." They ride into town and find the citizens in an uproar over the disappearance of of a young girl. Believing her kidnapped they form a posse under the influence of Craig Allen (John Hubbard), proprietor of a gambling club and every other important business in town. He is engaged to Ysobel Martinez (Dale Evans), the cousin and only living relative of Chip Williams (Mary Lee), the 'kidnapped' girl. When Teddy tries to use a charm from the bracelet as a slug, Allen brands Roy and Teddy as the kidnappers, and starts taking them to jail. They escape and find Chip who has ran away because Ysobel , her cousin and not her sister, because Ysobel is selling a mine, left to her by her father, to Allen. The posse including Ysobel and Allen find the trio at the mine, and Chip clears Roy and Teddy. Ysobel, in gratitude, offers them jobs on her ranch. They go to the mine again and Chip finds the treasure left to to her…it is a tin box not to be opened until her sixteenth birthday, which begins at midnight this very night. Allen, cad that he is, knows the mine is rich in gold and is determined to dupe Chip and Ysobel, who do not know that, out of it. At the birthday party, the letter to be read disappears but through a lucky accident,Chip finds it and reads it aloud. Roy and Teddy, knowing that Allen has the bracelet , which show the location of the gold, fight Allen and his henchmen to get it for Chip, but Ysobel, still unaware of just how oily and sneaky Allen is, fires Roy and Teddy. Further complications arise. Riding into town, Roy Rogers and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams are mistaken for kidnappers. Chased out of town, they encounter the missing girl in question and agree to help look for her father's buried treasure, money that could spare her sister Dale Evans from marrying the rich town bully.<br/><br/>Another typical, albeit pleasantly entertaining Roy Rogers adventure, this has a slick villain, fun support by underused sidekick Williams, the first pairing of Roy and Dale, and an appealing performance by Mary Lee, as Dale's kid sister.<br/><br/>However, like a lot of Roy's later pictures, the music is a bit of a disappointment, being more in a pop vein than country or western. For example, the grand finale has Dale, Roy, and Lee singing a silly song about "The Enchilada Man"! "Cowboy and the Senorita" is the very first screen pairing of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and it comes across surprisingly well. The film title is also the name of the opening and closing musical number, and even if not meant to be prophetic, the eventual marriage of Roy and Dale proved to be a wonderful union for film goers and fans of the Western duo.<br/><br/>The story involves a missing runaway Chip Williams (Mary Lee), who is revealed to be Ysobel Martinez' (Dale Evans) half sister. Chip needs to find out what her deceased father left her in a box buried in an abandoned mine on the Martinez property. The mine is soon to be sold to Ysobel's fiancé Craig Allen (John Hubbard), and that should give you an idea where the story is headed. Allen and his henchmen have already begun excavating the mine for it's hoard of gold, while busily setting about to frame Roy and his sidekick Teddy Bear (Guinn "Big Boy" Williams) for Chip's disappearance, and later for the theft of two thousand dollars from his personal office safe.<br/><br/>To be sure, there are manufactured elements that defy coincidence in the story; Chip discovers her father's missing treasure on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the day on which her father specified it should be opened. In a letter accompanying the discovered box, it states that a bracelet she already owns (and lost, conveniently found by Roy and Teddy Bear) is her only inheritance, but she should examine it closely for the treasure to reveal itself. <br/><br/>Bad guy Craig Allen, Ysobel's fiancé furiously denies his complicity in any cover-up scheme. In an interesting response by Roy, the film's date is put into historical perspective - there's enough gold in the assayer's office to make Allen the biggest liar in 40 states!<br/><br/>Since most of Roy's films offer Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine as the comedic sidekick, it's a refreshing change of pace to see Guinn "Big Boy" Williams in that capacity here. The clumsy Williams spends a lot of his time falling down, but he also has a highlight line in the film; when Craig Allen's henchman Ferguson wavers in admitting their role in the mine cover-up, Big Boy offers to "take him to the memory room".<br/><br/>The film ends on a quite lavish musical number that starts out with dancers circling a huge sombrero. It's a fitting end to an engaging story, with Roy's arms clasped around not one, but two pretty senoritas - Dale Evans and Mary Lee.
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