Summary
We see a caravan of horses and stagecoaches moving down a dirt road in the middle of the plains. We then see a group of American Indians on horseback as the credits roll.
At a camp, a flag is raised as a man plays a bugle. Inside a tent, a man tells another that a group of Apache Indians are being stirred up by Geronimo, a tribal leader. An Indian envoy, who gave them the information, stands nearby, and when one of the white men questions whether the envoy is lying, another tells him that the messenger is Cheyenne, and “they hate the Apache worse than we do.” Suddenly a message comes in via telegram; it reads simply “Geronimo.” Ominous music plays as the men pass the message around.
We see a bustling Western town in Arizona, complete with saloons, cowboys, and stagecoaches. A stagecoach trip pulls into town to take a short break on their journey. As the driver lets people out of the stagecoach, a woman asks if there’s somewhere she can go for a cup of tea. As the woman goes into the hotel across the street, a woman recognizes her and greets her as “Lucy Mallory.” Lucy hugs the woman, Mary, and greets the man with Mary, Captain Whitney. When Mary asks Lucy what she’s doing in Arizona, Lucy tells her that she’s joining Richard, her husband, who is out West with his troops. Mary notes that Lucy is only one stop away from her destination, when a strange man comes out of the hotel and tips his hat at the group. They silently walk past him and into the hotel. Inside, Lucy asks Mary and Captain Whitney who the man outside was, and they tell her that he’s a “notorious gambler.”
Meanwhile, the stagecoach driver, Buck, goes into a building in town and asks Marshal Curly Wilcox for his “shotgun card.” The men tell him that someone named the “Ringo Kid” has escaped from jail and is on the loose. One of the men suspects that he’s looking to get revenge on the “Plummer boys,” the men whose testimony got him sent to jail in the first place. Buck thinks that the Ringo Kid ought to stay away from Luke Plummer, who is a dangerous and violent man, and whom Buck has recently seen in Lordsburg, the destination of the stagecoach. “You’ve seen Luke Plummer in Lordsburg?” asks Marshal Curly, surprised, before grabbing his shotgun and saying he’s going to Lordsburg with Buck.
At the bank, Gatewood, a bank manager, accepts a payroll delivery from the coach line, the equivalent of $50,000. As the messengers leave the bank, Gatewood says, “Remember, what’s good for the banks is good for the country.”
Down the street, a dancehall girl, Dallas, is ushered out of town by a group of women. As she walks down the street, she encounters a drunken doctor, Doctor Josiah Boone, who is being evicted from his office for not paying rent. Dallas goes to Boone and mourns the fact that they are both being run out of town. “Haven’t I any right to live? What have I done?” she asks the doctor, to which he responds, “We're the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the Law and Order League are scouring out the dregs of the town. Come on. Be a proud, glorified dreg like me.”
Dallas and Boone walk across the street and Boone goes into the bar to talk to the bartender. Boone asks for a free drink and tells the bartender that he’s leaving town for good. Feeling sorry for Boone, the bartender pours him a drink and points out that the only other man in the bar is a passenger from the stagecoach, a whiskey salesman named Peacock from Kansas City. Hearing that Peacock sells whiskey, Boone gets excited and walks over to introduce himself, taking a swig from the bottle that Peacock is carrying.
At the bank, Gatewood’s wife asks for $5 to pay the butcher and that she’s invited the Ladies of the Law and Order League over for dinner. After she leaves, Gatewood takes a sum of embezzled money from under the main desk and puts it in a bag, planning to leave town.
Buck calls out that the stagecoach is leaving town, and the group assembles to get on board. A group of men leer at Dallas as she gets onto the stagecoach, exposing her ankle seductively to a group of cowboys. Boone climbs on after her, as well as Mr. Peacock. Nearby, Lucy Mallory stands with a group of society ladies and they gossip about whether Lucy is going to travel with “that creature,” referring to Dallas. Lucy says it’s just a few hours and she isn’t worried about it. Because Lucy is pregnant, the women also worry about Lucy traveling without a doctor, but Lucy insists that someone said there was a doctor onboard. “Doc Boone? He couldn’t doctor a horse!” says one of the women, indignantly. They help her onto the stagecoach.
In a nearby bar, the mysterious man that Lucy spotted earlier is gambling and playing cards. Lucy peers out of the stagecoach and spots him through the window; he raises his eyebrows at her, then says to himself, “Like an angel in a jungle, a very wild jungle.” He then turns to a man he’s gambling with and says, “You wouldn’t understand, cowboy. You’ve never seen an angel, or a gentlewoman…”
The stagecoach starts to embark, when suddenly a lieutenant comes up alongside it and a man delivers a note that tells of the danger with Geronimo. The lieutenant tells Curley and Buck that they have to notify the passengers of the risk, and let them decide if they still want to travel. When Curley asks the group if they still want to embark on their journey, everyone does. Curley tries to convince Lucy to not go on the trip, but she replies that her husband is in Lordsburg and she wants to be with him if he’s in any kind of trouble.
As the stagecoach gets ready to leave, the mysterious man who locked eyes with Lucy earlier—his name is Hatfield—tells them to make room for one more. “I’m offering my protection to this lady,” he says, referring to Lucy. Curley doesn’t quite trust him, but lets him in. Boone leans his head out the window and bids farewell to the Ladies of the Law and Order League. The trip begins, and on the way out of town, Gatewood the banker flags down the stagecoach and climbs aboard, carrying his bag of embezzled money.
The stagecoach makes its way through Monument Valley. Buck tells Curley he doesn’t feel good about driving a stagecoach through Apache country. He then tells Curley that he’s saving up money to get married, and Curley wonders about what Gatewood was doing on his way out of town. In the stagecoach, Gatewood talks admiringly about the army men back in the town. “But, brother, aren’t you aware what’s happened?” asks Peacock. Boone pipes in, drunkenly telling Gatewood that they’re all going to be scalped.
Gatewood thinks they are joking, but Boone assures him they are serious, that Geronimo is on the warpath. Gatewood is surprised, insisting that he wasn’t told, but quickly covers up his surprise so that it isn’t obvious that he had already left town when the announcement was made. Curley remains skeptical about Gatewood’s story.
Suddenly, on the road, they encounter the Ringo Kid, the escaped outlaw. “Didn’t expect to see you riding shotgun on this run, Marshal,” he says, as Curley holds up his rifle.
Analysis
The film follows a very straightforward structure. The main conflict is outlined at the start, and concerns the tension between Western settlers and American Indians. In the preface, a man in the American military receives word that Geronimo is planning an attack, and this news hangs over all of the following action. The movie investigates a particular moment in American history, one in which white settlers were at odds with indigenous American Indians. While sociopolitically this is a complicated issue, in terms of narrative it is an especially straightforward one: cowboys vs. Indians. The film establishes itself as belonging in the “Western” genre from the start.
Next comes an extended sequence of exposition, in which we see the social and political dynamics at play among white settlers in the West. In a small town in Arizona, we meet Lucy Mallory, an especially upper-class Southerner who is on her way to meet her husband in Lordsburg. Lucy’s patrician attitudes and finery are somewhat at odds with her rustic surroundings, and she represents the diverse class positions that peopled the West. Lucy’s class is particularly highlighted by her interaction with the raffish and sinister Hatfield. Their strange tension, at once antagonistic and erotic, shows us the way that class distinctions are blurred and positioned against one another in the film.
Part of the exposition sequence in the film is to establish the ensemble of characters who will be riding the stage coach. This group is a motley group of many different kinds of people, a sort of microcosm of the diverse range of characters in the American West. In contrast to the serious and sophisticated Lucy Mallory is Dallas, a rowdy saloon girl who is being pushed out of town for her prostituting ways. Doctor Boone is also being pushed out of town, for failing to pay rent and general drunkenness, and he is contrasted with the priggish and effete Mr. Peacock, a whiskey salesman whom everyone mistakes for a clergyman. Additionally, there is the Confederate gambler, Hatfield, the corrupt banker, Gatewood, the clownish driver, Buck, and the noble Marshal Curley. Part of the adventure of the film comes from such a mixed crowd embarking into the unknown.
Even apart from the fact that their travel route is a high risk area, all of the characters on the stagecoach are putting themselves into unusual circumstances, save perhaps Peacock, who is a traveler by trade. Lucy makes the rather daring decision to travel through Apache Country while pregnant with a child, even in the face of discouragement from her acquaintances. Both Dallas and Boone are outcasts, forced out of their homes for their undignified vices. Hatfield has an ambiguous interest in Lucy and is disreputable in the town. Gatewood is running away with thousands of dollars. None of them are especially used to travel, but are all thrown into the same situation.
As serious and dramatic as the stakes of the film are from the start, the film has a fair share of comic moments and maintains a lighthearted tone even in moments of direness. Multiple characters serve as comic relief and lend the adventure plot a dose of silliness. Boone, the drunken doctor, is a comic character in that he seems to be a remorseless drunk, as affable as he is pathetic. His dynamic with Peacock is particularly comic in that his bawdy shamelessness contrasts with Peacock’s mannered comportment. Another comic character is Buck, the easily frightened and squeaky-voiced driver. These characters serve to balance out the melodrama of the plot.
