Summary
As the stagecoach makes its way through the desert, it ends up in a dust storm. Onboard, Dallas looks at Ringo, who looks back. Lucy looks perturbed as Doc Boone goes to have another swig of liquor. Peacock pleads with him not to, but Doc drinks anyway and passes out.
Later, the stagecoach arrives at Apache Wells. Curley tells everyone that they just have to change horses and continue on their way to Lordsburg. Curley asks a Mexican proprietor at Apache Wells, Chris, where the calvary are and Chris tells him that all the soldiers have left. Alarmed, Lucy asks where Captain Mallory, her husband, went, and Chris tells her that he was hurt in a “skirmish” with Apaches the previous night, and was brought to Lordsburg.
As Lucy walks away, Dallas tries to offer her sympathies, but Lucy rudely shrugs off her words of support. Hatfield follows Lucy into a building, where she promptly passes out. Hatfield calls for help and runs to her side. When Curley comes in, he picks Lucy up and carries her into the next room. Dallas and Ringo urge Doc Boone to follow to tend to the sick woman, as Gatewood complains that Lucy’s illness will only slow them down. Dallas rushes into the room to ask Ringo to get some hot water, and Doc Boone comes out looking drunk and defeated.
“A fine member of the medical profession, drunken beast,” says Hatfield dismissively. Boone asks for coffee. After Boone gets sick in a bucket and sobers up, Curley throws some water in Boone’s face.
In the next room, Peacock sees Chris’s wife, a Native woman named Yakima, and screams in alarm. “She’s savage!” Peacock yells, and Chris invites his Apache wife in to help Lucy with her birth. “Not so bad to have an Apache wife, Apache don’t bother me,” Chris says. Boone goes into the birthing room.
Later, we see a Mexican playing the guitar out by a crackling fire. Yakima sings along with the guitar. She tells a number of vaqueros to ride away with the spare horses that the stagecoach was going to use, then continues her song. As the four “vaqueros” ride away on the horses, Curley, Ringo, and the others run out and watch them, defeated by the theft.
A coyote howls, and inside, Boone lights some tobacco from a lamp. Suddenly, the men hear the sound of a crying baby in the next room, and Buck mistakes the crying for the howl of a coyote. Then, Dallas comes out holding Lucy’s baby, and shows it to the men. Buck cannot believe it, and Dallas and Ringo share a glance as she holds the baby. As Boone comes out of the birthing room, Peacock shakes his hand and he walks over to a bottle of liquor. Curley leads them in a cheer for Doc Boone successfully delivering the baby, but Peacock thinks they ought to be quiet for Lucy's sake.
In the hall, Ringo watches Dallas walk down through a lit doorway. He begins to follow her, but is intercepted by Chris, who warns him about the Plummer brothers—Luke, Hank, and Ike—who are in Lordsburg. “You crazy if you go. I think you stay away, Kid. Three against one is no good,” Chris says. Ringo walks past him outside, where he finds Dallas looking at the night sky.
Ringo tells Dallas not to wander too far, before asking her if she is visiting someone in Lordsburg. “I have friends there,” she says, “And maybe I can find work.” She then warns Ringo not to go to Lordsburg, and asks him why he doesn’t try to escape from the stagecoach. He explains that the Plummer boys killed his father and brother and he needs to avenge their deaths. Dallas tells him that she also lost her parents in a massacre in Superstition Mountain.
Ringo then tells Dallas that when he saw her holding the baby, he began to think about the fact that he’d love to settle down with a woman in his cabin across the border. “A man could live there, and a woman,” he says, but Dallas is ashamed of the fact that he doesn’t know she’s a prostitute. “You don’t know me,” she says, to which he responds, “I know all I want to know.” Dallas rushes off. Curley tells Ringo to come back inside.
The following morning, Chris wakes everyone up to tell them that Yakima ran away. “You can find another wife,” Curley tells him, but Chris is distraught because she stole his horse and rifle. Chris is more upset about his missing horse than anything. Realizing that Yakima is a thief, Gatewood becomes exceedingly anxious, searching for his bag with the stolen cash in it. Buck has it, and Gatewood takes it back, storming out of the room. Boone has a drink at the bar.
Gatewood wants to make a run for it, but Hatfield reminds him that Lucy is sick in bed. They argue and Curley tells them to be quiet. Ringo suggests that Boone take a look at Lucy and her baby, whom Buck has nicknamed “Little Coyote.” Boone throws his drink in the fire and visits Lucy at her bed.
Dallas is braiding Lucy’s hair when Boone comes in. “You’re up early, Dallas,” Boone says, and Lucy tells him that Dallas stayed up all night holding the baby while Lucy slept. Lucy begins asking Boone about her husband, but he tells her that she needs to decide whether she’s up for the next leg of the journey without worrying about her husband. She tells him she has made up her mind and is ready, and Boone instructs Dallas to make the men some coffee.
In the hall, Dallas tells Boone that Ringo proposed to her. “Is that wrong for a girl like me? If a man and a woman love each other, it's all right, ain't it Doc?” Boone tells her that it’s hopeless, since Ringo is probably going back to prison, and he won’t be happy when he learns about her profession once they get to Lordsburg. Lucy tells Boone that Ringo isn’t going to Lordsburg, and just wants to know if he thinks it’s right or wrong. Boone simply says, “Do it if you can. Good luck” and Dallas walks away tearfully.
Gatewood wants to leave immediately, but Boone thinks they should stay another night. Hatfield and Peacock agree, but Gatewood is furious. Curley urges everyone to sit down and talk about what to do next, as Boone goes into the next room to tell Ringo that Dallas needs help making the coffee.
Analysis
When the stagecoach reaches Apache Wells, Lucy receives some distressing news, that her husband was badly hurt in an attack the previous night and has been brought to Lordsburg. Soon after, she passes out on the floor, and by the end of the day, she’s had a baby. The arrival in Apache Wells brings about some dramatic events in Lucy’s life, especially after the harrowing journey she has been on. The birth of the baby, dubbed “Little Coyote” by Buck, who mistakes its cries for a coyote howl, brings the motley group together and pushes them apart in unexpected ways.
At the beginning of the film, we see the white soldiers interacting with an Apache informant, but since then, there haven't been any Apache or Mexican characters in the film, in spite of the film taking place in the American West. When the group arrives in Apache Wells, a number of non-white characters are introduced, and we are able to see some of the racial and sociopolitical dynamics at play. Chris is the affable Mexican proprietor working at the encampment, and he has an Apache wife named Yakima. When we first encounter Yakima, we hear Peacock’s response to the Apache woman, as he yells “Savage!” thinking she is a threat. Chris assures him that she is peaceful and will be helpful, but we can see in this interaction that tensions are high between white settlers and non-white inhabitants of the land.
A rather unusual but beautiful interlude comes in the middle of this section of the film. While everyone from the stagecoach is inside, Yakima sings a Spanish song accompanied by a guitar. The song’s lyrics are from the perspective of an exile and express a mourning for one’s native land. They roughly translate to, “When thinking of you/Land in which I was born/What a nostalgia my heart feels/In my loneliness/I feel relief and consolation in my pain.” The lyrics are poignant coming from a Native American who is caught at the crossroads between white expansion and a Mexican husband. In the middle of the song, she instructs some men to steal the stagecoach’s spare horses. The film maintains a somewhat ambivalent depiction of relations between white settlers and nonwhite inhabitants.
After Lucy has the baby, Dallas steps in and proactively takes care of it. When the men are first introduced to the baby, Dallas is holding it, and Ringo and she lock eyes intimately. Their looks are unmistakably longing, and without them even having to say a word, the viewer knows that they share a romantic connection. Later, Ringo watches Dallas walk down a long hallway in the building, towards the moonlight streaming in a doorway at the end of the hall. She doesn’t notice and we see both of them from behind; it is a beautifully framed and lit shot, adding an air of beauty and tenderness to their connection, all through images.
Ringo goes so far as to propose marriage to Dallas, without even knowing about her less-than-reputable profession. While his advances are all she wants, Dallas cannot quite accept his affection, and wanders away anxiously, insistent that he wouldn’t love her if he knew who she really was. Doc Boone, the drunken but soulful doctor, becomes her prime confidant, and acts as a kind of moral authority (in spite of his dubious reputation). Boone doesn’t quite know what to say to the emotional prostitute, even though she asks point blank what he thinks is right. He simply tells her to do it “if [she] can,” giving his tentative blessing to the union.
