Summary
Ringo visits Dallas while she makes coffee. He tells her he was awake most of the night “wondering what [she] would have said if Curley hadn’t busted in.” He still wants an answer to his proposal, when Dallas turns around abruptly and tells him he ought to try to escape. “I gotta go to Lordsburg. Why don’t you go to my ranch and wait for me,” he says to her. Dallas replies, “Wait for a dead man. Haven't got a chance. With three against one when the Plummers' swore that you killed their foreman, they got you set up. It'll be three against one in Lordsburg.”
Ringo tells her he cannot run away from his past, but she insists that he’ll be killed if he tries to avenge his father and brother’s deaths; “I don’t want that kind of life, Ringo,” she tells him, urging him to go to the border to escape, and that she’ll meet him there. “Do you mean that, Dallas?” he asks, but Dallas suddenly remembers that she has an obligation to look after Lucy’s baby, and promises that she’ll come to him from Lordsburg. She grabs him a rifle and sends him on his way.
The men try and decide what to do next, but Curley isn’t sure what to do with Lucy and the baby. Suddenly, Curley realizes that Ringo is missing and runs outside, where he sees Ringo getting on a horse and riding off, with Dallas’s help. Not far from the camp, Ringo stops and gets off the horse, looking at something, but Dallas yells at him to keep riding when Curley comes outside. She tries to hold Curley back, but he manages to get to Ringo and handcuff him. “You don’t need those, Curley. I ain’t gonna run away,” the convict says.
Then, Ringo points out smoke in the distance in the hills. They are war signals from the Apaches, and Curley recognizes them instantly. The scene shifts and the group hastily boards the stagecoach, embarking on the next leg of their journey.
Onboard, Gatewood is increasingly anxious about making it to the ferry on time, blaming the others for taking too long and getting into petty arguments. He accuses Hatfield of waiting for Lucy for too long, which has slowed them down. “You talk too much, Gatewood,” says Hatfield.
The two men threaten each other, and Ringo gets in the middle of the argument, as Peacock urges them to be kinder to one another.
Buck and Curley speed the stagecoach along, when they come to a small village that has evidently been burned to the ground. The ferry they were going to take has also been destroyed, and the village's inhabitants massacred. The passengers emerge from the stagecoach, and Curley undoes Ringo’s handcuffs on his word that he won’t try to escape again and will help them ford the river.
Buck drives the stagecoach towards the river in hopes of fording it, as Hatfield covers a dead woman with his jacket. When he looks up at the hills, Hatfield sees a number of Indians, on their way towards them.
By attaching large logs to the stagecoach, they are able to ford the river. They reach the other side safely and continue on their way. Buck sings a song about going to Lordsburg, and asks Curley if he ought to charge Lucy’s baby “half fare.”
We see the stagecoach in the middle of a vast desert in Monument Valley, when suddenly the camera pans over to reveal a group of Apaches watching the coach. We see Geronimo in closeup, then the Apaches make their way down an incline to follow the stagecoach.
On the stagecoach, Gatewood apologizes to everyone, and they all talk about how they have luckily avoided danger. Boone proposes a toast among the passengers, when suddenly Peacock is shot in the chest by an Apache bow and arrow. Buck and Curley suddenly see a number of Apaches coming over a nearby hill, and Curley shoots at them, calling to Ringo for help.
They speed down the trail trying to outrun the Apache warriors. Curley shoots at them, knocking some down, as Ringo climbs up on top of the stagecoach for reinforcement. He shoots several Apaches down, as arrows fly into the side of the stagecoach. Onboard, Boone dresses Peacock’s wound as Gatewood panics. The men on the stagecoach continue to shoot at the Apache warriors, knocking many off their horses, in an extended action sequence. When one of the Apaches climbs onto a horse pulling the stagecoach, Ringo shoots him, killing him instantly.
Ringo climbs up to the horse at the front of the stagecoach and attempts to increase the speed of the stagecoach. Buck has been shot in the arm, so Curley takes the reins. When Curley, Buck, and Hatfield all run out of ammunition, it begins to look bleak. Dallas looks down at the baby, scared for its life.
Hatfield reloads his pistol, but then, rather unexpectedly, points it at Lucy, planning to kill her and spare her from their horrific fate at the hands of the Apache. At the last minute, however, Hatfield is killed, and we hear the sound of the cavalry bugle. The soldiers have come to the stagecoach’s rescue.
As the stagecoach come to a halt, Hatfield whispers his dying words: “If you see Judge Greenfield, tell him his son…” but he dies before he can finish. The cavalry troops bring everyone into Lordsburg, and saloon piano music resounds through the town that evening.
Analysis
In the previous section, we learned that Ringo is very motivated to avenge the murder of his brother and father by the Plummer brothers. At the start of this section, Dallas agrees to his proposal and tries to convince him not to go to Lordsburg and instead meet her at his cabin for a life of domestic bliss. For around 30 seconds, Ringo agrees to this plan, but as he leaves, he realizes that he cannot possibly escape in Apache Country, and decides to continue on to Lordsburg. Dallas gives him an out, but due to external circumstances, and his sense that he must enact revenge—even though everyone assures him that “3 against 1” never works—keeps him on the stagecoach.
It is a good thing for the stagecoach that Ringo doesn’t run away, as they are set upon by Apache warriors and Geronimo on the next leg of the journey. Just when it seems like the stagecoach is safe, they are set upon by the Apaches, who begin their massacre by shooting Peacock in the chest with a bow and arrow. This moment is shocking and sets into motion the most suspenseful and fast-paced portion of the film. A resourceful fighter and an exceptionally coordinated cowboy, Ringo proves essential to their victory. He shoots well, and manages to climb up to the front of the stagecoach to increase its speed at a key moment.
A central element of the film is its music and the way the music signifies shifts in the narratives. Most notably, a bouncy and lilting theme plays whenever we see the stagecoach making its way down the trail, an anthem of possibility and white westward expansion in a major key. This jolly motif is interrupted by the arrival of the Apache, who are accompanied by a minor, ominous riff on traditional American Indian music. This music signifies that the Apache are warlike and to be feared, and strikes a high contrast with the more innocent and benign music of the stagecoach. Everything in the film, even the music, contributes to the narrative that the Apache are dangerous enemies and the white settlers are their blameless victims.
In addition to musical signifiers, director John Ford uses photographic techniques to heighten his narrative. The camera is placed at many unique angles to show both the scope of the landscape and to heighten tension and drama at certain key plot points. For instance, when the stagecoach fords the river when they find the ferry destroyed, it is filmed both from afar to show the complex maneuver, as well as from the top of the stagecoach, looking down at Curley, Buck, and the horses going into the water. This angle makes the viewer both an observer of the action as well as a participant in the action, pulling us into the drama of each moment.
Another moment in which Ford uses photography, image, and angle to tell his story is in the moment that the Apaches are revealed in Monument Valley. We see the stagecoach making its way down the trail, when the camera makes a quick pan to the left, where a group of Apache warriors are standing, watching them. The quickness of the pan is part of what makes it shocking, and immediately after, the camera zooms in on the face of Geronimo, stoic and unreadable. It then settles on another Apache’s face, before settling at a wider angle. The Apaches begin to come down from the cliff on which they stand, and the viewer knows that they are on their way to attack the stagecoach. Ford’s camera reveals plot points suddenly, which heightens suspense and builds a sense of urgency into the plot.
