Ride the High Country

Ride the High Country (released internationally as Guns in the Afternoon) is a 1962 American CinemaScope Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Mariette Hartley. The supporting cast includes Edgar Buchanan, James Drury, Warren Oates, and Ron Starr. The film's script, though credited solely to veteran TV screenwriter N.B. Stone Jr., was – according to producer Richard E. Lyons – almost entirely the work of Stone's friend and colleague, William S. Roberts, and Peckinpah himself.

In 1992, Ride the High Country was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant

The film featured Scott's final screen performance. After this film, Joel McCrea did not make another feature film until 1970. That year saw him make Cry Blood, Apache, with his son Jody. He appeared in The Young Rounders in 1972. His final film appearance was in 1976 in Mustang Country.

In the early 20th century, aging ex-lawman Steve Judd is hired by a bank to transport gold from a high country mining camp to the town of Hornitos. Six miners were recently murdered trying to transport a gold shipment. Judd was once respected, but his threadbare clothes and spectacles show that he is long past his prime. He enlists his old friend and partner Gil Westrum to guard the gold transfer. Gil, who makes his living claiming to be a legendary sharpshooter named The Oregon Kid, recruits his young sidekick, Heck Longtree.

The three men ride toward Coarsegold, the mining camp. Judd doesn't realize that Gil and Heck plan to steal the gold. They stop for the night at the farm of Joshua Knudsen and his daughter Elsa. Knudsen is a domineering religious man who warns against those who "traffic in gold" and trades Bible verses with Judd at the dinner table. That night, Elsa and Heck secretly meet in the moonlight for conversation, but Knudsen catches them and pulls her away. Back at the house, he admonishes and slaps her.

The next morning, after the three men have left, she catches up and asks to ride with them. She is also going to Coarsegold, to marry a miner named Billy Hammond. Along the way, Elsa and Heck flirt, and at one time he tries to force himself on her. Heck is stopped by Judd, and then punched by both Judd and Gil. He later apologizes to Elsa.

When they reach Coarsegold, the two older men set up a tent to weigh and accept gold dust. Elsa and Billy are married in the camp's brothel—the only substantial building there—by the retired Judge Tolliver. Billy forces Elsa to a room in the brothel for their wedding night, and strikes her when she resists. Dead drunk, he fails to prevent his brothers Elder, Sylvus, Jimmy, and Henry from entering the room and attempting to rape her. Hearing her screams, Judd and Heck rescue Elsa and let her stay in their tent overnight.

The next day, the miners of the camp organize an extrajudicial "miner's trial" to make the outsiders return Elsa to her "legal" husband; because they are outnumbered, Judd agrees to the miners' demands. However, Gil rouses the drunken Tolliver, demands to see his license, then keeps it. He forces Tolliver at gunpoint to agree that when asked if he has a license to marry, he must say no (because Gil has it). The ruse works and the three men leave the camp with the gold and Elsa.