It's Pretty Malicious Either Way

From some reason or the other I was thinking about High Plains Drifter again this last week. Specifically, about how The Stranger prepares the townspeople to try and defend themselves from Stacey Bridges and the Carlin Brothers. When the sheriff was trying to convince the Stranger to help them, he told the sheriff that all he needed to do was put a couple of people with rifles on that roof over there, some guys with shotguns over there across the street, a guy in the bell tower, and so on. He makes it sound so simple, and after a considerable bribe, agrees to help them prepare.

The joke is that when Stacey and the Carlins arrive, the Stranger has just left, and the townspeople fail to defend their town. I'm not sure any of them even fire their guns, preferring instead to drop their weapons and just run. So I'm trying to decide whether the Stranger set them up to fail, or whether he was actually trying to give them a chance to stand up for themselves.

What supports the former is that the Stranger is really a spirit here for some vengeance on these cowardly folks. He consistently plays on their fear - both of the impending arrival of Bridges and Co. , and of him - to do whatever the hell he wants. He shoots three men who were hassling him in the barber shop, and the townspeople do nothing. He drags that one rude woman (Carrie) into the barn and rapes her, and the townspeople do nothing*. Well, that's not true. They beg him to protect them, and allow him free reign over the town. The man running the general store is hassling some old Indian who was looking at the blankets, the Stranger gives the old man all the blankets, and they're free because the Stranger's doing it. He names Mordecai the sheriff and the mayor, when he has to know Mordecai's going to be insufferable now that he's not at the bottom of the social ladder. He makes the hotel owner kick all his other guests out, just 'cause. When the bad guys are nearly there, the two Mexicans who built the picnic table ask if they can stay for the fiesta, and Stranger tells them no. That suggests he knows this is going to go poorly and he wants them somewhere else, since they aren't targets for his vengeance.

Additionally, he had ridden out earlier to find one fellow who'd tried to kill him, and came across Stacy and the Carlins, and proceeded to shoot at them a bit, took one guy's ear, set off some TNT to send some rocks raining down on them, in general just piss them off. So Stacey hits town even angrier than he was already, convinced one of the townsfolk had ridden out and done that, and so he's likely even more vicious than he would have been otherwise. Viewed from that angle, the townspeople having a picninc set up, and a sign welcoming the boys back, then apparently being prepared to ambush them would only make things worse for the townsfolk, the knife twisting as you finish falling.

Still, I have this vague idea (hope, may be more accurate) he's trying to give the townspeople the opportunity to stand up for themselves, which has not been their strong point. This started when the Marshall they brought in to protect the town learned their profitable mine was on government property, and was determined to blow the whistle. Rather than suck it up and deal with the consequences, they hired Bridges and Co. to kill the Marshall, which they did. By bullwhipping him to death in the street while the entire town watched from the shadows**. Then, when their hired guns started throwing their weight around too much to suit the town, the town dealt with them by framing them for robbery, and the sheriff waited until they were drunk off their asses to arrest them. Knowing Bridges was going to be enraged by the betrayal, do they admit their error? Of course not! They hire more gunfighters to protect themselves, who by Dave Drake's own admission 'sat around drinking whiskey and acting snotty for a year', then were killed for hassling the Stranger in the barber shop. And we've already detailed how the town responded to that, though I guess it's worth mentioning that eventually a few of them get fed up and decide to sneak into his hotel room at night and beat him with sticks***.

These people have a consistent pattern of trying to avoid responsibility for problems they created, and when they can't duck it any longer, they either get someone else to handle it for him, or they try to deal with it in a underhanded method. So maybe the Stranger is giving them a chance to redeem themselves. So here come Stacey and the Carlins. They're irked about how they were tricked us, and looking to pay us back. There's no time left to find more gunfighters besides the Stranger, and he's riding. . . out. . . of town. Crap, guess it's up to us now. Time to stand up for ourselves, put on those adult pants, and deal with our own problems!

Yeah, that didn't really work. I don't think the second possibility is very likely, since I don't think the Stranger was really interested in helping the town of Lago atone for past misdeeds, as much as he just wanted to stick it to them as much as he possibly could. And seeing as how the town wound up basically destroyed, and I'd say roughly a dozen people (including pretty much all the major players) died, I'd say he was pretty successful at that. Still the idea of the last shot at redemption was another interpretation that I thought of, so I figured I put it out here, let you discuss it, if you'd like.

* Except for Carrie, the assaulted woman, who showed up while he was taking a bath and tried to shoot him.

** Gee, I can't imagine why that would fill a spirit with a desire for vengeance.

*** That didn't end well for those guys. Or for the hotel.