Thursday, January 22, 2009

It's More Money Either Way, But Still . . .

At the end of A Few Dollars More, Colonel Mortimer is riding into the sunset, and Monco has loaded quite a few dead bank robbers into a wagon, and has begun riding in the opposite direction. As he does, he comes across the money Indio and his boys stole from the bank, which our two bounty hunters moved during the night. Monco pauses for a moment, then reaches over, pulls the satchel out of the tree, swings it over his shoulder, and resumes his course.

My question is this: Did Monco return the money to the bank, and take the $40,000 reward for it, or did he just keep the stolen money? I can't remember how much was stolen, so I can't weigh the amounts he'd get from one choice or the other.

On the one hand, he has to turn in all those corpses to get the reward money for them, and since bank robbery (and murder) probably upped their bounties, he would probably get asked about the money anyway, so it might be easier to just turn it in.

On the other hand, there was something about the way he deliberately pauses, looked at the money, then seemed to decide "Why not?" before reaching out and grabbing the bag, that suggests to me he decided to just keep it for himself. Anyone asks, he never found out where they stashed the money, as he was too busy killing a dozen guys* by himself**.

* For the record, I'm counting everyone killed in the big gunfight, plus Nino, who was stabbed by Groce, plus the fellow killed by Indio, and the fellow Indio framed for that, plus Wild, the hunchback that Mortimer shot earlier. But not the three that Monco killed during the bank robbery scene, since he couldn't really turn those guys in at the time.

** I imagine he would leave Mortimer out of it. If Monco mentions that he teamed up with somebody, and that somebody isn't present to collect their half of the bounties, that could be problematic for Monco.

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