MovieChat Forums > The Last Wagon (1956) Discussion > I'm confused

I'm confused

posted 19 years ago by janniklindquist
12 replies | jump to latest

I'm confused about the Harper brothers. At the trial at the end of the movie we learn that Todd is accused of having murdered four people - the Harper brothers. It would seem natural to conclude that the four people he kills in the first part of the movie are, then, the Harper brothers. The sherif that catches him introduces himself to the leader of the wagon train as "Sherif Harper" and later tells the "christers" of the wagon train that Todd has killed three of his brothers. Obviously, then, Sherif Harper is one of the brothers. Timothey Carey - who is one of the men pursuing Todd - is billed as "Cole Harper" on IMDb and Allmovie. He is not credited in the movie, though, and the name Cole isn't mentioned. I assume the information is from the original short story, then.
However, if the three other deputies are his brothers, they obviously can't be chasing him because he is wanted for the murder of them! Sherif Harper later tells the obnoxious Ridge that he doesn't want to hang Todd because there's a thousand dollar reward on him. For what? Why didn't the sherif just kill Harper when he had the chance?
The most simple answer seems to be that the sherif and Cole are the only Harpers left as the movie begins and the two other men are just anonymous deputies. In that case it is rather odd that the deputies are not mentioned in the charge against Todd at the end of the movie!

[–] momur (107) 3 years ago

Okay, so after having watched the movie several times to try and determine this exact thing, this is what I've pieced together (which may or may not be entirely accurate). The first thing to note is that we only have the Sheriff's word that there was any kind of financial reward out for Todd at the point of his capture, and the Sheriff is very quickly established as a sadist whose primary goal is simply to make Todd suffer for as long as he possibly can. Even the soldiers who turn up at the end don't say anything about any reward for bringing Todd in. All that being considered, it's entirely possible that there was never any reward money and the Sheriff simply claimed there was to get Ridge to drop the possibility of Todd being hanged then and there. There's also several fairly strong hints that Todd was well-known to the Sheriff and his brothers and was hated by them for quite a while before the start of the movie. Again, taking this into account, it's possible that Todd and the Harpers had been personal enemies for years and the Harpers actually specifically targeted his family, r**ing his wife and murdering her and their two sons (all of which it's heavily implied Todd was a witness to). This seems to have been basically the straw that broke the camel's back and prompted Todd to go on some kind of revenge spree; I don't think it's coincidental (narratively speaking) that the catalyst for the various Apache attacks is specifically stated to be in revenge for the slaughtering of Apache women and children by white men. I'm inclined to agree with a couple of other posters that the first shooting we see right at the start is the death of the first Harper brother and that it occurs at least two days before the others (hence them specifically mentioning that Todd's been 3 days without food or water despite the first killing taking place by a river). It's that first killing that prompts Todd's "wanted" status and he quite possibly killed a few more people in the interim.