When Gil asks if that's all he wants, Judd replies, "All I want is to enter my House justified." After all the lost years working in disreputable places, he tells Gil that he's now grateful to have gained back some of his self-respect and intends on keeping it "with the help of you and that boy back there". This ruse works and the three men are allowed to leave the camp with the gold and Elsa.Īlong the way, Judd talks to Gil about right and wrong and how that's "something you just know". He forces the judge at gunpoint to agree that when asked if the judge has a license to marry, he must say no (because Gill has it). However, Gill wakes up the drunken judge and demands to see his license (which in fact is duly issued in Sacramento), and then keeps it. The next day, the miners of the camp organize a "miner's trial" (without any need for a judge) to force the outsiders to return Elsa to her "legal" husband because they are outnumbered, former lawman Judd agrees to the miner's demands as "that's the law in places like this". Outside, hearing her screams, Judd and Heck rescue Elsa from the brothel and the Hammonds and let her stay in their tent that night. By now intoxicated and passed out, he fails to prevent his disreputable brothers Elder, Sylvus, Jimmy, and Henry from entering the room and attempting to rape her. Then Billy forces Elsa to a room in the brothel for their wedding night even though she emphatically states "No, Billy, not here!" he strikes her when she refuses to obey him. The madam and prostitutes serve as "maid of honor" and "flower girls". Having brought her mother's wedding dress with her, Elsa and Billy are married in the camp's brothel-the only substantial building there-by a real retired judge who happens to be at the camp. When they reach the mining camp, the two older men set up a tent to weigh and accept gold dust in individual bags for which they give receipts of deposit, with safe transport guaranteed by the bank. Heck is stopped by Judd, and then punched by both Judd and Gil. Along the way, Elsa and Heck flirt, and at one time he tries to force himself on her. He had previously proposed to her when he was in town, although she had not accepted his proposal back then. She announces that she is also going to Coarsegold, to marry a miner named Billy Hammond. The next morning, after the three men had left on the trail to the mining camp, she catches up to them and asks whether she can keep them company on the way. Elsa replies "I promised the next time you hit me you'd be sorry for it!" Back at the house, he admonishes and slaps her even though her father had only met Heck that evening, "I can see that the boy is no good"- just as all her other boyfriends were no good. That night, Elsa and Heck secretly meet in the moonlight for conversation, but the elder Knudsen catches them and pulls her away. Knudsen is a domineering religious man who warns against those who "traffic in gold" and trades Bible verses with Judd at the dinner table. Along the way they stop for the night at the farm of Joshua Knudsen and his daughter Elsa. Judd doesn't realize that Gil and Heck are planning to steal the gold for themselves - preferably with Judd's help, but without it if necessary. Judd, Gil and Heck hit the trail on horseback toward Coarsegold, a mining camp located in the Sierra foothills, north of the town of Fresno. Gil, who had been making his living passing himself off as a legendary sharpshooter named The Oregon Kid, enlists the help of his young sidekick, Heck Longtree. Judd enlists the help of his old friend and partner Gil Westrum to guard the gold transfer. In his prime, Judd was a tough and respected lawman, but now his threadbare clothes and spectacles serve as reminders that he is long past his prime. Six miners were recently murdered trying to transport their gold on the one trail leading down from the crest of the Sierra Nevada. In the early years of the 20th century, an aging ex-lawman, Steve Judd, is hired by a bank to transport gold from a high country mining camp to the town of Hornitos, California.
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