Really a one gag film where the wallet and money gets hidden because the bandits are going to kill the person who possesses it. Again great settings, like in the last Lloyd short we discussed and these one reelers really do work well when focused on one thing like this. Back to Lloyd, the short itself is pretty Lloyd like with its razor sharp focus on milking one particular situation for all its worth.
I’ll do a spoiler since you’ve all seen this, but the ending is brilliant. The bandit thinks he kills Charley, just misses with the bullet and Charley plays dead. The sheriff is coming, so the bandit plants the gun on Charley, making it look a suicide. Then a whole bit for a minute of the bandit tricking everyone in order to get away with the money. After all that build up, Charley is laying there doing nothing the whole time. Then out of nowhere, as the bandit is about to get away with the cash, Charley rises up and kills the bandit with the gun the bandit himself planted on Charley. Brilliant.
GreenCanaries, I too was going to mention the age of Martha Sleeper. I very recently found out she was so young in these Chase shorts.