Summary
In a sun-cracked frontier outpost where soda-pop fizz substitutes for whiskey, a prank-prone cowboy—equal parts nimble-footed jester and accidental outlaw—discharges a harmless bullet that ricochets off a bar-stool dreamer’s suspenders and detonates the town’s comic ire. Thus begins a kaleidoscopic pursuit through sagebrush and slapstick geometry: the sheriff’s posse, a flurry of flying sombreros and flapping star badges, gallops after the laughing fugitive whose spurred boots drum a syncopated tattoo across alkali flats. Caught at last, he is hoisted atop a cooper’s barrel, a makeshift scaffold that doubles as communal liquor cache; the noose tightens, the horizon tilts, and the camera pirouettes into a phantasmagoria of urban nightclubs, clandestine stills, and jazz-age skylines projected onto the underside of his eyelids. While the rope sways, a sharpshooting cowgirl—her Stetson cocked at a rakish angle—spurs her pony from behind a dust cloud, severs the fatal cord with a single spark, and tumbles the condemned into her arms. The posse, discovering the barrel’s precious contraband, exchange vengeance for revelry; the gallows morph into a makeshift bar and the desert air shimmers with carbonated absolution.
Synopsis
A light-hearted, quick shooting cowboy fires a shot into a peaceful patron of a wild west soft drink emporium, and leads the sheriff a lively race before he is roped and hog-tied and stood on a barrel to be hung. Al's dreams while he is dancing on air are of the city and his adventures among the secret stills of the big town. Before he is deprived of his entire supply of atmosphere he is rescued by a lovely cowgirl, who clips the rope with a shot from her trusty weapon and tumbles him to the ground. When the sheriff and his bunch discover that Al has been hung from the only barrel of booze left in the neighborhood, they forgive him everything, and open the barrel.
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