Of course the key name both in the film and in the Ernest Haycox source story is Lordsburg to which the societal cross-section on this coach are headed. That gives the parable a religious/moral dimension. How do these characters here prepare their souls for the Lord’s burg?
My meditation is prompted by the two central — and antithetical — characters and their consanguineal names. Now, what marshall would ever be named Curly? Figures of the law are expected to be ramrod straight. So a Marshall Curly? Then there’s the outlaw, The Ringo Kid, a rather amiable name even before the Beatles magnified a Starkey into a Starr. These apparent opposite characters connect in their names as in their actions and in what they signify.
At the film’s climax the marshall opts not to arrest the outlaw after another killing. Instead he allows him a fresh start across the border, in Mexico. This is to save him from — that crushing irony — “the blessings of civilization.” The marshall has come to respect outlaw Ringo’s virtue, both in his crime — a defence both of his self and of family honour — and in his respect for and resurrection of the (obligatory) Fallen Woman.
The men’s names fit that dynamic. The marshall’s “Curly” connotes softness. A curl isn’t hard like “bent” (see Gatewood below). It leads into the implicit circles both in the Ring and its closing O. The circle is a completed curl. These antagonists’ names confirm their shared humanity in their sensitive flex of the law. The enemy Plummer family suggest a deeper evil, the depth they evilly plumb.
Said Fallen Woman is named Dallas, presumably after where she’s from. That is, she is defined by her past. But then Ringo reads a different future into her relationship with the respectable wife and her newborn. Himself a social outcast, he can appreciate a new potential in her.
In contrast to this virtue, the corrupt banker Gatewood’s name evokes the “wood” hardness of the civilization spreading into the frontier. The wood like the “civilization” of banking is imported to the desert. The “gate” suggests the fencing both in the towns the pioneers imposed upon the open West and in the town’s own fragmentation into private yards. When Mrs Gatewood and her cronies drive Dallas out of town they harden this exclusion. Exposing their false morality, Gatewood exploits the broken telegraph line to abscond with the bank’s funds. He is as outlaw as the Indians who broke the connection.
Similar themes appear in the coach’s other two couples' names. Hatfield is especially courtly towards Mrs Malory, even saving one bullet to save her from the fate worse than death should they be taken captive by the savage. Hatfield is the southern gentleman, the black sheep of an aristocratic family. The Confederate major turned “tinhorn gambler.” They are connected through his army service in her father’s regiment but also in literature. Sir Thomas Malory is famous for his poems about flowering knighthood, including the death of King Arthur. Where Mrs Malory reflects Hatfield's chivalry, his name also recalls the family feud with the Hatfields. That connotes social disorder, the bloody rifts within “civilization.”
The whiskey drummer may seem truer to the actor’s name — Donald Meek — than to his character, Samuel Peacock. As the character falls far short of the flashy strut implied in the family name, it’s a comic parallel to Hatfield’s descent. So, too, Peacock’s new friend Doc Josiah Boone recalls Daniel Boone, the famed pioneer who claimed to be trying to escape civilization — only to have it follow him ever further. The genre's stock character of the drunken professional — often played by Thomas Mitchell — is another figure fallen from grace. His weakness either explains his flight from the East or reveals his disenchantment with his new refuge.
Not to forget Buck, the hearty driver of the six-horse machine. Bucking is what the wild horses do, until the human master "breaks" or tames (i.e., civilizes) them. The driver's name arrogates the initial power of his charges,
As the names in this richly nuanced classic confirm, the trip to Lordsburg allows even the fallen the possibility of redemption. Indeed the stagecoach trip to Lordsburg starts in Tonto (in Arizona), which means “wild one” in Potawatomi. The journey from wildness to salvation should not preclude moral flexibility and care.
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