The Ballad of Cable Hogue

“Cable Hogue says … “Do unto others … as you would have others do unto you.””

All Cable Hogue (Jason Robards) wants is to get even with the two partners who left him to die in the Arizona desert with no water. Then he finds a spring right where the stagecoaches pass, and he builds a house on it and starts charging for a drink. Sam Peckinpah follows him through the years that follow, with Hildy (Stella Stevens) moving in and the automobile starting to show up, and the film treats the frontier ending as a plain fact of the calendar.