"you gonna pull those pistols, or whistle dixie?"

I've found a new appreciation for the Western as movie... I'm not sayin' they're my new-found joy or anything, but there's some subtlety in places I didn't expect. Of course, I could be reading into the dialog and seeing something that's not there, but in most movies (and particularly in Westerns where the dialog is sparse), scenes don't happen by accident. They have to consciously be put there, like the scene in The Outlaw Josie Wales after Josie and Lone Watie are galloping out of a Texas town where they just shot down 4 men. They slow their horses, and a brief conversation follows:

- Lone Watie: I noticed when you get to disliking someone, they ain't around fer long neither. How did you know which one was going to shoot first?
- Josie Wales: Well, that one in the center, he had a flap holster and he was in no itchin' hurry. And that one second from the left - he had scared eyes, He wasn't gonna do nothin'. But that one on the far left, he had crazy eyes. Figured him to make the first move.
- LW: How 'bout the one on the right?
- JW: [thinks for a second, spits at a scorpion] Never paid him no mind. You were there.
- LW: [as they ride off into the landscape, after a pause] I could've missed.

And in that pause and those three words "you were there," he communicates a notion that seems to be conveyed best in a Western with sparse dialog and squinting towards a vast landscape: they only met weeks ago, but Josie trusts him with his life. He didn't even have to think about it at the time of gunplay - he just knew that Lone Watie had his back. So much so that he didn't have to think about it. At the time LW asked, he even had to think back about why he didn't have to worry about the man on the right. JW says this to LW, communicating his friendship and trust indirectly, as in all Westerns (and lots of other "guy movie" genres). That he already knew LW would be there, and that LW wouldn't have missed because JW is confident in LW's steady aim - showing his confidence and trust yet again. In Clint Eastwood's trademark squint, there's almost a smile there, and if it weren't a Western, the ol' "punch on the shoulder" among friends would fit right into the scene there.