Saturday Action Matinee

Scouts to the Rescue (1939), Chapter 6: “Ghost Town Menace”

The Resolution: Bruce, Skeets, and ace G-man Marvin are in the Indian’s wicker basket elevator (yes, you may snicker) when the Indians above chop through the rope! The basket plummets! Fortunately, it falls directly on a tree and holds, so everyone aboard can climb into the tree and shimmy down to safety. Wait, why is there a tree directly beneath the basket elevator?

The Narrative: Good golly, I’m getting tired of this “back and forth between three or four locations” storyline. The three of them hike back down to Ghost Town to get Mary and Kent, who in the meantime have discovered the counterfeiter’s plates which they left behind while they took the first load of people up to the cabin. Bruce is supposed to take Kent, Skeets and Mary back to the Scout camp while Marvin snoops around a little bit, but it just so happens that the path to the camp runs right beside the mountain road the counterfeiters use to come back down the mountain (and get a flat tire, which gives them an occasion to get out and talk about things they already know just so Bruce can overhear it). Bruce uses Mary’s compact mirror to signal back down to Marvin in Ghost Town (via Morse code) to be ready for the counterfeiters. Marvin gets the drop on the two of them, ties one up, and forces the other to drive him (yup) back up the mountain to the cabin.

Meanwhile, Rick — remember him? the juvenile deliquent who’s fallen in with the criminals? — tries to lasso Bruce in the woods, but when the fight doesn’t go his way, he claims that he’s broken with the counterfeiters. Bruce stupidly believes him, and lets him know that Marvin’s waiting for the counterfeiters down in the town. Not that he can get there in time to stop anything. But he can get back down the mountain to help the tied-up one Marvin leaves behind.

Though the distances on this mountain are really fluid. Mary hikes with Kent and Skeets back to the Scout camp, then has time to get in her car and drive to the mountain cabin of the counterfeiters before Marvin can get there. She of course wants to free her father Scanlon, and of course gets herself captured. But then when Marvin gets there with his captured gangster and everyone starts shooting, Mary and Scanlon run out the back and escape in her car. Escape to where? Why, back toward Ghost Town, of course! Marvin hitches a ride, and so does Bruce; he was mostly hanging out on the road back down, hoping, I think, to be useful again, and knowing that EVERYONE on the mountain uses this road at least twice a day.

That includes the Indians. They’re on their way back down to Ghost Town, where Rick and the gangster he untied are planting dynamite around an old barn. Why? Well, they hope that the explosion will cow the Indians enough for the two of them to get away. I guess when the only tool you have is dynamite, every problem looks like it should be exploded.

The Cliffhanger: Although Marvin hitched a ride with the Scanlon father and daughter team, he still thinks that Scanlon is willfully colluding with the counterfeiters, and wants to restrain him. He sends Bruce into the barn (the one that’s about to blow up) to look for some rope, and — BOOM!

Next Week: “Destroyed By Dynamite”