Synopsis for
No Country for Old Men (2007) More at IMDbPro »

It is 1980. In a West Texas police station, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) uses the handcuffs around his wrists to garrote the deputy who had arrested him. He steals a squad car and intercepts a random motorist. He kills the motorist using a compressed air gun then steals his car.

Somewhere else in the desert, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the carnage of a drug deal gone bad. Mexican criminals and pit bulls lie dead on the ground; only a mortally wounded driver remains alive. The driver asks for water but instead Llewelyn follows the trail of one of the criminals who had gotten away. Llewelyn tracks him to a tree where the criminal died. He finds a satchel filled with two million dollars. He takes the money and returns home to his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly McDonald) who is irritated that he has been gone all day and refuses to tell her where he found the guns and money he had brought home. That night, Llewelyn feels guilty for not giving the wounded driver water and resolves to take him a jug. He arrives around dawn and discovers that the driver has been shot and killed. More gunmen appear, disable his truck and fire on him, hitting him in the shoulder. They chase him to a river bank where Llewelyn tries to swim away. The gunmen's pit bull leaps in to the water after him. Reaching a far shore, Llewelyn is barely able to shoot and kill the dog before it is upon him. Realizing he is facing some dangerous individuals, he tends his wounds then sends Carla Jean to stay with her mother in Odessa while he travels separately with the money.

At a service station, Chigurh becomes suspicious when the elderly clerk (Gene Jones) asks him if he's from Dallas. Chigurh flips a coin to decide whether or not to kill the clerk. The clerk correctly guesses that the coin came up heads. Chigurh gives the man the coin and tells him not to mix it with any other coins. Later that night, two well dressed men take Chigurh to the site of the failed drug deal. After he takes the VID tag from Llewelyn's truck and examines the corpses, the well dressed men give him a tracking device that he can use to find the satchel of money, which has a transponder in it. Chigurh then kills them.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and Deputy Wendell (Garret Dillehunt) find the motorist's burning car. They then follow another trail to the drug deal site. Ed Tom recognizes Llewelyn's disabled truck. He and Wendell perform a preliminary examination of the scene then decide to call in the federal authorities. Ed Tom is disturbed by what he sees.

Chigurh uses the VID tag to find out Llewelyn's address. He uses the air gun to break in to Llewelyn and Carla Jean's trailer. He tries to intimidate the trailer park manager into revealing Llewelyn's place of employment but has to settle for a phone bill that reveals the couple make a lot of calls to Odessa, TX. Llewelyn gets a room at a motel and hides the satchel of money in the air ducts. He then purchases tent poles and shotgun at a local sporting goods store, which he fashions into a hook and sawed-off shotgun. He then rents another room behind the first room. Later that night when returning to the motel he sees the Mexicans' truck in front of his first room. He goes to his second room and begins to retrieve the money using the tent-pole hook to pull it through the air duct. Meanwhile, Chigurh happens past the motel and the tracking device goes off. He rents a room, determines which room has the satchel and uses his air gun to break into the room. He finds three Mexicans and kills them with a high powered rifle with a silencer. Meanwhile, Llewelyn has escaped with the money.

In Dallas, the businessman who hired Chigurh (Stephen Root) is upset about the violence Chigurh is causing. He hires Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) to neutralize Chigurh and get the money back.

Chigurh tracks Llewelyn to a small border town, where Llewelyn has rented another room. Chigurh kills the desk clerk then finds Llewelyn's room. Llewelyn shoots at him with his sawed off shotgun and escapes through the window. Chigurh chases him and kills another driver who has stopped to help Llewelyn, causing an accident. Llewelyn uses the confusion to shoot Chigurh, forcing him to retreat. Wounded, Llewelyn hides the money along the banks of the Rio Grande then crosses into Mexico and pays some people to take him to a hospital.

Ed Tom continues to be disturbed by what he saw in the desert and the apparently deteriorating state of morals in the world. He goes to visit Carla Jean in Odessa and asks her to put him in touch with Llewelyn. Almost absent mindedly, he tells her how a local farmer was nearly killed by an animal he was trying to slaughter, and how slaughterhouses now used compressed air guns to kill cattle immediately. In the border town, Chigurh steals medical supplies and, in a motel room, cleans his wounds.

Carson visits Llewelyn in the Mexican hospital and suggests that he just hand over the money so Carson can protect him. Llewelyn refuses and Carson tells him which hotel he is staying. On the way back across the border, Carson sees the satchel from the bridge. Back at his hotel, the same one at which Llewelyn was staying, Carson is confronted by Chigurh. Carson pleads for his life but when Llewelyn calls Chigurh kills him. Chigurh tells Llewlyn that if he brings him the money, he won't kill his wife (though Llewelyn's life is forfeit). Llewelyn tells Chigurh he will kill him then hangs up. He calls Carla Jean and tells her to meet him in El Paso. Chigurh goes to Dallas and kills the businessman for hiring not only Carson but the other Mexicans well.

The Mexicans have been watching Carla Jean in Odessa. They follow her and her mother (Beth Grant) to the airport. One of the Mexicans helps Carla Jean's mother who tells him she and Carla Jean are going to El Paso. In the airport, Carla Jean calls Ed Tom and tells him which motel Llewelyn is staying in El Paso. Ed Tom drives there but discovers that the Mexicans have beat him there and killed Llewelyn. All Ed Tom can do is comfort Carla Jean when she arrives. Later that night, Ed Tom and the local sheriff (Rodger Boyce) have coffee and bemoan the declining morals of American society. Afterward, Ed Tom returns to the motel and nearly misses being killed by Chigurh who had been searching the room for the satchel of money.

Ed Tom visits his uncle, Ellis (Barry Corbin) to tell him he's retiring because he is too disturbed by the violence he's seen. Ellis tells him he's being vain and relates the story about how Ed Tom's grandfather had died: shot by outlaws, he bled to death on his front porch as they watched. Meanwhile, Chigurh visits Carla Jean, who has just buried her mother. She understands why he's there but still finds it meaningless. Chigurh flips a coin but Carla Jean refuses to play his game. After killing her, Chigurh drives away. His car is struck by another car and he suffers a compound fracture. He buys a shirt from a boy to use as a sling then walks away.

At home, Ed Tom tells his wife (Tess Harper) about a dream he had. In it, he was horseback riding with his long-deceased father. It was cold and his father rode ahead to prepare a fire for them.

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The film opens with a shot of desolate, wide-open country in West Texas in June 1980. In a voice-over, the local sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), tells of the changing times: in the old days, some sheriffs never wore guns, as did his late father, who was the sheriff before him; in the modern day and age, however, Bell once sent an unrepentant teenage boy to the electric chair who had killed a girl simply because he wanted to kill someone, had been "fixin'" to do it for some time, and would do it again if he had the chance.

Along a desert highway, a man named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is being arrested by a deputy (Zach Hopkins). Back at the otherwise empty police station, the deputy speaks to Sheriff Bell on the phone, describing an odd device in Chigurh's possession, a compressed air tank which the deputy believes is an oxygen tank like those used by medical patients. The deputy has his back to Chigurh, who sneaks up behind him and garrotes him with his handcuffs just as the deputy hangs up the phone. Chigurh falls back on the floor with the deputy, a strange emotionless grin washing across his face as his wriggling victim finally expires. After cleaning himself up in the station bathroom, Chigurh - driving the deputy's police car - pulls over a man in a Ford along a deserted highway. Politely asking the man to step out the car, Chigurh holds the hose attached to the compressed air tank, placing the nozzle at its end to the puzzled driver's forehead; he fires it through the man's skull, and we sense the device's function as a gun designed to put down cattle. Chigurh then drives off in the man's car.

Elsewhere, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is hunting pronghorns. Setting the sights of his hunting rifle on one, he fires, scattering the animals. Walking to where the herd stood, he notices a trail of blood. Realizing the pronghorn left in a different direction from the blood trail, he spies a wounded pit bull hobbling away. Retracing the dog's trail, Moss eventually comes upon several pickup trucks parked in the middle of the wilderness. Coming closer, he finds several bodies shot to death, most appearing to be Mexican, and even a dead pit bull. Under a tarp in the bed of one pickup, Moss sees what appears to be a great deal of heroin. Opening the passenger door of one of the trucks, he finds the driver is still alive, but badly wounded. The panting stranger begs Moss for "agua", but Moss says that he has no water. Moss asks the man where the "last man standing" - the winner - is, but doesn't get an answer. He carefully takes the man's submachine gun off the seat and an ammo clip from his shirt pocket, and follows another blood trail; he suspects that whoever survived would have sought shade, and heads toward a distant patch of trees. Through his binoculars, he sees someone is sitting under a tree, facing the other way. After waiting some time, seeing that the man does not move, he makes his way to the tree and finds that the man is dead. At his side are a silver Colt .45 pistol and a satchel, which Moss finds to hold $2 million.

Moss returns to his trailer home with the "agua" man's submachine gun (which he hides in the crawl space under the home), the silver pistol and the satchel. Moss's wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), asks Moss what's in the satchel, but doesn't believe him when he off-handedly tells her. That night, Moss can't sleep, guilty that he left the man in the truck to die. He gets up and grabs a jug of water and the semi-automatic, explaining to Carla Jean that he's "fixin' to do something dumber than hell".

Driving up near the site of the drug massacre, Moss goes to find the man and give him water. Upon opening the door, Moss sees that the wounded man is now dead from a gunshot to the head. Looking back to where he'd parked his pickup truck atop the ridge, Moss dimly sees in the predawn light another truck now parked alongside his. Two men get out and slash the tires on Moss' truck. He tries to hide behind one of the dead men's trucks, but is fired upon by the men who are now approaching in their truck, using bright searchlights. Moss flees with the pickup pursuing him, but is shot in the shoulder just as he reaches a river embankment. As Moss tumbles towards the river with dawn breaking, the two men, apparently Mexicans, sic a pit bull on him. Evading continued gunfire, Moss dives into the river and swims downstream, eventually crossing to the other side with the pit bull gaining ground. On the opposite bank, Moss frantically dries his .45 and manages to shoot the pit bull dead just as it leaps at him. Returning to his trailer, Moss tends to his wounds and puts Carla Jean on a bus to go stay with her mother.

After filling up at a gas station in the dead man's Ford, Chigurh goes to pay for some candy from the gas station proprietor (Gene Jones). When the proprietor tries to make polite conversation out of simple friendliness, Chigurh gets upset at the inane smalltalk, and engages the man in a quiet but increasingly hostile debate over the point of his amiable questions; the man is genuinely perplexed by his customer's anxiety, and tries to defuse the argument by saying he needs to close the station, which only further irritates Chigurh due to it being still midday. He asks the man what is the most he's lost in a coin toss, and it becomes increasingly clear that Chigurh will harm the proprietor if he calls the wrong side of the coin. Much to his relief, the proprietor calls the right side of the coin, which Chigurh insists he must always hang onto and keep separate from his other coins, because this is now a "lucky" coin.

After nightfall, two men in suits pick up Chigurh and bring him to the drug massacre. They note Moss' slashed tires and assume that the Mexicans did it. Chigurh tears the identification plate out of Moss's truck and proceeds to survey the massacre with the two men. The two men give him a transponder on which they said they're getting "not a bleep." Chigurh picks up a gun laying next to one of the several massacred men at the site and coolly shoots them both dead with it.

The following morning, Sheriff Bell is called into check out a roadside car fire, which draws attention to the nearby drug massacre site. Meeting his inexperienced deputy, Wendell (Garret Dillahunt), Sheriff Bell tells him they'll ride horseback to the drug massacre. The car on fire is the Ford belonging to the man Chigurh killed the day before. While going over the massacre, Sheriff Bell recognizes the truck parked nearby as belonging to Moss.

Going to the Mosses' trailer, Chigurh uses his cattle gun to shoot out the lock on the door. Recognizing that they've left in a hurry, Chigurh briefly sits on their couch and drinks some of their milk. He goes through the mail which has been delivered, and examines their phone bill which includes numerous calls to the same number in another city. He then goes over to the office of the trailer park manager (Kathy Lamkin) and questions her about Llewelyn's whereabouts. When the manager refuses to tell Chigurh where Moss works, he seems to contemplate killing her, but changes his mind when he hears someone in the bathroom. Sheriff Bell and Deputy Wendell go into the Mosses's trailer a bit later and see that someone has shot out the lock.

Moss has taken a cab to stay in a motel, where he hides the satchel of money in his room's ventilation duct. He leaves and purchases a tent for its poles, some duct tape, wire cutters, and a shotgun and ammo. He returns to the motel and rents a second room, adjacent to the rear wall of his first room. There, he saws off the shotgun and fashions a pole with a hook (made of cut clothes hangers) duct-taped to the end of the pole to pull the satchel from the duct into his second room.

As he is doing this, Chigurh is driving around when the transponder he received from the two men starts to go off. He finds the motel, and by the frequency of its beeping he deduces which room the signal is coming from, Moss's first room. Chigurh checks into the motel. He takes off his boots so he can quietly walk up to the room where the signal is coming from. As he is walking outside the motel, he does not hear Moss noisily pulling the stachel with the hooked pole from the vent into his second room. At the door of Moss's first room, he uses the cattle gun to shoot out the lock. Inside are two Mexican men, one with a semi-automatic rifle, but he quickly and bloodily dispatches both with a silenced shotgun. The bathroom door opens and another Mexican with a Uzi opens fire on him but Chigurh kills him. Going into the bathroom, he finds a fourth man cowering behind the shower curtain. He closes the curtain and shoots him. Moss, hearing the Uzi gunfire, escapes quickly, but not before replacing the vent grate. Chigurh searches the room for the money but does not find it. Finding Moss's second room he searches it also and finds nothing, then finally uses a dime to unscrew the grate and look inside, where he sees the stachel's drag marks. Moss has escaped, managing to hitch a ride. The driver who picks him up tells him he shouldn't be hitch-hiking because it's dangerous.

The next day, in a high-rise office building in Dallas, a bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) comes into the big office of a businessman (Stephen Root). Wells tells the stern businessman that he has had past dealings with Chigurh and would know him by sight. Wells also compares Chigurh to the bubonic plague and calls him a psychopathic killer. The businessman hires Wells to control the "situation" with Chigurh.

That night, Moss goes to an old hotel near the Mexico border. While checking into the room, he asks the desk clerk how late he'll be working. The desk clerk tells him 10 A.M. Moss gives him some money and asks him to give him a call in the room to let him know if anyone checks in, as someone (not the police) is after him. Moss is unable to sleep that night while pondering how Chigurh was able to track him down to the previous motel. Digging through the satchel with the money, he finds a signal transmitter embedded in a hollowed-out pack of bills, and he realizes Chigurh was able to track his signal with it. Hearing creaking footsteps coming down the hallway, Moss calls the hotel desk; he can hear the phone ringing from downstairs, but there is no answer. Moss places the transponder on the nightstand and goes to the sofa with the satchel and his shotgun and turns off the desklamp and faces the door, waiting for Chigurh to make a move, with his sawed-off shotgun pointing at the door. He sees Chigurh's shadow under the door and slowly clicks the hammer on his rifle. Hearing the distinctive sound of the hammer cocking, Chigurh goes down the hall to unscrew the light bulb so that the shadow of feet will not be seen under the door. Suddenly, just as Moss perhaps realizes that his position directly in front of the door might not be ideal, Chigurh's air gun blasts the lock through the door and hits Moss in his right abdomen. Moss fires as the door is thrown open, rendering the hallway momentarily silent. Moss makes a break for the window and escapes, falling to the sidewalk with the satchel and his shotgun. As he runs down the alley, Chigurh fires on him from the window. Running back into the hotel lobby to try to get the drop on Chigurh in an ambush, he finds the desk clerk dead and opts to flee.

Moss then runs out into the street to wave down a man in a small truck. The man seems startled by Moss's bloody appearance and firearm, but just after Moss gets into the passenger seat, the man is killed by shots to the throat and face from Chigurh's gun. In pursuit in his own truck, Chigurh continues to shoot at Moss as he tries to speed off driving from the passenger side, with the dead driver still in the driver's seat. Swerving around a corner and losing control, Moss crashes into a parked car. He takes cover behind a parked car on the other side of the street and waits for Chigurh. Using the reflection in a store window, he sees Chigurh walk up to the crash. Just as Chigurh begins to see where Moss's blood trail leads, Moss jumps up and opens fire, but Chigurh manages to dive for cover in time. Moss charges forward, crossing the street, shooting under the truck where Chigurh went down, flattening the tires in the process. Rounding the car, Moss sees that Chigurh has escaped though, leaving his weapon behind.

Heavily wounded, Moss heads for the Mexican border. Walking along the bridge from Texas to Mexico, he encounters a group of young sailors on shore leave in civilian clothes, returning from Mexico. He has lost so much blood, he can barely stand. He gives five hundred dollars to one of them in exchange for his jacket and a bottle of beer. After they leave, Moss throws the satchel over the high barrier into the weeds on the riverbank beside the bridge, covers his bloody shirt with the jacket and, posing as a "drunk Mexican" waves the bottle of beer drunkly at the half-sleeping Mexican station guard as he stumbles past to cross over into Mexico; the sleepy guard is unconcerned with his identity, as his primary attention would be directed toward anyone crossing in the other direction.

Passed out next to a fountain, Moss is awoken in the morning by a mariachi band who at first play happily for him but stop suddenly when they see the blood spreading from his wounds. He holds out a blood soaked hundred dollar bill and asks for medical help. That same morning, Chigurh limps up to a drugstore, one of Moss's shots having hit him in the leg. Removing the gas tank cap from a car parked in front of the drugstore, he dips cloth in the gasoline and lights the tip of the cloth with a lighter. As he walks into the drugstore, the car explodes, creating panic among all those inside. As the clerks and customers run out to find out if anyone has been injured or is in need of help, Chigurh nonchalantly strides into the pharmacy at the drugstore's rear and makes off with a bunch of medical supplies. Back at his hotel room, Chigurh lays plastic down on the floor, injects a heavy dose of the stolen lidocaine into his leg, and proceeds to remove the shotgun pellets. He then cleans his leg in the bath, removes the remaining shrapnel, methodically stitches his wounds, and applies clean dressings.

Sheriff Bell tracks down Carla Jean to see if she knows where Moss is running. When she truthfully tells him she has no idea where Moss is, Bell warns her to let him know if she hears anything from him. Later, Deputy Wendell tells Sheriff Bell that the D.E.A. wants to go over the drug massacre site with him, but Bell tiredly declines. He rambles about a newspaper article about a couple who rented rooms to elderly people, then tortured and killed them so they could collect their social security checks. They remained unsuspected despite the numerous fresh graves in their yard, until a victim escaped into town wearing nothing but a dog collar. Bell quietly expresses his bewilderment at the callous brutality of such crimes, which seem to be increasing as the years pass.

When Moss awakens in a Mexican hospital, he sees Wells is at his bedside with flowers, having apparently been able to track him down within three hours. Wells explains that he is willing to help Moss, and that he may be able to arrange to give him a small cut of the money if Moss returns it, but that Chigurh will not be making any such deals; he dryly notes how easily Moss was found despite his best efforts to be elusive. It is revealed that both Moss and Wells are Vietnam veterans. When Moss asks if "Sugar" is the "ultimate bad ass", Wells says Chigurh has no sense of humor but does have his own code of honor, is "highly principled, almost." Wells gives Moss the number to his hotel room to give Moss time to consider the deal. Walking back over the U.S.-Mexico bridge, Wells is able to see where Moss has thrown the satchel.

When Wells walks back into his hotel, Chigurh follows him in. Chigurh greets Wells warmly, but keeps him at gun-point. Upstairs in the room, Wells recognizes the bleakness of his situation and desperately tries to cut a deal with Chigurh. He offers to retrieve the money for Chigurh, but Chigurh remains uninterested in any deal. Upon realizing that there's no way Chigurh will let him live, Wells resigns himself to the predicament and tells his adversary how crazy he must be. When the room phone rings, Chigurh kills Wells. Chigurh answers the phone, and it's Moss calling. Chigurh lets Moss know that he knows exactly where he is and, instead of coming to kill him in the hospital, he is going to go to Carla Jean's mother's house, which he has located from the phone bill, and kill her. He makes an offer that Moss give him the money and his own life, in exchange for allowing Carla Jean to live. Moss tells Chigurh he won't have to come after him, because he will come after Chigurh. Walking back from Mexico into Texas, still in his hospital gown, Moss uses his veteran experience to verify his nationality to the Border Patrol agent, who admits him back into the United States. He then goes into the same store in which he had previously bought boots to buy some new clothes. He then recovers the satchel. Moss then calls Carla Jean and tells her to take her mother on the bus to El Paso, meet him at a motel where he's gotten a room, then fly off to some safe location.

Back at the Dallas office building of the businessman who hired Wells, Chigurh bursts in to find the businessman conversing with someone from "accounting," and shoots the businessman in the face. Chigurh tells the accounting man that the businessman was at fault for bringing the "Mexicans" in on the case. When the accounting man asks Chigurh if he's going to shoot him too, Chigurh says as he turns to face the man: "That depends. Have you seen me?" Soon after, Chigurh feigns being broken down on a roadside. When a chicken farmer in a flatbed pickup pulls over to assist, Chigurh asks where the nearest airport is. The man tells him El Paso. Chigurh asks if the chicken crates can be removed from the truck, which puzzles the driver. Cut to a car wash, where Chigurh is cleaning the feathers out of the farmer's truck.

Moss is by the pool at his motel where a sun-bathing girl flirts with him. She tells Moss that she has beer back in her room. He says that he's married and that he knows what beer leads to, and declines her offer.

Mexican gangsters follow Carla Jean and her mother from their home to the bus station in their pickup truck, discussing what to do in Spanish. After they've arrived at the bus station, Carla Jean steps away from her ailing mother, Agnes (Beth Grant), to call Sheriff Bell and report where Moss is to meet them.

One of the well-dressed Mexican gangsters, gets out at the bus station and offers to help Agnes with their luggage. He chats her up, and she trustingly tells him exactly where they are going; she is unenthused about the trip, as she is suffering from cancer and would prefer to remain at home. He and his associates drive off. A bit later, Sheriff Bell is driving up to Moss' motel as he hears automatic gunfire and sees, to his creeping dismay, a pickup truck, its crew of hired assasins standing in the truck bed, speeding off. At the motel, Sheriff Bell sees that the flirting girl is dead in the pool and Llewelyn Moss is dead in the open doorway of his room. That evening, Moss's wife arrives at the motel, and Bell greets her with the bad news.

After dealing with local law enforcement associates and comforting Carla Jean, Sheriff Bell goes back alone to the hotel room, barricaded off with yellow crime scene tape, where Moss was killed. Seeing that the motel room door has been shot open in Chigurh's favored style, Bell draws his gun. We see Chigurh leaning against a wall in the dark (seemingly awaiting Bell) with his cattle gun and apparent fear or sadness in his teary eyes. Bell opens the room door and looks around the room and the bathroom, not finding anyone. Sitting on the bed, Sheriff Bell notices that the ventilation duct has been opened with a dime, just as Chigurh had opened the vent earlier.

Apparently weeks later, Bell drives to a farm to visit his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin). Bell has retired, news which is frustrating for Ellis. When Bell explains that he felt "outmatched", Ellis tells him that we have to continue with our lives no matter how evil life gets.

Later still, Agnes has died, and upon returning from her funeral, Carla Jean finds Chigurh sitting in her mother's house. Chigurh explains that he made a "promise" to Moss that he was going to kill her. Chigurh offers that if she calls correctly in a coin toss, he'll spare her life. Carla Jean dismisses Chigurh's game, saying that he's the one who decides on whether or not to kill her, not the coin. He is unmoved, however, insisting on his lack of a free choice in the matter. During this exchange, we see two boys ride past the house on bicycles. We next see Chigurh walking out of the house, stopping to check his boots, apparently, for blood.

Driving off, he is looking at the same two boys in the rear view mirror as he proceeds through the green light when he is suddenly hit broadside by a car speeding through the intersection that he just entered. The other driver appears dead, but Chigurh gets out of his car, his eye nearly popped out of his skull and his bone protruding out of his elbow in a compound fracture. The two neighborhood boys come up to him to see if he's all right. Chigurh pays the kids for one of their shirts, which he uses to make a rough-and-ready sling for his arm, and to have them not report having seen him. Chigurh limps away down the street.

At Sheriff Bell's house, he ponders what to do for the day at breakfast with his wife, Loretta (Tess Harper); he is restless in retirement, but she rebuffs his offer to help out around the house, as he will just throw off her established routine. He recounts a dream he had about his sheriff father. Bell dreamed that he and his father were riding a mountain pass in the night. His father, carrying a horn with embers inside that glowed like moonlight, rode ahead into the darkness and disappeared. Though he couldn't see anything in the dark night, Bell dreamed that he kept riding forward since his father would have a warm fire waiting for him. Bell ends the film with the final words: "And then I woke up."