Ride the High Country (released internationally as Guns in the Afternoon) is a 1962 American CinemaScope Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Mariette Hartley.

The supporting cast includes Edgar Buchanan, James Drury, Warren Oates, and Ron Starr.

In the early 20th century, aging ex-lawman Steve Judd is hired by a bank to transport gold from a high country mining camp to the town of Hornitos.

Gil, who makes his living claiming to be a legendary sharpshooter named The Oregon Kid, recruits his young sidekick, Heck Longtree.

Knudsen is a domineering religious man who warns against those who "traffic in gold" and trades Bible verses with Judd at the dinner table.

That night, Elsa and Heck secretly meet in the moonlight for conversation, but Knudsen catches them and pulls her away.

When they reach Coarsegold, the two older men set up a tent to weigh and accept gold dust.

Dead drunk, he fails to prevent his brothers Elder, Sylvus, Jimmy, and Henry from entering the room and attempting to rape her.

In the ensuing gunfight, Jimmy and Sylvus are killed, and Billy, Elder and Henry give up and escape.

During the night, Gil returns to the site of the gunfight, where he takes a horse and gun from one of the dead brothers.

Producer Richard Lyon was looking for a Western at MGM and William Roberts remembered Stone's script.

[12] Peckinpah flipped a coin in the presence of a producer to see which leading man got top billing, Scott or McCrea.

However, in the opening credits, both stars' names are shown in the same shot, so both Scott and McCrea received equal top billing.

[15] Seeing it as half of a double bill with The Tartars, Bosley Crowther greatly preferred Ride the High Country, calling it a "perfectly dandy little Western" and "the most disarming little horse opera in months."

And so, if anybody ever doubted it, do a couple of leathery, graying hombres named McCrea and Scott.Ride the High Country was hailed as a success upon its release in Europe.

[17] They also note that all of the themes of Peckinpah's later films, such as honor and ideals compromised by circumstance, the difficulty of doing right in an unjust world, the destruction of the West and its heroes by industrial modernity, and the importance of loyalty between men are all present in Ride the High Country.

[18] In his autobiography In the Arena (1995), Charlton Heston wrote that he was considering remaking the film in the late 1980s, presumably with Clint Eastwood as a co-star, but after viewing Ride the High Country Heston proposed Harry Julian Fink's script of Major Dundee (1965) to Peckinpah.