[1] Abner Peabody, proud owner of the Jot 'Em Down general store in Pine Ridge, Arkansas, inherits railroad stock from his Uncle Ernest.

Lum comes up with the idea of selling some of the stock to the town's inhabitants, thus getting money to buy the land on which the railway is built and its surroundings.

After a case of mistaken identities at the doctor's office, Abner receives notice that he is dying and only has two weeks left to live.

Both men are unaware of that the woman, Mrs. Carmen, who offered Abner the job, plans to blow the house up, and claim that the dead and scorched body found in the ruins, is her husband, so she can get the money from his life insurance policy.

Mrs. Carmen gives Abner a violin case and a good luck charm before sending off to the haunted house.

Abner has no idea that the case contains the bomb and that the charm has the woman's husband's name on it, so that the coroner can identify the body to her advantage.

Before the two men make it to the launch pad, Gimpel answers the phone in their room and receives news that Stark has sold their land for $20,000.

When Abner hears the good news he has to sit down, and does so on the launch button, sending Lum off into space.

[4] The comic possibilities of “problem-solving by immoderate means”' is revisited in Two Weeks to Live with Abner’s repeated efforts to solve Lum’s financial troubles.

Keaton remarked on the formula used in the climax to The Goat: “[W]e had the characters in serious trouble which permitted bigger laughs, and the biggest of all coming when the catastrophe threatened…Often the plot was based on a melodramatic situation.”[5] Dwyer adds that director St. Clair’s “Lum and Abner” comedies earned him an assignment by 20th Century Fox direct Laurel and Hardy in their final pictures.