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Butch and Sundance Take a Payroll Job, Explained

On the run in Bolivia, Butch and Sundance weigh whether to finish off the man hunting them or simply go straight. Their bravado hides a losing hand — "let's finish it now, one way or the other." A stranger's job offer as payroll guards sounds like salvation, until he admits he cannot promise to pay.

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Key moments

Start here, then watch the full scene
  1. Butch Decides to Outlast Lefors

    0:21–0:45
    24s

Butch and Sundance Take a Payroll Job, explained

What happens

Holed up in a remote Bolivian town, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid debate whether Sheriff Lefors can arrest them abroad. Deciding the law can't touch them, they plan to outlast him by going straight. Instead they meet a mine operator desperate for payroll guards; he hires them on the spot, warning only that bandits keep robbing the payrolls — and that he cannot promise to pay.

What's really going on

For two men used to calling the shots, this scene is about the end of options. They tell themselves Lefors is beatable — "We'll drive him crazy. We'll outlast the bastard. We'll go straight!" — but the same speech reveals they have nothing left to rob and nowhere to run. The joke is that their new boss is hiring them to guard the payrolls that the "Bandidos Yanquis," meaning the two of them, have been robbing. The boss's answer "Because I cannot promise to pay you" is the film's sly commentary on outlaws turned wage men: honest work in Bolivia pays exactly as badly as crime. Going straight doesn't rescue them; it just changes who is chasing whom.

Key lines & what they mean

“We'll drive him crazy. We'll outlast the bastard. We'll go straight!”
Butch's plan for surviving Lefors: wear the tracker down, outlast him, and quit robbing altogether — going straight as a tactic, not a moral choice.
“He'll wait for us to pull a job, then hunt us like before.”
Their pursuer has no reason to act until they rob again, so he'll wait for their next job and then come after them exactly as he did before.
“Well, you couldn't have picked a more out of the way place in all Bolivia, I'll tell you that.”
A sarcastic welcome: the town is the most remote, hard-to-reach spot in Bolivia, which is precisely why fugitives like them would end up here.
“Because I cannot promise to pay you.”
The dealbreaker. The job is real, but the man can't guarantee wages — because the payrolls he needs guarded keep being robbed.

Theme

  • Survival — Butch's plan — outlast Lefors by going straight — makes survival a strategy, and the job he takes is guarding money just like him.
  • Dark humor — They're hired to guard payrolls from the very 'Bandidos Yanquis' — themselves. Honest work, and nobody can promise to pay.

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Ideas clave

Lo que te llevas
  1. Butch turns survival into a three-line slogan.
  2. The hunter's patience is the real prison here.
  3. Garris leads with his worst term and wins them over.
  4. Hiring strangers can be a warning as much as an offer.

Preguntas frecuentes

La pregunta, luego la frase
Why don't Butch and Sundance just kill Lefors?

They consider it — "let's finish it now, one way or the other" — but they can't be sure it's really Lefors, and a shootout in a foreign country risks more than it settles.

Why can't the man promise to pay them?

Because every mine's payroll is held up on the road from La Paz. With the money so unreliable, he can't guarantee wages for the guards he hires.

Who is Percy Garris?

The man whose operation the job is with. His name comes up as someone you normally have to wait to work for, which shows how far the two fugitives have fallen.

Is going straight really a way out for Butch and Sundance?

As a plan, yes — outlast Lefors by taking honest work. But the honest work is guarding payrolls, the same money the "Bandidos Yanquis" have been stealing, so the line stays thin.