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Right when "The Ecstasy of Gold" starts to play, after he's done being shot with the cannon (really weird, by the way, that they camped out only 100 yards from the graveyard and yet he tried to steal a horse to go to it) he jumps for joy and then throws a bunch of papers away. What were the papers?

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2
  • I don't remember it very well, but can it just be the map or instructions to get there that Tuco has written down? Or maybe a map he used to find the graveyard he only had a name of?
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 16:02
  • I don't think he ever wrote down a map or instructions - remember he was trying to hide the secret from Blondie earlier.
    – Andrew Latham
    Commented Jan 17, 2012 at 23:31

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11

It's a map, either hand drawn or official. The map could be coded in such a way that only Tuco understands it.

Earlier on before the bridge explosion and the drunk captain, Tuco pulls it out looks at it and says to Blondie,

There should be a bridge across that river.

Also the way he folds it when he tells Blondie to trust him indicates that the paper is very large so it's not notes. The only type of document you fold that way is a map.

The scene where he throws it away indicates that he no longer needs the map as he is at Sad Hill Cemetery. Blondie told him the name of the grave was Arch Stanton as well.

Remember Tuco knows the location of the cemetery, Blondie knows the name of the grave.

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7
  • I'm surprised Blondie didn't just take the map from him if it was so obvious!
    – Andrew Latham
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 2:32
  • @AndrewLatham Blondie most likely would not have been able to decipher it. It could have been coded in some way that only Tuco understands
    – phwd
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 2:42
  • I've watched this again, and get the impression that Tuco was fairly illiterate. Even if it was a map, it probably went unlabeled except in a form only Tuco would be able to understand. Stealing it would probably do no good to anyone.
    – wbogacz
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 3:52
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    It could just have been a standard official map of the area, that Tuco needed since he only knew the name of the cemetery but not where it is. It wouldn't be of much use to Blondie without knowing the name to look for. But on the other hand I don't know how fast the cartographers were at that time, since the cemetery should be rather new, as there lie fallen soldiers from the civil war, which they were still in and which lasted only 5 years at a whole. But well, the cemetery could just have had the name of a nearby town.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 14:28
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    It was a map but Tuco would not have written the destination down. He remembered the destination and just used the map to find it.
    – Stefan
    Commented Jun 26, 2012 at 9:23

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