How much money did the local sheriff manage? [closed]

In any western movie, the bounty hunter is paid his money on the spot, amounting to hundreds to thousands of dollars. That was a lot of money, and I have a hard time believing that the small town sheriff had that amount of cash on hand to pay. Is it a realistic representation of the time or just a movie trope?

Reference: "For a few dollars more" Guy Callowy, $1,000 for murder. El Indio, $10,000. A wagon full of dead bad guys, $27,000.

"Django unchained": In other words marshall, you owe me two hundred dollars

realism western

Best Answer

Just to be clear, I'm going to call it 'movie trope'.

Cash-based society.
Banks had cash; maybe the sheriff went there, rather than keeping it all himself. Maybe he had to cash some government check, so it took a month to call in from the next big town, so the movie trope becomes expedient to plot.

The audience doesn't need to know how the cash gets there, just that the bounty hunter got paid.
Big wads of cash and shiny gold coins are exciting. Tramping across the Yukon for a month to go fetch it isn't.

If you watch a lot of cowboy movies, it seems a bank is robbed every hour. If the sheriff then went off in chase of the robbers, taking all the alpha males and best horses with him as a posse, all the robbers have to do is split into two parties and send one back to steal the cash from the sheriff's safe too;) Sometimes plot just has to be plot.