Ride West by Frank O’Rourke

 

 Edgar Johnson was so big and strong, and so good natured, that people mistook his friendliness for timidity.—Whippletree

This 1953 anthology by an author I hold in high estimation features 11 stories.

Not many can claim to be more than formula tropes but all feature O’Rourke’s mature gimlet eye for life and detail all winnowed to a terse line or two.

As in the following examples.

John Thorpe straightened wearily, chisel in hand, and regarded Gordon with wise, rain-blurred eyes. He saw a thin, wiry man with regular features and black hair already salted gray by experience; a man of thirty or so with an inherent good breeding behind a recent life of unguessable activity.—The Widow’s Peak

Most author’s give us mere, “Here’s what he looked like” and get to shootin’. Mr. O’Rourke tells us what is seen and what lies under the skin.

She was already peering eagerly across the street, and then she saw her husband. Charlie Bourne watched her face break and change into something any man would cherish and be selfish about letting anyone see.—Argument with Death

We know this marriage relationship before we even meet the husband. He does it with a single sentence.

Here is the author in his method.

In my western experiences I've been over every bit of ground I've ever written into a short story or book. I've got a mighty library of the very best fact books on the West, a good many first editions of old books hard to find these days. From my grandmother on my father's side, from my father, from several of his old timer friends, a lot of stories came down to me. I've hunted a lot, have a good many guns, and have also studied old guns of the West, so my characters use the right gun at the right time. You add history as it really was, old newspaper stories, other books, research, and your own general mind picture of things as they were. and I guess that's the way a book comes about.

Mr. O’Rourke sells himself short; all the research in the world don’t make a Man see deeply like he does. That is less research than a Man who Lives, a Man who Feels, a Man who Sees and Remembers.