Saddle Tramp by Todhunter Ballard

 

Shamus McGee was happy. There had been few days during his twenty-three years when he had not been happy. He was a big man and when people made fun of his good nature he grinned.

“I'm too big to be nasty,” he told them. “If I went around hunting up trouble people would call me a bully. And if I refused to fight they'd call me a coward. Way it is, I like everyone, so I never have cause to battle.”

This 1957 novel from Mr. Ballard gives us the trope of the big amiable man who’d rather not fight but…as one would assume, he gets pushed a bit to far and even mild pots sometimes simmer and boil over.

This is fine serviceable entertainment in the “Destry” vein. It may be formulaic, but I found it to be more successful than the highly regarded Destry Rides Again by Max Brand. I think that good reputation is more from the film than from the source  novel, but that’s just me, what do I know?

While no classic, it’s head-and-shoulders over all the “Solid-jawed” heroes who boil from the go.

A fine afternoon whilin’.

The Killers, Edited by Peter Dawson

 

Pop Jennings took care of the horse and then warmed up a pot of beans and a pan full of bacon for Jeff. After Jeff had eaten, the old man looked at him with shrewd, twinkling eyes and asked, “Are you ridin’ or lookin’?”

“I'm not headed any place in particular, if that's what you mean,” Jeff said.

“Then you're lookin’. There's only two kinds of people. One kind is always ridin’ over the hills to a place where the grass is greener. They never find it. The other kind is lookin’ for a place to settle down and it don't matter much to ‘em where that place is. I figure you're the looking kind.”—Bill Gulick, Gambler’s Luck

This 1955 anthology is subtitled “A Collection of Stories About Gunslingers.”

It has 11 stories from Gulick, L.L. Foreman, Elmore Leonard, Thomas Thompson, Bennett Foster, John Jo Carpenter, Tom Blackburn, Steve Frazee, William Holder, Verne Athanas, and Will Brown.

Some are a little less than others, but the following tales are worth an afternoon’s read: Gulick’s work, Steve Frazee’s “Learn the Hard Way,” Will Brown’s “Into the Guns,” and the oft-anthologized Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma.”

Overall, a solid sampling of the 1950s style of hardmen.

The Pick of the Roundup Edited by Stephen Payne

 

Sighs and sniffling and throat clearing came from the far corner of the room where two old men haggled softly over the pawns on a chess board. The corner was dim as twilight. Cullen turned his head to stare at them, seeing bent spines and white, tufted hair and withered hands reaching out to touch the pawns with such anxiety that life and death hovered over the board, and each breath was a shallow jealous effort. Time dribbled away between their withered fingers.

That opening quote is from The Promise of the Fruit by Ann Ahlswede, the crowning story in this 1963 anthology from the Western Writers of America.

This anthology offers ten stories and one poem.

Ahlswede’s story is the reason I sought out the anthology—Jon Lewis has listed it as one of the 100 Best Western Short stories and it does indeed pack a mature wallop.

Another fine story is T.V. Olsen’s They Walked Tall. It is a formulaic tale well told.

The remaining offerings, well, they pale alongside Ahlswede’s work.

I repeat, I sought it out for a single story—not sorry I did.

Fine writing, fine observation.

And I got Mr. Olsen’s winner as a bonus.