“You ever ride posse before, Mr. Rawlings?”
asked St John, when a door had closed behind her at the end of the hall.
“This is my first one.”
“Then here’s your first lesson. Don’t ever
make excuse for the man in charge. If he’s any good he won’t need them, and if
he’s not, he doesn’t deserve them”
A rock-solid novel from Estleman with a lawman past his time forming a
posse with an also aged Indian tracker, a legally-blind sharpshooter, a Sunday
school teacher with less than saintly predictions, and two banditos with less
than noble motives.
They are trailing the notorious Buckner gang, and the company of these
brigands is equally intriguing.
Rife with flavor and observation.
“I remember him saying it was the cold weather
that saved you. Ten degrees warmer and you’d have bled to death half way there.”
“And if that bullet had been rimfire instead of
center-fire it would have flattened out against my hip bone and you’d have
plucked her out with tweezers the same day and I wouldn’t be feeling it every
time it rains. How things might have gone and how they went don’t have much to
do with each other.”
You’ll even pick up some useful advice for on the scout.
“The area behind the rocks smelled of ammonia.
He wondered idly if the woman used it too. Nodesty was an early casualty on the
scout. His urine steamed in the cold clear air.”
“Woman Watching built a good Indian fire scarcely
bigger than a man’s hand (‘white man make fire big, sit back, no good. Indian
make fire small, stay close, get warm.)
All in all, a superlative effort.
