Gun Hand by Frank O’Rourke

 

“He had no real zest for the job; that was lost in the past and he was beyond the age of eagerness. The old urge for trouble had died in his chest, the once bright game had passed on to younger men.”

That is Mr. O’Rourke describing an aging John McCabe’s view of having lost his taste for plunging into wild ways.

In this blog, I have made it no secret that I consider O’Rourke one of the best in the genre even…even if many of his novels suffer from plots that hew to formula.

I read O’Rourke not for the freshness of the tale [that can occur] but for the riding along for a while inside the skull of a Man who Sees the World.

A Man who Sees the world well.

I won’t offer plot here, that is seldom the way in these pages, rather I will offer another extract.

Here we go from food at a station to ride along on a stagecoach to first viewing of a town.

One paragraph. One.

It tells far more than the words on the page.

“He rose early and ate his breakfast at the counter before the other passengers came down, and took his place beside the driver on the top seat, busied himself with a stick on his muddy boots when she came to the door. He rode all day in moody silence that bothered the driver, and eventually pulled them completely apart. He watched the changing land as they galloped north along the river, made their stop at noon to change teams, and galloped on again. Two hours before sunset they swung into a broader road lined with houses and barns and fields. They clattered over a planked creek bridge and swung into a wide street that boasted the business of this town--- eight solid blocks of stores and saloons and hotels, all slapped together in a rush from green lumber, but there to stay and to be replaced by the brick, for this town was a comer. They pushed into the stage yard and stopped and the lassitude that followed so much movement struck them all as they got down and looked about at the town.”

One paragraph. More setting, character, and story than many an entire chapter.

Winter Count by Barry Lopez

 

What I remember most from the first visit, however, was neither the dryness nor the cactus but the wind. When I was a child in California the Santa Ana wind that came west to us from this side of the mountains seemed to me exotic but aloof. The wind I found in this upper Sonoran country with my father was very different. It was intoxicating. The wind had a quality of wild refinement about it, like horses turning around suddenly in the air by your ear. Whether it blew steadily or in bursts its strength seemed so evenly to diminish as you turned your face to it, it was as though someone had exhaled through silk. I have never since felt so enticed or comforted by the simple movement of air.

This slim volume of short stories [9 total] by the noted naturalist, Barry Lopez highlights his knowledge Plains Indians and the Land---very much the Land.

Those familiar with Lopez, either thru his work with National Geographic or his nonfiction works Arctic Dreams and Of Wolves and Men can expect the writing quality to be high and the observations of natural phenomenon to be gimlet focused.

That is, indeed, what one finds here.

I will say each story, while interesting, is of the elliptical style, where often the point or even the finale of the story is a bit…lost in the horizon, very much like the horizon of the Land Mr. Lopez describes so well.

At a slim page count [my copy runs 112 pages] and written with clear intelligence, I am not sorry I spent time with it.

I will admit, I am philistine enough to long for tighter plotting once I finish such New Yorker fare no matter how Western or skillfully done.

“Trouble Weather” by Lauren Paine

 

Carter stood up. His height seemed to tower over her. “Your family likes Nevada, doesn't it?”

“Yes. We've had it hard here, but we like it…we're going to stay.”

“Then do something for Nevada. Not just for Will, but for Nevada… for yourselves. Pioneers don't come to a wilderness just to take, ma'am… they come to give.”

“I'll do it,” Mister Alvarado.

My first encounter with the mighty prolific Mr. Paine.

I hardly know if this example is typical, but it struck me as on par with mid-to-late L’Amour: brisk, amiable, nothing deep, and given to a bit of preacher-ness.

Note, not preachiness, which is pushing the lesson a little too hard at the expense of story, but rather Preacherness, where the piece and the point of view seem intertwined.

Without looking around, Dago said, “The Indians used to have, Carter let the deed die with the wind. You go on back to town.”

Overall, a fine story, no roof shaker but fine afternoon fare all the same.

Apache Ambush by Will Cook

 

Lovington was in the barn, still alive, hanging by his wrists from one of the rafters. The Apaches had sliced through the calf muscles and his feet kept twitching. Another had flicked out Lovington’s eyeballs with the point of his knife. They hung on his cheeks like boiled eggs dangling from bloody strings.

The metallic clank of spurs roused Lovington and he croaked, “Shoot me! In th’ name of God-- shoot me!”

Now that is undoubtedly stark, particularly for a novel penned in 1955.

In Apache Ambush, Mr. Cook dishes up another one of his hyper-competent cavalry procedurals.

The land is right, the protocol is right, the men are dust-caked and hard.

It has predictable formulary elements to it that prevent it from being raised to an A level but the ride along the way is so true to lived experience that is easily head and shoulders above many a formulary tale by others who lack his life-experience.

I read Cook for his starkness and also for his offhand observations of the human character, as in the next extract.

Like many weak men, he easily mistook desperation for courage and this ride, in spite of pain and discomfort, would remain a hallmark in his life.

In my estimation, lesser Cook is what many another western author strives for on their best days.

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

 

Bergson went over in his mind the things that had held him back. One winter his cattle had perished in a blizzard. The next summer one of his plow horses broke its leg in a prairiedog hole and had to be shot. Another summer he lost his hogs from cholera, and a valuable stallion died from a rattlesnake bite. Time and again his crops had failed. He had lost two children, boys, that came between Lou and Emil, and there had been the cost of sickness and death. Now, when he had at last struggled out of debt, he was going to die himself. He was only forty-six, and had, of course, counted upon more time.

The opening extract from Cather’s 1913 novel is just one of the gemlike observations from this gorgeous novel.

It was offered as one of The 100 Best Western Novels by editor Jon E. Lewis.

It is not your formulary Western chockful of rootin’-tootin’-shootin’ action by any stretch of the imagination—if that is what one requires, look elsewhere.

But…but, if one allows the prose to wash over one, the people with their hopes, dreams, internal frictions in a small Nebraska town come alive.

Cather’s own experience growing up on the plains fuels the reality of what she offers.

Like most of their neighbors, they were meant to follow in paths already marked out for them, not to break trails in a new country. A steady job, a few holidays, nothing to think about, and they would have been very happy. It was no fault of theirs that they had been dragged into the wilderness when they were little boys. A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.

Here the rural envies the cosmopolitan, but the tables are turned.

Which are we?

“I'd rather have had your freedom than my land."

Carl shook his head mournfully. "Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder."

Ponder this precious diamond of a throwaway line.

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.

Or this observation in tune with the tides of life.

When she went out into the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again!

A truly gorgeous novel.

Wise, mature, observant. Real.

Frontier by Louis L ’Amour

 

“For some people the term “frontier” may bring to mind only the way west. That is acceptable as long as one remembers that everything from where the Atlantic Ocean breaks upon the shore was at one time west. It was all frontier, and it is the entire breadth of the continent from east to west that I’ve attempted to deal with in this volume.”

That, my friends, is but one treasured observation from this gorgeous volume from Mr. L’Amour, one of his few non-fiction works. This work leaves me a bit wistful for what we might have had if he had produced more in this contemplative non-fiction mode.

I offer copious excepts from the text, but…the accompanying photos by David Muench make this volume well-worth a look.

“Our country was opened up and built by people unwilling to accept the horizons they were offered: they had to push ever forward, trying to go beyond the limits presented to them. They gave themselves many excuses for going--to settle upon new land, to trap for fur, to dig for gold, but the real reason was their wish to extend themselves to extend their horizons.”

·        To “extend horizons” is always the real reason for “What’s next?”

·        For “What’s over that hill?”

·        If we trod repetitively in the same paths, feel secure only in the ruts of “I eat at these restaurants, I watch these shows, I only go out in this weather, I need these policies I was hereto before now unaware of to be in place forever” to feel secure…

·        If we have no urge for the new, for a wee bit of risk, if we are unwilling to sample change without a whine or a complaint we are demanding that horizons remain unchanged.

·        We cannot claim intrepidity and stasis at the same time.

·        If we desire no extended horizons, we have not extended the self.

 

Europeans traveling in rural areas expected subservience but found an irritating independence, failing to understand that what they were encountering was a new sort of man. Europe had for hundreds of years been a relatively settled society, changing slowly and according to patterns known and accepted. Such was not the case on the frontier. The pioneer had to constantly adapt to changing conditions or to peace or war with various tribes of Indians. He not only considered himself as good as any man but had proved that under the harshest conditions.

·        The democracy of ability, equality via action not elevation via fiat.

Europeans traveling in the backcountry often found themselves treated rudely or with indifference. Dismounting at a tavern, they rarely saw anyone come forward to take a horse to the stable or carry their luggage inside. When some bystander was asked to take a horse to the stable, more often than not would either stare with contempt or reply with some rude comment. For the most part men stabled their own horse on the frontier took care of their own gear.

·        “ Ask not what” rendered in the small everyday actions.

Sod houses could be warm and snug. Often when visitors were expected the earth floor would be sprinkled with water and tamped hard; then with a small stick or other instrument a design would be traced, resembling a carpet. The design would not last long but would, for the first comers at least, add a pretty touch to the bleak surroundings.

·        The surge for beauty and improvement no matter the circumstances.

The country into which they ventured was rich with wild game, edible plants, fish leaping from streams. The Long Hunter was only secondarily an explorer, so he often lingered for weeks and some likely spot where the fishing was good and life comparatively easy. Our present conception of the importance of time [born in part from the railroad timetable] had not come in to be. People lived and worked by the sun's rising and setting, and when they paid attention at all, they judged longer periods by the waxing and waning of the moon.

·        A creature of the Sun, Moon and Seasons.

·        Whereas, we have multiplied our masters by adding slavery to matinee times, timetables, and the myriad stopwatch additions of the day.

Education is of many kinds, and these boys went to school with Nature, learning to read a trail as a modern man would read his newspaper, and reading the forest itself just as well, knowing its plants and animals, the way of the insects and the birds, and where to find springs. Any of the girls could have done as well had they been called upon, and there were some who proved it in escaping from Indians. At a later time Annie Oakley became famous for her shooting, her skill acquired in just that way, but in an earlier time there were girls in every hollow who could have done as well or nearly as well. Marksmanship was not a pastime or an entertainment, it was necessary for survival.

·        Education via immersive doing.

·        No YouTube tutorial then assuming, “Yeah, I could do that.”

One estimate has at the seventeen people died for every westward mile of the covered wagons. I think the estimate is a modest one. So many died of whom there is no record. Years later the remains of wagons might be found, merely a few scattered bones and nothing to identify anyone. In one case, Captain Eugene Ware went on patrol up Lodge Pole Creek found sixteen wagons, all neatly circled, grass growing up around them, some weathered harness, wagons showing every evidence of having been where they were for years. There was no food or ammunition left and the trunks have been ripped open and hastily looted. No letters, papers, or any marks of identification could be found. Although the story was widely reported at the time, nothing ever came of it, and the wagons remain a mystery, the owners vanished and unknown.

·        Standard human beings, not superheroes, who desired something so dearly they uprooted and braved the harshest for the dream.

·        How many of us can honestly claim we would be among that stock that braved the journey?

All things change in the mountains. Sand becomes sandstone and then quartzite; gravel becomes conglomerate and then gneiss; mud changes to shell, to slate, and then to schist; shells change to limestone and then to marble. Nothing remains the same as the years become centuries and the centuries, millenniums.

·        I love the long perspective, one informed by understanding the natural processes around the Man.

·        The more blind we are to what we see, the more ignorant we are of the “How” of what we see the less depth we see in the beauty.

Often I hike the mountains and desert, but when along I do more loitering than hiking. When one adopts a goal that is miles away one misses too much. If one is to understand and appreciate the wilderness one should stroll along, pause, sit down for a while and just absorb what there is to see, to hear, to smell. Walking too fast one misses too much. If you see a wild animal at such a time it is strictly by accident. If you sit quietly and make no sound they often appear. I had a deer come to feed within 50 feet of me when I was downwind of them.

·        Elemental. A Man. A Stroll. An Environment.

·        No speed, no timetable, no phone to steal life.

The mere fact that you do not see animals does not mean they are not present. Usually they see you first and quietly disappear into the landscape. From time to time a would-be explorer goes into the jungle or mountains searching for some strange animal of which he has heard. A few weeks later he returns saying there is no such beast because he found none. I have spent years in mountains where there were mountain lions, yet the only two I have seen were treed by dogs.

·        Even a watchful Man may not see it all.

·        Are we as watchful as He?

A man traveling wild country in the old days always kept his eyes open for possible camping places, not only for the immediate journey but for some future time. Those things essential for a camp--shelter from the wind, fuel, and water-- were the same essentials for the Indian or for prehistoric, and often on the sites chosen I have found evidence of previous use, sometimes from the pioneer years or earlier.

·        I can vouch for this. I have located many a pocket Sinagua ruin, campsite, and, in some cases entire villages in canyonland by simply asking myself, “Where would I receive the most sun? What’s the closest water run-off on this redrock shelf? Where are the closest game trails?”

·        The following observations double-down on the wisdom of following the footsteps.

Unfortunately, much of the knowledge of terrain acquired by mountain men in the course of their hunting and trapping was never written down, for the simple reason that it seemed too obvious. By simple observation they learned to read the land, to tell directions by plant growth or by melting snow, and to find the easiest routes of travel.

Buffalo and other wild game had found the best trails long before any white man and probably before any Indian. Engineers who came to layout roads or railroads usually found they could not improve on buffalo trails, which always followed the easiest route.

In travelling wild country it is always best to stay with the trail, for a trail is always going somewhere it's usually the shortest route between points. Whenever I have left a trail, except for a bit of exploration, I've gotten into trouble. Once, following a long, winding trail I came up on a long, beautiful slope of grass leading down to the very point where I wish to go. The car waited for me down there, and the trail led off in a roundabout way, so I decided on the shortcut. I was tired. It had been a long day, and the easy way down the grassy slope was inviting. After nearly two miles I came suddenly to a deep canyon, dropping sheer for 300 feet, and no way down. Across the canyon that nice grassy slope continued, I had to walk all the way back to the trail, and it was all uphill. Common sense should have told me that had there been an easy way down others would have used it.

Nobody knows the wild country. No matter how long one lives in it and with it one is forever learning, and there's always much to see and hear. Nor are any two places the same.

·        Deep meaning in that preceding extract. Profound.

Much of what one gets from the wilderness depends on what one takes to it. By this I mean that the more that is known of simple geology, of plant growth, and so on, the more interesting an area becomes. The point is not only to see what is there but to know what is happening and what has happened. Soon one is able to travel the country with an awareness impossible before.

If you believe the wilderness is gone you are mistaken. It is out there, miles upon miles of it.

[On being picked up after a week alone in the mountains.]

“Must have been quiet,” he said. “How can you stand being alone?”

“I wasn’t alone,” I said, “I had a mountain with me.”

The greatest stories ever told are those around campfires, and bunkhouses, or in ship fo’c’stles with a bunch of wandering men. They'll have dropped their anchors in forgotten coves and paddled canoes up nameless creeks, and the best of the stories are always for each other, for the ones who have not known the life will not believe what they are hearing.

·        Dead on!

·        Stories from those who have lived, who have dared trump those who have only viewed the YouTube video, read the article or had AI read it to them.

·        Find your Wanderers, converse with them.

·        Better yet, ask to go with them on their next excursion, even if it’s a mere trip to the local BBQ, these people, my friends, these people have stories.

·        They will not regale you with last night’s Netflix binge, this morning’s headlines, or yesterday’s scores.

·        They are too busy living to speak spectator tales.

The more we learn of the world the more we should be cautious about our statements on the past. So much of what we believe is theory or founded upon theory, and much of such theory is based on insufficient evidence. The greatest danger lies in accepting a theory for fact and building mountains of learning on insecure foundations.

·        Sage advice to the cocksure on any topic.

·        And…his cherry on top.

One has to begin somewhere and a theory is such a place, but a theory can be a trap and is not to be trusted too much.

·        This may be non-fiction but it is easily my favorite work of Frontier literature from Mr. L’Amour.

·        Simply superlative.

Conflict [1936] Starring John Wayne

 

[Start with the boxing film review, stick around for the behind-the-scenes gossip. Trust me, it’s wilder than most any film the man made.]

John “The Duke” Wayne.

Should require no introduction, but if he does…well, I’m not really sure what to make of you.

For those who haven’t checked him out in a while or allowed the memory to dim, allow me to say, at his best he was a larger-than-life presence on the screen. He possessed a toughness mixed with a gentle charm.

Those who knew the man and worked with him said, what you saw on the screen wasn’t too far off from the truth.

Let us look to a little-viewed 1936 boxing picture titled Conflict. [aka The Abysmal Brute.]

A low-budget affair produced by Universal, Wayne may be the star here, but this is before he become THE John Wayne. He’s still a hopeful hand at this point.

Directed by David Howard, with a screenplay by Charles A. Logue and Walter Weems based on Jack London’s famous boxing story The Abysmal Brute.

The screenplay takes liberties with London’s story turning it into a wholesome tale of lumberjacks, befriending orphans, travelling boxers and issued challenges.

For old school fight aficionados, the film is of interest for several reasons.

·        Travelling boxing shows to lumberjack camps to challenge the local tough was a common occurrence in actuality. This is one of the few films to portray that world.

·        Jack London, the originator of the material, knew and played the boxing game himself; he wrote of what he experienced-- it always helps to have some authenticity at the foundation.

·        We see the Duke do some low-key speedbag work, nothing blistering but still competent.

·        We see the Duke do some nice punch evasion with an Old Boxer’s bet of “Toss your money on the floor, I’ll put my foot on it, you take a swing, if you knock me off of the money I’ll double it.”

·        This was indeed a game that was played in these camps—stay with me, we’ll come back to this. [See our instructional material of Lumberjack Fighting for much more on the subject.]

·        In the climactic fight we see an old method for hardening the wraps after inspection.

·        In this climactic battle we also see some nice old school milling to the body…

·        Use of the underhook clinch as opposed to the more common fight/action stalling overhook we see commonly today and…

·        At least three instances of what would appear to be poor form from the Duke as his rear foot comes off the canvas for rear straights.

·        Actually, not poor form at all, it is simply the movie version of a common tactic from the early days. Think of it as the forerunner of Patterson’s Gazelle Punch, or even earlier Dundee’s Leaping Hook .

·        See Street Dentist KO Combos Volume 2 for the complete breakdown and the hows, whys, and whens of this hard-jolting shot.

All in all a fine bit of Old School fun for the discerning eye.

Now, let’s get to the behind-the-scenes spice that makes this film match-up all the more fascinating.

Duke Wayne’s nemesis in the film is actor Ward Bond.

The two were lifelong friends in actual life and this was the first of a mighty handful of screen fights they would share.

The fights they had in real life? Too numerous to count.

The friends were both hard-drinking, hard-loving, brawlers in real life.

Their repartee was constant trash talk, bluster, cutting sarcasm and macho posturing that led many to think they would come to blows on a movie set at any moment.

The two men had known each other since the 1920s, brought together by legendary director John Ford and were frequent guests on Ford’s yacht Araner.

The famously prickly Ford would often provoke the men to trade blows for his mere amusement.

As much as they hurt each other in real life, none of this seemed to hurt their friendship.

They would both frequent the Hollywood Athletic Club where they would spar each other the boxing ring, lift weights, sweat out last evening’s booze in the steam bath then head for the Club’s lounge to get a jump-start on that evening’s booze.

Wayne and Bond were not the only hard-drinker’s sitting in the lounge, add to that mix, Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller, and actors Preston Foster and Bruce Cabot.

They jestingly called themselves: “The Young Men’s Purity Total Abstinence and Snooker Pool Association.” [TYMPTASPA.]

[By the way, I have a wild story of a personal encounter with Mr. Weissmuller. I’ll save it for another day. Let’s just say, it was INSANE. Again, another day.]

As the TYMPTASPA sessions grew later into the evening Wayne and Bond would often trash-talk themselves into a fight. Chase all club members out and get to swinging, tossing furniture and punching holes in doors. [Punching holes through doors was a common competition of theirs.]

After which, they would toss a stack of cash on the bar and exit together as friends once again.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

One fight was so uproarious they were suspended for a year.

Their scuffles were not confined to the club or the movie set, at a party at director Frank [It’s a Wonderful Life] Capra’s home, they destroyed furniture and mangled a carpet from their ground scuffle.

Bond tells a story of once betting Wayne that he could stand on a sheet of newspaper and not be knocked off of it. [Recall the similar scene in the film?]

Wayne took the bet.

Bond grabbed the newspaper, stepped to a door threshold, spread the paper, stood on it and closed the door and laughed like hell.

Bond reports that Duke Wayne punched him through the door connecting with his jaw and won the bet.

Is there more to this wild Hollywood tale?

Oh, hell yeah.

Again, like my Tarzan Weissmuller story, another day.

But, if you want the skinny on the actuality of lumberjack fighting, the details on how to really throw the short inside leaping punches, well, head over to our store and browse all the Old School products that feature these Hosses from the Days of Yore.

My Heroes.