“Sugar” by Tom McGuane

 

When the cow tried to get back to the herd, I knew I would ride cutting horses for the rest of my life. With liquid quickness, the mare countered every move that the cow made. Riding her on a slack rein gave me a sense of controlled freefall. Centered between the ears of my horse as if in the sites of a rifle, the cow faked and dodged. Much of the time I didn't know where I was or where the cow was, and I was certainly no help to the horse. By the time I picked up the reins to stop, I was addicted to the thrilling shared movement of cutting, sometimes close to violence, which was well beyond what the human body could ever discover on its own.

This short non-fiction piece by the fine writer, Tom McGuane, can be found in his collection Some Horses.

It tells of the love affair with cutting horses that he and his wife both engaged in.

It nails the feelings of a novice rider versus the experienced rider. It takes us to competition and gets those details right, too; the missed turn-offs, the annoyances of pulling a trailer in traffic, the jittery nerves of competitive exposure, even the low-level “Me vs. You” between man and wife competing in the same event.

This man loved horses, but he is no Dan “Buck” Brannaman, and that makes the story all the more accessible for we lower-level riders. We can feel what he feels where as what “Horse Whisperers” do is an ineffable work of art, almost unrelatable beyond the beauty of witnessing the relationship.

A brief work but it does more to get “Man & Horse” dynamics perfect than many a longer tale in a genre that always features horses but seldom gets them right beyond the color.

Superlative!

The Threepersons Hunt by Brian Garfield

 

Fifty yards north of the station stood the roadhouse, the Broken Arrow, set back behind its dusty parking lot. It was a big rectangle sided with brown boards; there were no windows at all. The name of the place was painted in a faded crescent across the movie-set false front and an illuminated Coors Beer sign overhung the front door. The place had a forbidding aspect, like a slaughterhouse: the grim solid walls without windows gave the impression someone was ashamed of what went on inside.

This neo-Western penned in the 1970s by the talented Mr. Garfield is set in the southwest of the 70s.

We follow a Navajo law officer by the name of Sam Watchman as he is assigned to trail an escaped Apache Convict named Threepersons.

The landscape, the heat, the inter-tribal animosity, the outside press of Anglo ostracism are all portrayed beautifully.

We ride with Watchman on his contemporary manhunt for the first half of the novel and then…and then we begin to insert politics, a convoluted conspiracy involving water-rights, infidelity, past crimes remote to us and…well, the trouble is, the manhunt and Watchman on his on are compelling as hell. These additional complications, less so.

This is a well-written briskly paced novel.

What’s good is very good.

What did not hold this reader may hold others.

The Weight of a Dead Man by Weston Ochse & Yvonne Navarro

 

“You staring at me like you want to have my child,” the gunslinger said, his words like sawdust.

This tale has an intriguing premise, it is a mash-up of Old West adventure with Nate Dupes, a grandson of Edgar Allan Poe’s ratiocinating detective C. Auguste Dupin, working as a Pinkerton agent.

I’m all for experimentation with a bit of Jules Verne overlay of “streampunkish” elements but…this traipses a bit too far into incredulity for this reader’s tastes.

Wildy complicated plotting, convoluted secret societies with baroque motives, masters of disguise that stretch credulity to the breaking point.

Who travels with just the right amount of gear in their carpet bag to transform from a debonair French cosmopolitan to an authentic Chinese “coolie” in the blink of an eye?

Perhaps as a television episode or a graphic novel where such events pass quickly like confection this sates, but in prose where the reader is free to ponder loose elements at leisure…

Not unskillfully written, but this reader lacks the suspension of disbelief required for this journey.

The Crew of the Foraker by Steve Frazee

 

They were taking Jack Muirhead to the brig on Samar. The crew of the Foraker, an old destroyer escort now, watched with a quietness that was not healthy. Sullenly we watched, crowding the quarter deck as close as we dared, standing on the torpedo deck, sitting aft on the depth charge racks. Signalman and quartermasters stalled around the flag bag, staring down

In our prior offering we looked at a WWI story by a noted Western author, here we follow another Western author [a good one at that] into the Second World War.

This 1953 Naval story is not one of combat, rather it is a tale of a hated commanding officer and the long brooding of revenge.

It is a mature theme, and Frazee seems the man to pull it off but…alas, it feels a bit too pat, a bit rushed, a bit underdeveloped.

Strangely this tale feels more dated than his Westerns although it is of a time far more recent than our Frontier Western past.

Frazee is a stalwart author, and I will return to him again, but likely only in his main genre.

“Fear” by James Warner Bellah

 

“Afraid? Who isn’t afraid? But it doesn’t do any good to brood over it.”

James Warner Bellah, the author of many a fine Cavalry tale, those fine enough to be adapted to the screen by the late great John Ford, here brings his military insight to a World War I flying squadron.

We have a tale of a newly arrived pilot learning the ropes of combat in the days of canvas covered wood framed biplanes.

Bellah’s history is accurate. His feel for the realities of “being in the mix” of combat are just as sure as his cavalry work.

This is essentially Red Badge of Courage of the skies.

We live inside the head of the new arrival. Does he or doesn’t he have what it takes to do what must be done in battle?

His struggles are real. His tightrope walk of cowardice and duty are just as tangible.

Those looking for the surface charms of superhuman exploits such as found in Lee Child, Jack Carr, Mark Greaney et al. may not like what they find here.

Here is no superhuman—here we have nothing but humanity—fearful and yet plodding on.

For duty? Maybe not.

“Our job is a funny one, and we’re not here for ourselves, and were not here to be heroes or to get in the newspapers. The V. C.’s [Victoria Crosses] are few and far between.” He raised himself upon his elbow. “I’m not preaching self-abasement and a greater loyalty to a cause that is right, mind you. I don’t know anything about causes or who started the war or why, and I don’t care. I’m preaching C Flight and the lives of five men.”

Bellah nails what most true accounts understand, incredible feats of heroism and what we might term patriotic fervor are often more microcosmic than that. It is duty, loyalty, respect and, I’ll say it, love, for the flesh and blood right there in the trenches with you. The man or woman beside you. The “Big Cause” fades, the meme/headline/creed du jour dissipates.

Slogans and cheers are surface costumes for a character we haven’t stepped up to in actuality.

Whereas the person next to you in a struggle is bone-deep and real.

The men in this story live on that edge—an edge of “We are scared as hell, but let’s not dwell on it.”

“Cruel, thin, casual talk clicking against their teeth in nervous haste; the commercial talk of men bartering their lives against each tick of the clock; men caught like rats in a trap, with no escape but death or a lucky chance like Mallory’s. Caught and yet denying the trap—laughing at it until the low roof of the mess shack rumbled with the echo; drowning it in whisky for the night.

These men are no Mitch Rapp. No Jack Reacher.

They are real men and all the more heroic for it.

Every sentence of Mr. Bellah’s prose flavors the mood.

“The cold wet mist lay upon the fields like a soft veil drawn across the face of an old woman who had died in the night.”

A work of adult action, written by a mature mind for mature minds.

And the lesson holds for us all.

“Afraid? Who isn’t afraid” But it doesn’t do any good to brood over it.”

Bad Blood by John Sandford

Virgil went out the door, feeling a cop-like elation: he had them. But even as he went, he thought, Should I be happy that I was right, and that children are being abused? So he said that to Jenkins: “I got this rush, you know, being right about this. Being right about kids getting abused.”

“That’s not why you got the rush,” Jenkins said. “You got the rush because we’re going to stop it.”

“That’s right,” Virgil said. “I like your reconceptualization.”

“I’m really good at that,” Jenkins said. “Let me get some stuff out of Shrake’s trunk.”

What he got out of Shrake’s trunk were a bulletproof vest and two M16s with low-light Red-Dot scopes and ten thirty-round magazines. “I brought one for you, if you want it,” he said.

“Might be a little overgunned,” Virgil said.

Jenkins said, “I’ve never been overgunned. I have been under-gunned. After that happened, I reconceptualized.”

The third “not a Western” by John Sandford I’ve offered here. I justify as it is in the realm of rural cop/police procedural that works by Craig Johnson and C.J. Box often float under the radar with.

Box and Johnson are both fine writers, but it strikes me that Sandford is the brisker and sturdiest of them all. Add to that, a procedural verisimilitude no doubt furnished by Sandford’s years as a crime reporter, and you have rock-solid work.

This is another in the rural Minnesota, Virgil Flowers series. Speedy entertainment for those who don’t mind their Law Dogs of more recent vintage and remind themselves that many a fine Western is set in the wilds of Minnesota, so why not this modern incarnation?

I repeat, rock solid stuff. 

The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry

 

“Bat Masterson claims you're the best pistol shot in the West,” Doc said. “He says you can hit a coyote at four hundred yards.”

“Hell, I couldn't even see a dang coyote if it was that far away, unless they painted it red,” Wyatt said. “Bat should let me do my own bragging if he can't manage to be credible.”

“All right then, what's the furthest distance you could hit a fat man?” Doc persisted, determined to get at least the elements of conversation out of the taciturn Wyatt, who ignored the question.

Here we have the esteemed Mr. McMurtry’s last western. It is a slim volume in comparison with his epic work.

Slim in scale but not necessarily in scope of inclusion.

McMurtry has packed the tale with real life personages, from Wyatt Earp, to Doc Holliday, to Buffalo Bill, Quanah Parker, Charlie Goodnight and many many more.

The people may have existed and some of the situations are true but, the author has seen fit to fiddle with timelines, meetings and events to suit his whim.

It reminds me of Quentin Tarantino killing Hitler in Inglorious Basterds or likewise killing Manson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; the people are real, as is some of the history, but clearly, not all of it.

McMurtry calls this work a “ballad in prose whose characters are afloat in time.”

It may not match the power of the Lonesome Dove quartet of novels, but there is more than enough of the McMurtry talent on display for fans of the man to go along with his joshing of history.

Brief, definitely McMurtry, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.