“Danger Hole” by Luke Short

 

Our supper was pretty horrible--not the food, of course, but old Mrs. Moore. She had a voice like a file with which she dispensed lies and gossip with the abandon of a malicious child. Old Mr. Moore, who had a mechanic’s love of a fact, talked under and around her in a soft, slow way, chiding her gently and picking up the pieces of destroyed reputations and putting them together again.

This novella is one of the 100 Best picks by Mr. Lewis.

It originally appeared in a 1948 issue of Western Bonanza.

This amiable tale is an example of the range that the Western story can be.

There is an assumption of those unfamiliar with the genre that there is any width and breadth in story. That all must be rough and rowdy tales and gunplay must play a part.

Some, yes, to be honest, most tales go that route.

And there are many fine tales in that vein, but those tales always have a whiff of inevitability to them. Just as a crime novel must always, ultimately, be about the crime itself, the mystery plot must glue itself to the crime or you have nothing.

The Western shoot ‘em up, no matter how insightful elsewhere, must run the rails to get to the confrontation.

But the Western story also allows expansive room that most other genres do not enjoy.

In this novella, not one shoot-out.

Not one fistfight.

Not one “Steel-eyed stranger” to be wondered at.

It is a tale of a small town, a flooded mineshaft, and the economic future that is pinned upon being able to pump the shaft free.

It plays as a sort of working man’s Main Street.

It is a fine solid tale, one easily appreciated by those who like their Westerns refreshingly expansive in definition.