Paso Por Aqui by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

 

“Woman,” said Ben, “beware! You make utter confusion with the parts of speech. You make mere interjections of pronouns, prepositions and verbs and everything. You use too many shockers. More than that--mark me, my lass-- isn't it curious that no one has ever thought to furnish printed words with every phonograph record of a song? Just a little sheet of paper--why, it needn't cost more than a penny apiece at the outside. Then we could know what it was all about.”

“The way you hop from conversational crag to crag,” said Jay, “is beyond all praise.”

My 3^rd go around with this highly regarded Western author is this short 1927 “novel.”

I use scare quotes for novel as my version and print size clocks in at 45 pages, yet both Jon Lewis and Frank Dobie both list it as a novel.

A highly regarded novel by both of them might I add.

I will also add, that I usually find the taste of both men to be impeccable but here…

Well, as the offered opening extract shows I am at a loss as to the charm.

If the extract charms you, then perhaps you should plunge on and also revel in what I am missing.

I will close with another extract, the one that I do agree with regarding the author; he loves the land he writes of.

Miss Hollister looked around her, and shivered in the sun. “What a ghastly place!” she cried. “I can't for the life of me understand why anybody should live here. We came through some horrible country yesterday, but this is the worst yet. Honestly, Mr. Nunn, isn't this absolutely the most godforsaken spot on earth?”

Mr. Nunn abandoned his work for the moment stood up, smiling. So this was Pat Garrett of whom she had heard so much; the man who killed Billy the Kid. Well, he had a way with him. Jake could not but admire the big square head, the broad spread of his shoulders and a certain untroubled serenity in his quiet face.

“Oh, I don't know,” said Mr. Nunn. “Look there!”

“Where? I don't see anything,” said Jay. “Look at what?”

“Why, the bees,” said Pat. “The wild bees. They make honey here. Little family of ‘em in every sotol stalk;  and that old house up there with the end broken in—No, Miss Hollister, I've seen worse places than this.”

He loves the land. I love the land.

I want to love his people. I want to love his tales.

I shall try again another day.