Thirty Notches by Brad Ward

 

Think of the woman in the Conestoga wagon, and the weak-faced man who almost killed them both. Think of her face, the strength of her shining through, the level eyes, the odd little gesture of brushing away the strand of hair from her forehead. Think of her, and the wagon, with a young girl and the baby; think of all of them, and envy the man who was too stupid to appreciate what he had.

This 1956 novel by Brad Ward [a pen name for Samuel Anthony Peeples] was my first Ward/Peeples Western—and it won’t be my last.

The plot is formulary to the hilt, but like the excellent craftsman Frank O’Rourke, Ward/Peeples makes the familiar his by giving us living breathing people and not mere heroic cut-outs to be pushed across the plot board to check the trope boxes.

Like O’Rourke, Ward/Peeples limns characters in small acts, terse dialogue—none of that “He was a hard-eyed man with a gaze that saw much but could still soften when the tease of a smile touched his lips.”

Ward/Peeples treats us better than that. We learn the men and women through their actions or failures to act.

I will also remark, the violence here is hard. A bit surprising a for a 1950s novel. Not hard in the gratuitous sense, simply truthful in that death by gun be it wielded by hero or villain is never pleasant.

A mature work of the formulary Western head and shoulders over highly touted works by many better-known-names.