Lost Stage Valley by Frank Bonham

 

About the coach milled the usual crowd: relatives departing passengers, old men who read dead dreams of adventure in the dust of varnished panels, Mexican children waiting to run alongside the big yellow wheels is the stage rolled up the road.

This 1948 offering from the prolific Mr. Bonham was chosen by Editor Jon Lewis as one of The 100 Best Western Novels.

It is rife with well-observed ruminations of life, people, the land and the ever-rolling tapestry of Fate that we call history.

His terse pronouncements rival most more highly regarded craft found in what is termed “Literature” with a capital L.

I’ll allow a few more extracts to tell that tale.

Under a gray blanket of tattered clouds, they buried Tom Gilson in the cemetery on the hillside. Here lay Willie Crocker; a Mexican hostler dead of smallpox; and three immigrants who had been murdered in the past. Almost as many residents as some Western towns could boast.

Or this…

It had the appearance of a thriving town, but it was a rough one, dirty and careless of its appearance, like a bleary-eyed old man with food spilled on his vest. It was a town of church bells, crows, and rubbish, with little of beauty other than the tawniness of adobe walls against blue skies.

Or this summing up of how men often silently size up one another.

Holbrook's eyes picked him like a pawnbroker’s fingers, searching for the flaw he would go for in a scrap. But Broderick’s jaw was one for shaping anvils on, and his arms were long and the hands at the end of them big-knuckled and capable, and if he had a vulnerable spot it did not show.

Or here, his take on a tool in the feminine wiles’ arsenal.

And she did something with her eyes, a quick veiling of long lashes and the downward glance again, as though she had overstepped. He had seen it done before, but never so well.

The novel may come in the form of a formulaic Western and it contains it’s share of shoot-em-up scenes, but…these are never glorified.

Griff pondered. “Haunting is all in a man's mind. I saw Grandjon die tonight. Nobody ever died having less fun. He died because of the ball I put in his leg. Then I put a shot in McArdle. I guess he's done, too. Reminded me of a rabbit that almost made its hole, laying there kicking its life out and squealing like a pig. Death ain't pretty, Johnny. It ain't like going to sleep. It's big. Bigger than life, because people keep getting born, but nobody ever comes back carrying his coffin and brushin’ off the dirt. I've killed men in my time, and once in a while one walks in still, showing me the hole in his breast and saying, “You done that, pardner. Don't forget to tell God.”

Bonham’s West is both formulaic and real. Spangled how many of us like it, but also tattered, how others of us like it.

The girls were getting more haggard-looking. A couple had gone out and others came to take their places. The edge was off the fun, but the girls and patrons kept playing because they had things to forget or wanted something to remember.

Many who put pen to paper may hit their word count but how many, well, make it sing?

Or as Mr. Bonham would say:

“Powder’s cheap”, he said. “Anybody can talk loud, but how many can make it stick?”

Not a classic but head-and-shoulders above the herd.