Legal Shenanigans and a Fist Fight.

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #131

The next story in the May1927 issue of Frontier Stories is "Long-Leaf Lands," by J.E. Grinstead. And, by golly, I can't quite make up my mind if I like it.

The premise is sound enough. A businessman named Sam Smedley owns a lumber mill and some land with good trees. If he can build a small-gauge rail line from his mill to the main railroad, he can make a fortune supplying the railroad with fuel.

There are two pieces of land he still wants. One is full of good trees and is owned by an old squirrel hunter who owes back taxes. The other is along the right-of-way for his small-gauge track, but the owner of that land has recently abandoned it. 

But things go wrong when Smedley asks his assistant, Tom Stone, to falsify an estimate of how much the squirrel hunter's land is worth. Stone is perpetually honest, so he quits rather than go along with this.

This leads to a story in which Stone is attempting to prevent the old man from being swindled (and falling in love with the man's pretty daughter, of course). I like the characters and I like Tom's personal story arc, in which he needs the wisdom of an older friend to keep him from getting into trouble by losing his temper. But a lot of the story is simply legal and business manuevering, without any real tension being generated. 

There is some action when Tom acquires that abandoned land along the right-of-way. Tom gets into a fist fight with Smedley's bully-in-chief and there's an arson attempt and a couple of shots fired. But most of the story involves men borrowing money, getting credit and buying stuff. 

As I said, I do like the characters and the story did maintain my interest long enough to run its course. But Frontier Stories is a magazine that promises us adventure. It's okay to have a plot point centered around when a mortgage is due--countless Westerns have done that. It's just that you need interesting stuff to happen within that context. And in an adventure story, that usually involves battles, chases and rescues. "Long-Leaf Lands" needed a little more of that.

You can find this story online HERE.