Dutchman's Flat

cover art by Sam Cherry

 

Louis L'Amour was at least as skilled in writing short stories as he was writing novels.

For instance, "Dutchman's Flat" (published in the Fall 1948 issue of Giant Western) is about five six men chasing another into the desert. The man they are chasing, Chet Lock, apparently back-shot someone. There's no formal law in the area, so the men include a rope on which to hang Lock when they catch him.

But Lock isn't easy to catch. At one point, he keeps them pinned down with rifle fire. But he doesn't kill any of them, even though he could easily have done so.

Later, he leaves marks on cliff walls to point them towards water or towards a shady area to rest their horses. He even leaves wood for a fire, salt and coffee in one location.

Is he taunting them? Or have they misjudged him? He's not acting like a killer who would shoot a man in the back. 

The story is set up to allow the men to learn about Lock's character, even though they don't actually meet him until the end of the tale. The idea L'Amour brings across is that you can get a feel for who a man is by what he does. Would a man who acts like Lock does, even when being pursued by men who want to kill him, be someone who would commit cold-blooded murder?

"Dutchman's Flat" benefits from L'Amour's vivid description of the desert, presenting the landscape as oppressive and deadly, and his straightforward account of the pursuit. It's a Western adventure story, but its also a solid character study. It's worth reading.

You can find it online HERE.

Sailing a Freighter in the South Seas.

 

cover art by Rudolph Belarski

Louis L'Amour is, of course, most famous for the many, many excellent Westerns he wrote. But he did write in other genres. For instance, early in his career, he wrote a series of stories set in the South Seas, with his own experiences as a merchant seaman giving those tales authenticity.

The protagonist in these stories is a "Ponga Jim" Mayo, who is the master of a tramp steamer and who has a penchant for finding trouble. One of Ponga Jim's adventures is recounted in the October 1940 issue of Thrilling Adventures. 

"On the Road to Amurang" has Ponga Jim taking his ship, the Semiramis, on a cargo run to several islands. But World War 2 is raging in Europe and one side effect of that is to make the British and Dutch-controlled islands in the Pacific a dangerous place to be.

Jim finds that out when his ship is hijacked by gunmen led by a big guy (and I mean a BIG guy) named Job Dussel. Jim knows that he, his ship and his crew are doomed unless he does something fast.

He sees a chance to make a break for it and then finds an unexpected place to hide while Dussell's men are looking for him. When he has a chance, Jim jumps a guard, gets a gun and frees a few of his crew.

From there, the action picks up to a lightning pace. Dussell and his surviving men are forced to steal a lifeboat and leave the ship, but a (persumably German) cruiser is nearby to pick them up. Jim has a gun mounted on the Semiramis, but can't outduel the bigger vessel. But Jim knows the waters here better than anyone and he might still have one last trick up his sleeve. 

Besides, he doesn't want to miss a chance to find out if he can take Dussell in a fist fight. 

"On the Road to Amurang" is a great example of how much fun the Ponga Jim stories are. It's short, but packed with captures, escapes, gun battles, ship-to-ship combat and a brutal fist fight at the climax. You can read it online HERE. 

Two Great Westerns

 

Angela and I are in a really fun online book club in which, each month, we read one of Louis L'Amour's Sackett novels and another unrelated Western, then discuss them. But a visiting relative will mean we'll be missing an upcoming meeting. Though we're happy to have that visitor here, I'm bummed about missing the meeting. The books this time around are two of the best Westerns I've ever read. 

These were L'Amour's Sackett (1961) and Wild Times (1979), by Brian Garfield. And, by golly, if I can't talk about them at the book club, I'm gonna talk about 'em here.

{Update: My brother hadn't yet adjusted to the time change on Book Club Night and fell asleep early. So I got to attend the meeting anyways. But since I'd already written this post, I'm leaving it up.}

In terms of plot, the novels are very different. Sackett is about Tell Sackett, who is working to improve himself by teaching himself to read properly while working a hidden mine for gold, helping to establish a new town and facing off against the vengeful Bigelow brothers. The action takes place over the course of a few months.

Wild Times is the life story of an expert sharpshooter named Hugh Cardiff. Hugh is a crack shot--perhaps the best in the American West--who becomes the hero of a series of dime novels and the star of a less-than-realistic play about his adventures. He eventually opens his own Wild West show. But along the way, he has a number of real adventures, suffering loss and romantic heartache while also making a number of life-long friends. The action takes place over six decades, starting with the Civil War and ending in the 1920s.

Both books, though, have similar themes running through them. In each case, these themes give strength to the plots and additional life to the characters. In both stories, the importance of being educated is stressed. Themes of honesty and loyalty to one's friends are there, along with the benefits of having these traits. Also, the protagonists in both novels work for what they have and clearly earn their eventual success. 

Also, by coincidence, the best scenes in both novels parallel each other. In Wild Times, Hugh makes an epic journey through a desert, nearly dying along the way, in order to carry an injured friend to safety.  In Sackett, Tell makes an epic journey over a snow-covered mountain, nearly dying along the way, in order to carry an injured man (in this case, an enemy) to safety. 

So I've just read two books that stress the importance of family and friends. But then, because of visiting family, I thought I would miss hanging out with Book Club Friends. But then I was able to attend the book club anyways because my brother fell asleep early after a trip across four time zones. It's complicated, but it's probably easier than hauling a wounded man across a heat-seared desert or a snow-covered mountain. So I suppose I can't complain.

Wagon Train Conspiracy

It's really a clever plan. There's gold in the Little Big Horn area. The Sioux are no longer a major threat--their power broken by the Army after Custer's 7th Calvary was massacred a year earlier. So you can organize a wagon train--large enough to keep what Indians you may meet at bay--to move into gold country and start a town. Anyone who comes has to have at least one wagon and carry a load of goods. With a town established, some will prospect for gold. Others will ranch. One man plans to start a freight company. Another will run a general store. In a brand-new town in a country yet to be tamed, the possibilities are endless.

But there's another, somewhat darker plan underneath that one. One of the men who organized and now leads the wagon train realizes that the total value of goods and cattle being brought with the train can be valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If something were to happen to the wagon train--something that might later be blamed on the Sioux--then that man and a few select others can claim the goods and make a fortune.

That's the premise for Louis L'Amour's 1950 novel Westward the Tide. The protagonist is Matt Bardoul, a man with a reputation for being good with a gun. This is something that--to a degree--works against him as he begins to suspect that the wagon train is in danger. The villains in the train immediately see him as a threat, but some of the other wagon train leaders distrust his reputation too much to take his warnings seriously.


Also, Matt himself isn't completely certain his suspicions are accurate. It's a situation that L'Amour uses very effectively to build up tension as the wagon train moves out into unsettled territory. Matt sees that a few of the wagons are carrying more men and less supplies than others; and that many of those men are outlaws and thieves. But he's got no proof of anything overtly illegal and he himself can't be certain of what the villains are planning.

He's also reluctant to bring things to a head, because there are women and children on the train who would be caught in the crossfire if open battle broke out. That includes Jacquine Coyle, the beautiful daughter of one of the wagon train leaders, to whom Matt has taken quite a shine.

Of course, his relationship with her would be less rocky if she weren't spending her time with Clive Massey, co-leader of the wagon train and the probable leader of the outlaws.

So Matt and the few men he can trust have to bide their time--even when most of their ammunition is stolen from their wagons and a good man is killed in what Massey claims is self-defense. Matt knows that the outlaws will strike soon and that they can't afford to leave any witnesses behind. But he needs to bide his time and consider the women and kids first. In many ways, the novel plays out like a pure suspense tale.

Not that it lacks for pure action. Like all L'Amour westerns, this one has plenty of action. There's a lot of gun play, a tense knife fight between a wounded Matt and a Sioux warrior, and a exciting fist fight.

Of course, in a L'Amour novel, there's always an exciting fist fight. L'Amour was (among many other things) a boxer. He knew the Sweet Science well and he knew how to choreograph a fight. When you read one of his novels, you know the hero is going to start trading punches with somebody at some point and you always look forward to it.

The extended climax of Westward the Tide is particularly tense, with Matt wounded and the innocents on the wagon train in truly horrible danger. All this builds up into the expected but no less exciting confrontation between Matt and Clive Massey.

In fact, it's interesting how often L'Amour uses the same tropes--brutal fist fight at some point and a final confrontation between hero and villain at the climax--in so many novels, but it never gets old. Often, he adds some factor (such as a trick Massey has up his sleeve in the final shootout) to give these scenes variety. But mostly these moments are often so good just because L'Amour was a great storyteller who simply knew how properly to spin a yarn.

Westward the Tide may also be L'Amour's most cynical novel in its dissection of civilization and remarks about the death of the open frontier. At one point, he even stops the story for a few pages so an old Indian stopping by the campfire can pontificate on the difference between living on the land and simply pillaging the land. This attitude never gets in the way of the story and, in fact, L'Amour makes sincerely interesting philosophical points. But one really gets the feeling that Louis L'Amour really was born 70 years too late.

Well, lucky for us he did wait around for the 20th Century before being born. The world would be a poorer place without his novels.

A City Boy Makes Good in the West

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I’ve always enjoyed Louis L’Amour’s Western novels. The one I just finished reading—The Iron Marshal (1979)—is typically good.





It’s a bit atypical, though, in that the main character is not a born and bred Westerner, as most of L’Amour’s protagonists usually are. Tom Shanaghy was born in Ireland and emigrated to the States when he was 11. He did most of his growing up in the tougher sections of New York City, where he worked for a Tammany Hall politician. Though never quite a crook himself, he lived on the edge of corruption. He also had plenty of reason to develop skill in using his fists and a gun.





When gang violence breaks out, Tom is abruptly forced to hop a freight train out of town. He ends up in Kansas. Soon, via a set of rather unusual circumstances, he ends up as the town marshal. Now all he has to do is stop an angry cattleman from burning the town to the ground, foil the robbery of a gold shipment, and solve a murder or two. And, oh yes, face off against the five members of a local family who have gotten really ticked off at him.





It’s a really well-constructed story, fusing the Western with elements more usually found in detective stories. (Actually, a lot of writers have done that. But it's perpetually cool whenever it's done well.) Tom’s journey from big city thug to Western lawman nicely parallels his growth as a person, as he gradually comes to realize he wants to do something productive with his life. And, as is typical in L’Amour’s novels, the action set pieces are a lot of fun, involving several fist fights as well as gunplay.





All in all, The Iron Marshall shows L’Amour’s typical strengths as a writer, but is also just different enough in terms of plot and character to make it stand out from his other works. It’s not his absolute best novel (that’d probably be Hondo), but it still makes for an entertaining sojourn back to the Old West.