The Mammoth Book of Westerns Read online

  The War changed the Western for good. If the good guy still tended to win, he was less of a clean cut-hero. Moral, social and psychological issues were wrought with greater complexity. A fuller, deeper use of Western history became commonplace. (The evidence was in the new pulps’ titles, for example True West). Nowhere was the new maturity of the formulary Western more evident than in its treatment of the American Indian. Until the 1950s, the Native American in pop Westerns was either a noble savage or a savage savage, but a savage nonetheless. The problem had been exacerbated by the decision of the Curtis magazine group that the Indian point of view must not be shown in its journals after the audience outrage that greeted Zane Grey’s attempt to depict a love affair between a white woman and an Amerindian man in a story for Ladies’ Home Journal in 1922. From the 1950s, it became virtually de rigeur in the Western to treat the Native American sympathetically, with the milestone being Dorothy M. Johnson’s “A Man Called Horse”.

  The Golden Age lasted a fleeting ten years or so. By the 1960s television had become the main form of cheap entertainment for ordinary people. Also, the sheer amount of formulary Western stories and novels – not to mention films and TV series – in the 1950s had produced a sense of overkill. The pulps had come to the end of the trail. It is easy to sneer at a form of creative writing that paid a cent per word and where editors issued “How and What” rule books; it is also misplaced. The legacy of the pulps was enormous and is still around us. Writers as diverse as Sinclair Lewis and Elmore Leonard served their apprenticeships in Western pulps, while the special skills of compression and economy demanded by the coarse-paper magazines have worked their way into the brilliance of the contemporary American short story.

  Ultimately, though, it wasn’t TV that drove the popular Western towards the sunset. The popular Western no longer fitted the times. By the 1970s a certain urban cynicism ruled the population. The formulary Western can be many things. Except cynical.

  Meanwhile, what of the literary Western? Its biography could scarcely be more different from its popular blood brother.

  Despite the shared paternity in Fenimore Cooper, the literary Western tended towards down-in-the-dust realism over the ensuing years, together with a resolute eschewing of heroism. In fact, there were few tasks the literary Western set about with more vigour than the debunking of the more preposterous illusions fostered about the Wild West – usually by the popular Western itself. Mark Twain got in an early blow with his parody “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865). In literary hands, the desire to cut down mythology to uncover the real West was simultaneously to uncover a West of paradox and conflict, and of material and psychological hardship. Of diversity, too. Willa Cather, Hamlin Garland, John Steinbeck and Mari Sandoz in taking their sweep of the West’s horizon found their gaze not settling on the cowboy but the sodbusting farmer. A.B. Guthrie created “mountain men” characters for his monumental The Big Sky (1947) and in The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943) Wallace Stegner, the “dean” of western writers, homed in on townsfolk of the West. Larry McMurtry, for all the success of his cattle-drive epic Lonesome Dove, long specialised in small Western town blues, with the town usually fictionalised as Thalia. When the literary Western looked upon the cowboy, it tended to do so with a distinct, unsettling candour, beginning with Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Oxbow Incident in 1948, in which cowboys turn into a lynch-mob. Fifty years or so later, Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” abolished an Old West cliché (or perhaps a taboo) and explored a love affair between two male cowboys. For none of these writers is the West mere backdrop; it penetrates and shapes their fiction.

  The desire of the literary Western to set the record straight also meant that American Indians were honoured much earlier in this branch of the genre. John G. Neihardt’s Indian Tales and Others from 1926 was the pioneering attempt to treat Native Americans seriously. Neihardt, though, was white. Skip forward forty years and Native American writers were writing about the West themselves. The breakthrough moment in the “Native American Renaissance” was the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn in 1969.

  In tandem with the Native American Renaissance, a discernible shift towards the ecological occurred in the literary Western. Here the landmark book was Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). That the literary Western turned environmental is unsurprising. After all, when the chips are down, the Western is about place – and that place, a wilderness, is deserving of reverence and protection. William Kittredge grew up on an Oregon ranch. On turning over the macho and commercial shibboleths of ranching he found them to ring dangerously hollow, and quit to become a writer whose work pulses with sensitivity to nature. The same can be said of Montana’s Rick Bass. There is the beat too of moral indignation over the despoiling of the pristine environment by oil and lumber companies. The literary Western one might add is thriving because, generally, it is about Now, not Then, the New West rather than the Old West.

  If popular Western might be a dying breed – though only the foolhardy should write it off – the literary Western is going from strength to strength.

  Of course, classifying Western fiction into “popular” and “literary” is a canyon-sized problem. What about Jack London, one of the most popular authors of all time, but whose stories are often strongly literary and realistic? Popular or literary? Owen Wister? His short Western stories are exercises in irony; on the other hand, it was Wister who, in The Virginian (1902), made the cowboy, instead of the fur-wearing scout, the Western hero sans pareil. Under a thousand different names, The Virginian, toting a six-gun and a code of chivalric honour, rode the range of Western fiction for years thereafter.

  For all the difficulties of categorising Westerns, some sort of division is useful to separate out the different types of Western writing because at times their style and emphasis have been so radically different. I have included both types of Western story in this anthology because together they demonstrate the breadth and history of fiction available under that tantalizing signpost “Western”.

  And now, as they say, dear reader, “Once Upon A Time in the West . . .”

  BRET HARTE

  The Outcasts of Poker Flat

  FRANCIS BRET HARTE (1836–1902) was born in New York, but later moved to California, where he worked as a schoolteacher, journalist and typesetter. His literary career took off in 1868, when he became the editor of Overland Monthly. It was in this journal that the tales of the California mining camps which made him famous were first published: “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and “Tennessee’s Partner”. Few people have been so influential in determining the course of the Western as Harte, since the characters he established in these, and other, stories have since become stock figures in the genre, among them the noble gambler and prostitute with a heart of gold, both of which, for instance, appear in the classic 1939 movie, Stagecoach, directed by John Ford. Harte was also responsible for introducing a certain “upside-down” morality into the Western, since his outcast figures are often morally superior to the supposedly respectable people around them. In mid-career as writer, Harte took a job as an US diplomat in Germany, later moving to London, where he died.

  “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” is from 1868. The story has been filmed several times, including by John Ford in 1919.

  AS MR JOHN Oakhurst, Gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.

  Mr Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was another question. “I reckon they’re after somebody,” he reflected; “likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with
which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.

  In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody”. It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgement.

  Mr Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. “It’s agin justice,” said Jim Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp – an entire stranger – carry away our money.” But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.

  Mr Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favour of the dealer.

  A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as “The Duchess”; another, who had won the title of “Mother Shipton”; and “Uncle Billy”, a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.

  As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good-humour characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse, “Five Spot”, for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of “Five Spot” with malevolence; and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.

  The road to Sandy Bar – a camp that, not having as yet experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants – lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day’s severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foot-hills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party halted.

  The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphi-theatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly of “throwing up their hand before the game was played out”. But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying them.

  Mr Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he “couldn’t afford it”. As he gazed at his recumbent fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah-trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him: at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own name called.

  A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the newcomer Mr Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as “The Innocent” of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a “little game”, and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune – amounting to some forty dollars – of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door, and thus addressed him: “Tommy, you’re a good little man, but you can’t gamble worth a cent. Don’t try it over again.” He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.

  There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting of Mr Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his fortune. “Alone?” No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had run away with Piney Woods. Didn’t Mr Oakhurst remember Piney? She had used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine-tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.

  Mr Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr Oakhurst’s kick a superior power that would not bear trifling. He then endeavoured to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with provisions, and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log-house near the trail. “Piney can stay with Mrs Oakhurst,” said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, “and I can shift for myself.”

  Nothing but Mr Oakhurst’s admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the cañon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire – for the air had grown strangely
chill and the sky overcast – in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. “Is this yer a d – d picnic?” said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.

  As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.

  Mr Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it – snow!

  He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.