This book is quite a departure for me: I had never read a Western before, but a co-worker convinced me to try reading Louis L’Amour, the classic Western storyteller. It was a good book and very much what you would expect in a Western. But this story— and all L’Amour’s books— is truer to the real Old West than many Hollywood stories, as L’Amour does a lot of research to make his fiction as true to history as possible. Of course, it’s still fiction— the characters and the story are made up— but it is based on authentic situations in the Old West. It revolves around a family setting out for the West and the tremendous challenges they face, which they never came up against back east— especially a gang of rustlers, intent on robbing them and kidnapping the wife, that chase them across the prairie. A stranger, Con Villian, shows up in the first few pages to help the greenhorns deal with these difficulties throughout their journey. Villian is an excellent backwoodsman: a laconic, plain-spoken crack shot with amazing awareness of what is going on around him (rather like an Old West Jason Bourne). These are necessary skills on the frontier and greatly increase the odds in the life-and-death struggle the family has with the gang. The man of the family, Duncan, in contrast to Con Villian, believes he can reason with the bad guys and so thinks he can avoid having to kill them. Yet he finds out that the rustlers are not reasonable; things don’t work out like Duncan hoped they would. I can’t tell you how things do turn out (that would be a spoiler!), but it is worth the read to find out, especially since it’s a short book. Enjoy, partner!
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