Knighthood’s still in flower. For, riding the crest of popularity at the present time, as never before in its long and glorious history, is the Western story.
On that grim dark day when romantic literature perishes, the soul of man shall perish, too. But as long as ideals are cherished; as long as stark courage engenders shining admiration in the heart; as long as men have splendid creeds to which their lives are pledged, Romance, a Joan of Arc in glittering armor, shall roam the earth.
The savage satire of Don Quixote failed to slay her, and the modern realists whose pens are held in far unsteadier fingers than those of Cervantes cannot prevail.... For the Western story is America’s saga of chivalry. It is Uncle Sam’s contribution to high adventure.
—Leo Margulies, Introduction to WESTERN THRILLERS (1935)
When some people first learn of my extensive collection of Western fiction, they wrinkle their snouts and ask me why I collect that sort of thing. As if Westerns carry a social stigma that puts them in the same class with pornography and/or romantic nurse novels.
These scoffers and sneerers, these snooty types who look down their noses at Westerns, all seem to have one thing in common: None of them has ever read one. Nor do they know anything about Western fiction.
Such ignorance is not bliss. So I sit them down and educate them.
In the first place, I tell them, the Western story—as Leo Margulies says in the passage quoted above—is a uniquely American art form, one of the relative few (hard-boiled crime fiction is another) this country can call its own. It was born more than a hundred years ago with the dime novels of Ned Buntline and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, and was later refined and given permanent literary stature by Mark Twain, Bret Harte, O. Henry, and Owen Wister, among others. During this century Western fiction has functioned as a symbol of all that America stands for: freedom, justice, self-reliance, the pioneer spirit. And in a century that has produced two world wars, dozens of localized wars and “police actions,” the Great Depression, and other tragedies large and small, Americans have needed that spirit to sustain them.
In the second place, I tell these unenlightened folk, the popular image of the Western as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry juvenalia is largely bunkum. There are as many good, intelligent Western stories as any other type; and the best of them not only have literary and entertainment value, but function as education tools, providing the reader with information about—and insights into—the lives and accomplishments of the men and women who settled the western half of the U.S.
In the third place, I say to the poor ignorant souls, few things reveal more about a generation than its popular culture. If you were to examine a cross-section of Western fiction published during each decade of the 20th century, it would not only tell you what type of books and stories were read and who wrote them, but would provide details on moral, religious, and political attitudes, passions and prejudices, fads and fancies. Mini social histories of each decade, in fact, through which you could accurately assess the progression and fundamental changes that have taken place in American society.
By this time, the more perceptive and adaptable among my listeners have begun to look thoughtful, if not downright enthusiastic. To these individuals I give reading copies of works by Wister, Ernest Haycox, A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Jack Schaefer, Dorothy Johnson, and other quality writers, and send them on their way. Those who take the time to read just one good Western usually stop being skeptics; and those who can be induced to read more than one often become converts.
Of course, I am careful with the hard-core sneerers and scoffers, those who have the narrowest minds, not to discuss bad Westerns, which in truth outnumber the good ones by a wide margin. After all, the whole point of proselytizing is to educate and convert; if I admitted that bad—or what I like to call “alternative” —Westerns not only have flourished like weeds over the past 70-plus years, but that some of them make Bulwer-Lytton read like a poor man’s Shakespeare, I would be reinforcing their know-nothing position rather than my own enlightened one.
So I don’t tell them about the alternatives, particularly not the action-oriented type known in the trade as bang-bang horse opera. And I sure as shootin’ don’t tell them that I collect and devour the clunkers, the ones so spectacularly awful that they are classics of their kind, with the same zeal and fascination as I do the quality works.
We all have our guilty pleasures; mine is an abiding admiration for alternative fiction in all categories. This passion for the atrocious, the laughably absurd, led me to write two books about alternative crime fiction, GUN IN CHEEK (1982) and SON OF GUN IN CHEEK (1987). And it has now led me, in spite of my ongoing efforts to convince the average reader to rethink his opinion of Westerns, to perpetrate the present volume—a project I undertook only after arming myself with a full set of rationalizations.
First rationalization: A study of bang-bang horse opera may well interest the casual reader in the genre as a whole, giving him pause to reflect that if bad Westerns are such fun, good Westerns must have plenty to offer, too, and therefore leading him to seek out a Wister or a Guthrie or a Johnson.
Second rationalization: The great alternative-Western writers and their works do not deserve to remain trapped and someday lost in obscurity; their peculiar brand of “Joan of Arc romance in glittering armor” should be recognized and lauded for what it is. And who better to be their champion than a True Believer?
Third rationalization: The book will provide a different historical perspective on the many facets of the genre and on the social attitudes it reflects (which are often more pronounced in alternative fiction than in its opposite).
Fourth rationalization: The literary community, like most others, sometimes takes itself too seriously; critical works tend to be determinedly sober-sided, if not downright pedantic. We can all use a few more chuckles, not to mention a good horselaugh now and then, even if it happens to be at our own expense.
Fifth and final rationalization: The devil made me do it.
It should also be pointed out that the fun I poke in these pages, as was the case with the poked fun in GUN IN CHEEK and SON OF GUN IN CHEEK, was done with gentle and loving fingers. If it were not for alternative writers and the fruits of their labors, my world would be a far less pleasant place than it is. I bear none of the writers mentioned herein any ill will; on the contrary, I respect them mightily for their accomplishments—fiction that stands well above the mundane, that is every bit as enjoyable in its skewed fashion as any created by those working at the other end of the Western spectrum.
Before we begin, it seems a good idea to include a glossary of Western slang that the reader will encounter in quotes and references throughout these pages. Colorful vernacular was a staple of the pre-1950 Western story; indeed, in most alternative quarters slang terms and such phonetic spellings as “yuh” for “you,” “yore” for “your,” and “tuh” for “to” were de rigeur. Some yarns are so colloquial in style and content that they are a chore to plow through, containing as they do phrases and euphemisms that even a veteran reader will occasionally find incomprehensible. The following are some of the more common usages. Others of a murkier nature will be defined to the best of my ability as they crop up in the proceedings.
Boss: Big Augur
Cemetery: Boot Hill, skull orchard, underground hotel
Cigarette: brain tablet, quirly
Cook: belly-filler, hotcake herder
Cowboy: brushpopper, buckaroo, cow-nurse, puncher, range warrior, ranny, waddy
Crook/outlaw: buscadero (or busky), hyderphobia skunk, jasper, lobo, noose dodger, owlhooter (or ‘hooter), polecat, sidewinder, vinegaroon
Gunfight: gun music, gun-soirée, smoke talk
Gunman: gun-ace, gun-dog, gun-galoot, gunhawk, leather slap-per, sixgun smokeroo, slugslammer
Hands/fists: dew-claws, dew-clams, flippers, maulies
Horse: bangtail, bone-pile, bronc, cayuse, crowbait, hayburner, jughead
Liquor: bug juice, coffin varnish, forked lightning, nose paint, tarantula juice, tonsil polish
Preacher: sinbuster, sky-pilot, sky-skipper
Rifle: Ol’ Meat-Getter
Saddle: form-fitter, kak, kidney pad, rig, Texas skirt
Sheriff/Marshal: law-dog, star-toter
Sixgun: angel maker, cutter, hogleg (or hawglaig), iron, Judge Colt, lead-pusher, lead-slinger, lead-spitter, pistolian, powder-smoker, slug-slinger, smoke pole, smoke-wagon, smokeroo, talkin’ iron
Spurs: gut hooks
Tough guy: he-coon, skookum he-wolf
Young person: younker, button
Fool or cheat someone: run a whizzer on
Intimidate or frighten: booger
Leave in a hurry: dust, pull your freight
Nervous, antsy: sufferin’ from the seam squirrels
Riding or running fast: foggin’ it
Shoot dead: salivate
Shrewd, devious: slicker ’n slobbers