Dusty, a Chihuahua, a Boy, and Me

DUSTY, A CHIHUAHUA, A BOY, AND ME

A big heart, an encouraging spirit, and a belly-laugh nobody will ever forget.

Johnny D. Boggs, Bestselling Western Author

IT’S 2008, IF MY memory hasn’t given out, at the Western Writers of America (WWA) convention in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Dusty Richards is serving as auctioneer for the WWA fundraiser sponsored by the Homestead Foundation, the charitable 501(c)(3) foundation that provides award-giving and educational functions for WWA.

Jack, my son, is helping out. He idolizes Dusty Richards, and what 6-year-old boy wouldn’t be wowed by Dusty? The man’s larger than life. He drives a pickup truck the size of an aircraft carrier. That thick drawl. His jowly face. The ever-present cowboy hat. They talk about fishing. About baseball. About Jack’s new straw cowboy hat. About what first grade will be like. Then Jack, one more time, tells Dusty how he wants an apple-headed, miniature Chihuahua puppy.

That’s another story, but a few years earlier, on the way to the grocery, we pass a man selling Chihuahuas, the puppies sitting atop a boulder in front of the store. Jack picks one up and is smitten. Who wouldn’t be smitten by an adorable little puppy? But—

“We have a dog.”

“Yes, June is Dad’s dog.”

“Well, we’ll get you your own dog when you’re a little older.”

Now, in the middle of the auction, Dusty rides down a different trail.

“Hey, folks, y’all know Jack Boggs wants a little dawg,” Dusty drawls. “So, let’s all chip in so Jack can get himself a little ol’ puppy dawg.”

He calls out for Jack to pass around the hat, and my son eagerly jumps up and runs around till embarrassment sends him hurrying to his mom, while I find myself holding a new straw hat filled with bills.

A thought flashes through my stunned brain. Criminy, or a one-syllable word, I’ve got to find a Chihuahua puppy now.

The money from the hat goes to the Santa Fe (New Mexico) Animal Shelter, which I don’t claim as a tax deduction. But about a year later, in a nightmare adventure that reads more like fiction that I’ll save for later, I return with an apple-headed, miniature Chihuahua that Jack names Biscuit.

She must have heard me typing her name because she walks over from her bed in my office to check on me. Five-plus pounds, thirteen-plus years old. Goes ballistic at anyone who rings the doorbell and has outlasted two other bassets I’ve owned—you do know that miniature Chihuahuas live practically forever, don’t you?

I mail Dusty a photo of Jack and Biscuit. And during future WWA conventions, Dusty always ambles over to Jack, shakes his hand, and asks, “How’s that little dawg doin’?”

Yes, I think about Dusty Richards every time I’m picking up a deposit left in the house—you do know that miniature Chihuahuas are impossible to house train, don’t you? Or when the doorbell rings and Biscuit races off, yapping like a hydrophobic coyote while I’m apologizing to the museum curator I’m interviewing over the telephone for a magazine assignment. Or when she’s curled up by Bailey, the latest basset hound, in my office, looking so angelic. Or snarling when Biscuit has the high ground or thinks sweet-hearted Bailey is being a pest.

This is what I remember most about Dusty Richards. A boy and his dog. Of all the Westerns Dusty somehow wrote with those massive fingers, I still think his contemporary rodeo novel, TheNatural, is his best.

Of course, I also recall that bellowing laugh. And many of his stories.

And just how smart he is. He likes to play the comic relief, but sit with him on nonprofit boards like at WWA and Ozark Creative Writers, and you see another side. He knows business; he knows finances, but as soon as the board meeting is over, he’s telling stories, getting laughs, and laughing at other stories.

I remember other times, too.

DUSTY TALKING WITH A FELLOW AUTHOR DURING THE ANNUAL WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA CONVENTION.

Johnny D. Boggs

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. THE 2013 WWA convention at the Riviera Hotel & Casino. Dusty walks into the lobby with Pat, his lovely wife. He wears shorts and Birkenstocks. Hey, it’s 113 degrees outside. Dusty’s friends look stunned. Mouths fall wide open. Eyes bulge out of heads. And my camera is upstairs in my room. There goes my chance at a Pulitzer Prize for photography.

A bunch of Western writers are discussing Cormac McCarthy. I know I am in the minority here, but I’ve never understood the admiration for McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Fact is, I find the novel practically unreadable. But The Road, McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel that won a Pulitzer Prize, mesmerizes me. Colleagues dismiss my thoughts about The Road, but Dusty sides with me—at least on “The relationship between the boy and father in that book moved me,” he says.

Wait. Dusty Richards reads post-apocalyptic literary fiction?

Our literary discourse continues.

This is a side of Dusty many of us don’t see. Countless times I hear him tell the story of how he wrote reviews of Western novels for his classmates, knowing, of course, that his teachers would never crack the spine of a Western. He raves about Zane Grey and other writers of traditional Westerns—the type of stories he loved to tell—but he is well read. Now I am shocked to learn he even reads my works. “He never writes the same story twice,” he says of my novels. “Every one’s different.”

I’m touched. I’m proud.

Dusty Richards likes my books!

I’M INVITED TO SPEAK at the Ozark Creative Writers conference in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Let’s call it 2010. Dusty serves on the board, and after my presentation, fellow writer and OCW board member Max McCoy asks me to serve on the OCW board of directors. They ask, I am sure, because they think I can bring in some top names as keynote speakers, and over the next few years I will deliver—Da-

vid Morrell, James Donovan, Jeff Guinn. But I keep coming back as a board member because Eureka Springs is a nice place to be in October, the people are friendly, and writers never stop learning from other writers. Dusty will tell you that.

But it’s here, over a number of years, that I learn what Dusty’s biggest accomplishments are. Not the three Spur Awards or his Western Heritage Wrangler Award. Not his 2014 induction into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. And not his professionalism as a writer. As Kensington Publishing Corporation editor Gary Goldstein points out— Dusty never missed one deadline.

It is this:

Dusty Richards helps everyone who attends any conference or joins any writers group, WWA, OCW, Ozark Writers League, Northwest Arkansas Writers, Oklahoma Writes Federation, you name it. He refuses to voice one discouraging word. He wants to help everyone, hopes they all get published, and some of those he takes under his wing go on to have literary careers. Maybe they won’t top Dusty’s productivity, but they always stop to thank Dusty for his kindness, generosity, guidance, and all those stories that made them laugh.

This man, I figure, will live forever.

DUSTY RICHARDS HELPED EVERYONE. HE REFUSED TO VOICE ONE DISCOURAGING WORD. HE WANTED TO HELP EVERYONE, HOPED THEY ALL GOT PUBLISHED, MAYBE THEY NEVER TOPPED DUSTY’S PRODUCTIVITY, BUT THEY ALWAYS STOP TO THANK HIM FOR HIS KINDNESS, GENEROSITY, GUIDANCE, AND ALL THOSE STORIES THAT MADE THEM LAUGH.

Kelly D. Willis

SEPTEMBER 20, 2017, FINDS me at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, for the dedication of the permanent Western Writers Hall of Fame exhibit just outside the McCracken Research Library. Dusty, WWA executive director Candy Moulton, president Kirk Ellis, vice-president Nancy Plain, novelist Loren D. Estleman, historians Paul Andrew Hutton, Sherry Monahan, and Pete Simpson, collector Robert McCubbin, the husband-wife bestselling writing team of W. Michael and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, others. On a tour of the center’s Cody Firearms Museum, a curator brings out the 1895 Deluxe Lever Action Sporting Rifle, beautifully engraved by Clundt Philip, that Winchester Repeating Arms Company gave to Zane Grey in 1924.

When Dusty braces the stock on his shoulder, he’s delighted to hold a rifle used by one of his favorite authors. He’s also humbled.

I take a photo of Dusty holding that Winchester. Not the sharpest, not the best framed, not the most vivid that I’ve ever taken, but it’s my favorite photo of Dusty.

His article about the dedication will appear in the February 2018 issue of WWA’s Roundup Magazine, in which he writes that “the museum folks let me, and others, hold one of Zane Grey’s rifles. I grew up on Zane Grey, have been to his cabin in Payson, Arizona, and Zane Grey, rightfully so, is a member of the Western Writers Hall of Fame.”

TOURING THE CODY FIREARMS MUSEUM IN THE BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST IN CODY, WYOMING, DUSTY AIMS THE 1895 DELUXE LEVER ACTION SPORTING RIFLE GIVEN TO LEGENDARY WESTERN AUTHOR ZANE GREY IN 1924 BY THE WINCHESTER REPEATING ARMS COMPANY.

Johnny D. Boggs

That September evening, in the hotel bar, a bunch of us sit around talking about writing. Process. How we do this. How we do that. What we like, dislike. What works, and what doesn’t. For us, anyway. One writer’s blessing might be another writer’s curse, but words just don’t appear on paper or computer screens.

Just before the confab breaks up, Moulton suggests that this ought to be a panel for the 2018 convention in Billings, Montana, or down the road. Just Western writers, sitting and talking about the craft of writing, the process of writing.

Dusty retires early that night—hey, holding Zane Grey’s rifle and getting lost in that sprawling museum take a lot of out of you—but, by all means, Dusty needs to be on this panel.

It’s a great idea.

But this particular panel will never happen.

BECAUSE HERE I AM, sitting on the back row at Beard’s Funeral Chapel in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The Western writer who is going to live forever is dead at age 80, from injuries sustained in a single-vehicle crash that also claims his wife a few days before he joins her.

Earlier, Moulton calls to say that scheduling conflicts will not allow her or other WWA officers to attend the funeral. She asks if I can represent WWA. “I was going anyway,” I tell her. That’s an easy de - cision, much easier than telling Jack that Dusty is gone. I give Biscuit a treat and some extra attention before I hit the road to the Albuquerque airport, fly to Tulsa, and drive a rental car into Arkansas over the same route I’ve traveled to OCW all these years.

OCW board member Linda Apple asks if I want to sit up front, but I politely decline, explaining that I’m a back-pew kind of guy. That’s not the real reason. The real reason is the reporters notepad I’m holding in my lap.

I’ll cowrite Dusty’s obituary in WWA’s Roundup Magazine, but I’m not taking notes for that article. Truth be told, I write poetry about as often as I’ll attempt lyrics for a song. Once every two years is prolific. Once every four or five might be average. Prose doesn’t come easy, at least not as easy as Dusty made it seem, but I don’t need inspiration, just a deadline, to write a magazine article, a short story, a nonfiction book, or a novel. Now, something is forming in my consciousness that I have to put down on paper. Hard to believe that Dusty Richards, that spinner of Old West yarns and stories and owner of a belly laugh you can’t believe or forget, has me attempting free verse in Arkansas. Well, he has inspired numerous writers to do many things, and no one who met him will forget him.

He is not really dead. Writers like Dusty, they never truly die. Isn’t that right, Biscuit?

—JOHNNY D. BOGGS has worked cattle, been bucked off horses (breaking two ribs last time), shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He has won a record nine Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and has been called by Booklist magazine “among the best western writers at work today.” He also writes for numerous magazines, including True West, Wild West, Boys’ Life and Western Art & Architecture, speaks and lectures often, studies old movies (Westerns and film noir) and even finds time to coach and umpire Little League. A native of South Carolina and former newspaper journalist, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and s​on.