The Book Wagon: Cochise County Barnburners

We Ain’t Pullin' No Punches When it Comes to Tombstone.

The Master at Work

Brendan Early and Dana Moon had been friends since Moon scouted for Lieutenant Early’s 10th Cavalry. Together, they chased the Apache all over southeastern Arizona Territory and into Mexico. Now, Moon is employed by the government as an agent at an Apache sub-agency situated in the Rincon Mountains.

Early has been paid a princely sum upfront to work for the LaSalle Mining Company—the same company conspiring with the government to steal the Apache land, believing it to be rich in copper. Journalists swarm the town to egg on the coming brouhaha—because the Apache, led by Moon, aren’t leaving without a fght.

Written in Elmore Leonard’s characteristic combination of sentence fragments, dialogue summaries, and fast reading prose, Gunsights (William Morrow, 1979) keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. A master storyteller from the pulp era, Leonard mixes the drama of relationships, plenty of western action, and rising suspense to create a tension that builds through the entire story. He employs early fashbacks with point-of-view switches, mostly between Early and Moon, to set the stage. Later, as tensions rise, he utilizes other characters, including occasional jumps to the gathered journalist pool, if only to remind the reader of just what exactly’s at stake for everyone. Ever the storyteller, Leonard executes some nifty sleight-of-hand to surprise the reader as the events reach their climactic ending.

As with most of Leonard’s stories, Gunsights is a fun, easy read. The plot runs as straight as a wagon train with all the action driving to the end—where the reader finds the toy surprise. This is a Cracker Jack of a story worth reading multiple times.

A Sidewinding Twister

Kate London’s gunshot husband struggled over hundreds of miles to reach her only to die in her arms—but not before telling her about the treasure of gold he’d found and where it was cached. She couldn’t retrieve the treasure by herself, but who could a woman alone trust to help? Frank Sanderson was a down-on-his-luck former lawman who’d hooked up with a couple of rough men looking for work and unconcerned about on which side of the law they found it. When Kate hired Frank and his companions to escort her into the Rincon Mountains to find the cached gold, she failed to tell them one thing—other men wanted the gold, too and would do anything to get it.

In The Moonlighters (Avon Books, 1968), Ray Hogan infuses Kate with measures of both love and greed in a manner that exposes her humanity and tugs at the reader to sympathize with her, even if not all her decisions have been approval worthy. The Moonlighters has plenty of action to satisfy the western lover, but the gunfights never take over the story or relieve the carefully crafted tension. Hogan’s efective use of backstory leads to revelations and twists which create additional tension as the story builds to the fnal surprising but inevitable ending.

With characters rich in humanity and more twists than a sidewinder slithering across the desert, Hogan proves he can tell a story and keep the reader engaged in the characters from page one. This one is worth savoring like a glass of fine rye.

Stringy and Dry

In 1886, Leonard Wood, a recently commissioned army physician stationed at Fort Huachuca in Cochise County, Arizona Territory, was assigned to accompany Captain Henry Lawton’s expedition to capture Geronimo. Chasing Geronimo: The Journal of Leonard Wood, May-September 1886 (Bison Books, 2009) tells that story. The expedition followed Geronimo’s trail into Mexico and back into the Arizona Territory through some of the most hostile, inhospitable terrain of the American Southwest. Hardships, desertions, and bad luck followed the expedition. At one point Wood was bitten by a tarantula, a misfortune that nearly cost him his life. He recovered, much to the relief of Lawton, who had come to rely heavily on Wood as a regular officer. On July 13th, it seemed they had Geronimo and his band of followers trapped, only for the Apache to escape.

Wood’s journal ofers a regular—though not daily—examination of not only the events of the expedition, but also a firsthand account of the rigors of traveling through some of the roughest, driest country in North America. In addition, the editor’s footnotes provide tidbits of interesting facts and biographies of individuals who pop up in Wood’s account. Some prove to be scoundrels, playing both sides against the other. Wood’s insights into these individuals, oblivious as he is regarding their duplicity, provide interesting reading in places.

The journal of Leonard Wood is more of a factual presentation than an outpouring of deep thoughts or emotions. It isn’t without merit for those interested in the execution and logistics of extended military campaigns, the history of the Apache wars, or General Leonard Wood himself, but for everyone else, this one’s tough as a stringy jackrabbit and drier than a desert drought.