My Favorite Book, Part 29

We citizens of the United States sometimes forget that we do not own the West. Most everything that counts as cowboy came to us from south of the border, courtesy of Spanish and Mexican vaqueros. And their influence, always adapted for regional use, did not stop at the Canadian border. Cowboys are big in Canada.

I was reminded of that fact with this novel, Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse. The book was recommended by my friend Doris Daley from Alberta. She is as fine a poet, reciter, and writer as you’re likely to find anywhere.

Written by Paul St. Pierre, the details of cowboy life in Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse will be recognized by anybody who loves and lives the West, but with a unique north-of-our-border flavor that captures the quirks and customs of a time and place where the West was wild, the winters cold, and a sense of humor a necessary tool in coping—the sense of humor (or ‘humour’ as they spell it in Canada) perhaps most important of all. As you smile through page after page, and occasionally laugh out loud, you’ll wonder if the Indian cowboy—a horse whisperer of sorts—will ever find time in his not-so-busy schedule to see to the breaking of Smith’s quarter horse.

I thank Doris Daley for the recommendation. You will too.

 

My favorite short story.

 

“Genesis” is a long short story—82 pages—tucked into the middle of Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow. The tale’s main character is Lionel “Rusty” Cullen, a 19-year-old Englishman who migrated to cattle country in Saskatchewan, intrigued by the romance of the Old West and in search of adventure. It didn’t take him long to realize his notions of cowboy life were misguided:

    Already, within a day, Rusty felt how circumstances had hardened, how what had been an adventure revealed itself as a job.

 Rusty also realizes he is but a pilgrim, least among the nine cowboys who ride out on a late fall roundup to bring in calves for winter feeding. Still, he is determined, even eager, to give it his best, to prove himself a man among men.
        As with many Westerns, landscape and weather are also characters in the story. The roundup is interrupted repeatedly by early blizzards that scatter the cattle time and again. The storms become so violent and the cold so brutal the men are forced to abandon the herd, even the remuda, to race across the plains at a snail’s pace, trying to outrun death itself.
        Romantic notions, if any still exist at this point, are further disabused by the awareness that these men, and others like them throughout the West’s cattle country, put their lives at peril:

For owners off in Aberdeen or Toronto or Calgary or Butte who would never come out themselves and risk what they demanded of any cowboy for twenty dollars a month and found.

 As much as I like “Genesis” for what it includes—a realistic look at cowboy life and work, albeit in extreme circumstances—I like it for what it does not include. There’s not a single gunfight. No Hollywood walk-down quick-draw contest, no snarling packs of bad guys shooting up the streets and back alleys and saloons of a wooden town. There’s no damsel in distress—unless you count mother cows and heifer calves. No splendid super steeds racing at top speed across page after page with nary a stop for a blow, a sip of water, a mouthful of grass. And there are no six-foot-tall bulletproof heroes with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a steely gaze.
        That’s not to say there’s no courage, bravery, or heroics in “Genesis.” But it’s realistic valor, not the over-the-top imaginary superhero stuff so common in Western stories. Stegner sums it up best when, near the end of the tale, he says this about Rusty:

 It was probably a step in the making of a cowhand when he learned that what would pass for heroics in a softer world was only chores around here.

 

Rawhide Robinson makes the news.

Rawhide Robinson is an ordinary cowboy who often finds himself in the middle of extraordinary events—some real, some he spins in outlandish campfire tales.

The novel in which he made his debut, Rawhide Robinson Rides the Range, made the news when it won a Western Writers of America Spur Award. The second book featuring the cowboy, Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail, won a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award and was a Spur Award Finalist.

The latest book of whimsical tall tales and outrageous adventures, Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary, recently made news upon being named a Spur Award Finalist by Western Writers of America.

Not a bad showing for an ordinary cowboy. If you haven’t read Rawhide Robinson’s adventures as yet, he will be pleased to entertain you.

Another campfire tale from Rawhide Robinson.

Rawhide Robinson, the ordinary cowboy who often finds himself in extraordinary situations, has news. This time—unlike his usual campfire anecdotes—it’s true from beginning to end.

Western Fictioneers, an international organization of professional authors who write about the Old West, recently announced the winners of their 2016 Peacemaker Awards. You may recall that earlier, I wrote that Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail: The True Tale of a Wild West CATastrophe—was named a Finalist for Best Western Novel for Young Adults, and I promised an update if there were any developments.  

Well, it won.

That sentence probably deserves an exclamation point, but I try to follow Elmore Leonard’s advice and limit myself to two or three for every 100,000 words of prose. But don’t let the lack of a punctuation mark fool you—I am surprised and stunned and happy and honored to have a book I created win an award named after Samuel Colt’s most famous creation. Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail: The True Tale of a Wild West CATastrophe is available in hardcover and e-book and will make enjoyable reading for book lovers from junior high school to geriatric age.

Finally, since cat videos are so popular on the Internet, I’ve posted the little promotional video for the book. Click on it and take a look. (Spoiler alert: it does, in fact, include cats.)