I enjoyed the first book in my friend J. L. Curtis’ The Bell Chronicles, Showdown on the River, so I picked up book number two, Ranching in Colorado. The title’s a little generic, but the story was excellent.
Rio Bell, gunslinging Texas rancher’s son, survived the dangers of a trail drive and a range war, and now he has his reward. He’s married and owner of a large spread in Colorado. He wasn’t entirely prepared for mountain life or for northern winters, and when his wife gets pregnant he really feels out of his depth.
But he has some his hands with him, along with the crew of old mountain men who helped so much in his earlier adventures. He’ll learn the business, survive a stampede, and face back-shooting rustlers before he’s done.
I don’t know why I don’t read more westerns. I have an infinite taste for cowboy stories. This book was a little less bombastic than the first one; not much gunplay until the last third of the book or so.
I have quibbles, of course. Wedding dresses were not, as a rule, white in the 1870s. A woman we’re told is Scandinavian uses German words like “mit” (with) and “danke,” rather than “med” and “takk.” Some of the English diction is distractingly modern, like, “this baby is an affirmation of our commitment.”
But those are small things. Enjoy the story. Recommended.
Rio Bell is 22 years old, the son of a Texas rancher. In spite of his youth, he already has an impressive reputation as a gunfighter. But he doesn’t expect to need that skill a lot on his present job – leading his first cattle drive, up the Goodnight-Loving Trail to Colorado. He’s got some older friends to back him up, but the decisions will be his, and he feels the responsibility.
The first part of the novel Showdown on the River, by J. L. Curtis (who happens to be a friend of mine, I need to confess) is pretty standard Western fare – the hard days of riding, the boredom and the danger involved in a cattle drive. I didn’t mind that at all. I can read that stuff all day long, if it’s done well, and it is here (Red River is one of my favorite Westerns).
Once the drovers reach Colorado, they encounter challenges they didn’t expect. Rio was planning to visit his hermit uncle in the mountains, but discovers the old man is dead. The people living on his old place are a father with two daughters, one of whom is away at school. But another rancher has moved in on the other side of the valley, with a plan to take over the whole area, at any cost in human lives. With the help of some old mountain men, friends of his cook, Rio and his cowboys will risk their lives to save his new friends – one of whom is a very attractive young woman.
Taken purely as a story, I thought Showdown on the River worked pretty well. I felt the last scenes were a little rushed, and could have been fleshed out. But reading the book was a lot of fun, and that’s the main thing we ask for in these parts.
I have a couple historical quibbles – which may be unfounded. The author likely knows more about these things than I do.
One is the availability of dynamite. Dynamite is overused in Western stories, especially ones set as early as this (1871 by my calculations). The stuff did exist at the time, but I have the idea that finding some just lying around stretches probability a little (could be wrong).
The other is the issue of violence against women. There’s the famous incident of the killing of Dora Hand, Dodge City dance hall singer (involving Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp). Though the killer escaped the gallows, the immediate reaction demonstrates the kind of outrage that the denizens of the American West were capable of when encountering violence of any kind against a (white) woman. They were rare out west in those days, and the culture was romantic and Victorian. In this book, women get threatened with rape and murder. There is negative reaction, I’ll admit, but some of the “bad guys” show an indifference that seems to me improbable. Even the bad guys wouldn’t stoop that far in that time and place. I’m not familiar with any historical exceptions.
In spite of this, I thoroughly enjoyed Showdown on the River, and recommend it highly.
