Here’s my Louis L’Amour story: When his short story collection YONDERING was published in 1980, the author set out on a promotion tour that brought him to Oklahoma City. I caught up with him at a mall bookstore where fans were standing in a very long line to get an autograph. We were told he had time to sign two books max, so I grabbed that new collection and a copy of the 1967 MATAGORDA.
I set my two books on the table in front of him and he signed YONDERING, but hesitated some when he saw the title of the second one. He looked up at me with a question on his face and I said, “I grew up in Matagorda County.” Grinning, he replied, “I knew there had to be a reason.”
So even L’Amour knew that MATAGORDA wasn’t one of his best books. I knew it, and now you know it, too.
But it’s not a terrible book, either, and given the fact that it was reprinted for 2008 — the L’Amour centennial — in a double edition with 1957′s THE FIRST FAST DRAW for less than five bucks, I say go for it.
MATAGORDA is combo trail drive and feuding families tale, with an emphasis on the feud. Much of that material is drawn from the history of the infamous Sutton-Taylor affair, one of the most infamous feuds in Texas history. Matagorda is the name of a Texas Gulf Plains county about 80 miles down the coast from Galveston. A lot of that Gulf Plains region was settled by Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred, and while folks are more likely to think of South Central and West Texas as the setting for traditional oaters, the East Central part of the state was just as rife with danger.
Perhaps even more unusual than the setting is the presence of one of the region’s worst hurricanes: the one of 1875. Tap Duvarney, the novel’s protagonist, has traveled to the coastal city of Indianola, the state’s second most prosperous port, to join up with an old friend, Tom Kittery, in the cattle business. On arrival, he learns that Kittery is part of a generations-old feud, and the Munsons on the other side believe that if you aren’t for them, you must be against them.
L’Amour saves up most of the action for the last quarter of the book, when the hurricane blows in and rips Indianola to pieces, and the feuding factions use the storm as a cover for seeking revenge.
THE FIRST FAST DRAW moves up the coast to the Big Thicket area of East Texas. Cullen Baker has returned home from a sojourn out west to avoid the Civil War. He spent a few days with Quantrill’s raiders, but the murder and rapine were too much for him. Now he has to face the carpetbaggers and Reconstructionists who have taken over state and local government, and has to deal with the people he left behind who have always hated him for being too independent-minded.
In long-standing L’Amour fashion, there is a pair of lovely young women who develop a thing for Cullen — one is someone he grew up knowing and the other is a sort-of mystery woman from New Orleans who showed up with a fistful of dollars and an itch to buy up as much property as she can lay her hands on.
It’s mostly a run-and-pursue story as Cullen is accused of being behind every bit of mischief in the territory. He has to keep his women out of harm’s way, protect his land and himself, kill the bad guys, and all while hiding out in the swamps.
L’Amour manages some nicely poetic descriptions of the Big Thicket and if he hurries some of the action sequences, he keeps the story moving at a fair clip. I suspect he’s cannibalized some early short stories for some of these scenes — something most of the writers who began in the pulps were prone to do — but that doesn’t detract from the narrative.
Again, since both these novels are here reprinted in one inexpensive volume, fans of Westerns are in for a treat. Neither of these books is top-drawer L’Amour, but they’ll do to ride with. —Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF LOUIS L’AMOUR, VOLUME SIX: THE CRIME STORIES by Louis L’Amour
Related posts:
- Fast Forward 2
- Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge
- Fast Ships, Black Sails
- The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume Six: The Crime Stories
- Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America
