Western Writers Chat Newsletter May 2006
MAY Vol. 10 No. 5
~~~ Part #1 ~~~
MEMORIAL DAY MAY 29, 2006
Remember Them
We walked among the crosses
Where our fallen soldiers lay.
And listened to the bugle
As taps began to play.
One stanza from the poem by
C W Johnson - May 1975
==================================
THE CAVE
by Frazer Williamson.
George Washington Brown was with Two Shakes the Medicine Man. At the Indian camp he'd been given a pinto pony and the two had ridden into the hill country above Joshua and Congress.
"You must understand," Two Shakes said, "that if the coming winter is as bad as the last, the bones of the buffalo will not be enough to keep both our people from starving."
It was not the kind of news George Washington Brown wanted to hear. Even with the gathering of buffalo bones that were sold at the railhead to the representatives of the glue factories in the East, the poorest citizens of Joshua had suffered severely last winter. The snow had fallen relentlessly and many had died, frozen to in their dugouts.
"Your daughter, Betsy, is well now?" Two Shakes asked in genuine interest but also to give his black friend the opportunity to chew on the unpalatable fact he'd just been given.
"But surely there is enough?" George Washington Brown said. "Enough for both our people?"
Two Shakes shook his head.
"Not now," he said. "White men from Congress have been out taking the bones for themselves."
George Washington Brown knew there were poor Whites in Congress. Richer Whites called them 'White Trash.'
"We have gathered all we can for the winter and hidden them," Two Shakes said. "We are sorry we cannot share with you. We have barely enough for ourselves."
There was regret in Two Shakes eyes. George Washington Brown knew he spoke the truth.
"We had no awareness of this," George Washington Brown said. "Is there nothing else we can do to survive the coming winter?"
"It would have been well," Two Shakes said, "if the White men had not killed off the buffalo and the beaver for their skins, leaving the flesh to rot. We shed tears to see so much meat rotting in the sun."
They rode in silence for a while. There was something more Two Shakes wanted to say.
"I will say what is in my heart," he said. "It would not be good for us to fight one another."
"Why should we do that?"
"We have bones and you do not."
"We will not fight you for bones."
"When you are hungry enough you will want our bones."
"I will not fight you, Two Shakes."
"I believe you, my friend. But what of your people when they grow cold and hungry?"
George Washington Brown could not answer for his people.
"And then," said Two Shakes, "we might also have to fight with the poor Whites of Congress."
Two Shakes brought his pony to a halt. So did George Washington Brown. Two Shakes listened intently, then, taking his friend with him he wheeled his pony off the trail and down into a declivity behind a huge rock where they dismounted.
Moments later there was the sound of iron-shod hoof beats on the trail going in the direction in which the two had come.
Gradually the sounds of the riders faded into the downhill distance, and were no longer heard. Even so Two Shakes did not move. He motioned George Washington Brown to stay still. Soon a single horseman came after the main bunch and passed as they had.
"Thirty men," Two Shakes said.
"Where'd they come from?"
"Let's see."
They followed a climbing trail until it came to a cliff peppered with caves.
"The dwellings of the 'Old Ones', Two Shakes said. "The 'Old Ones' live here before the Great Spirit took them up from the earth. Stay."
Two Shakes went off but soon returned.
"All gone," he said.
Stone steps had been cut into the walls of the cliff. They went up in tiers until they came to a platform on which there was a wooden ladder leading to the opening of a cave.
George Washington Brown followed Two Shakes into the cave. There was a torch leaning against the wall. This Two Shakes lit from a match taken from his medicine bag.
The cave extended back nearly seventy feet and it seemed to be a storehouse. There were sacks of flour, casks of water, demijohns of whiskey, griddles and pans for cooking and making sourdough and there were coffee pots and tin mugs and plates. There were also bedrolls, bridles, traces, saddles, carbines, and ammunition.
At the very back of the cave they found, wedged into a broad crevice and covered with burlap sacking, ten saddle bags each stuffed to capacity with banknotes.
"Outlaws," George Washington Brown said. "Maybe these were the same gang that tried to hold up the bank in Congress."
Some of the saddlebags had jewellery.
"Seems like they been robbin stages as well."
"These men are kind to us," Two Shakes said. "The Great Spirit has led us here so that we can feed our people through the winter."
"But this is stolen money. Maybe there is a reward for its return."
"You are honest, but you will be cheated. Maybe they will hang you saying you steal this money."
The possibility could not be denied. In George Washington Browns experience no White man would want a reward to go to former slaves.
"What do we do, then?"
They left the jewellery, taking the money in a couple of burlap bags. They stuffed the empty saddlebags with copies of the Congress Sentinel, which neither of them could read but which told the story of how Josiah Spriggs and Jake Goldfarb had stopped the robbery of the Congress Bank. Nine bandits had been killed and one was in jail.
They put the saddlebags back into the crevice, covering them as before with the burlap sacking. Two Shakes carefully wiped away any trace of their having been in the cave.
On the way back they met no outlaws and George Washington Brown beat his brains for a way in which he could use his half of the money to feed the poor of his own people without disclosing where it had come from.
WORDS, WORDS, WORDS!
by Chuck Lewis
The tiresome argument about the "legitimacy" of the word alright evidently still continues today. This issue has been resolved for a long time, however, and I offer the following as food for thought and digestion.
In preface, it must be noted that American English is an ever-changing language and it is nearly impossible to keep up with all the new words added to dictionaries of the language every year, or with words and phrases that have become acceptable. We live in a hurry-up world and our speech and writing reflect that. We use drastically abbreviated words in computer chat rooms and cell phone text, and acronyms have become part of our speech. The original designation radio detecting and ranging has become the single word radar, and the original has long been forgotten. We hardly watch television anymore, we watch TV. We usually say phone instead of telephone, and now spell it without the apostrophe. We don't take the time to say advertisement, we simply say ad, and we look for typos now instead of typographical errors. We call government organizations and corporations by their initials, not their full names, and the average person seeing a "Beemer" doesn't know or care what BMW really stands for. (No, it is not British Motor Works.) Many people now use products' brand names as generic words like Levi's, Kleenex, Xerox, and Scotch tape. We Americans have abandoned the stuffy use of the ligatures oe and ae in words like manoeuver and encyclopaedia, and most computer spell-check programs won't even recognize them. We don't have to use the older spelling of catalogue for catalog, or dialogue for dialog; they're all correct, so take your choice. Even a lot of singers seem to have only one name these days. There are scores of such changes and deviations.
The word alright is only one example of how certain words have evolved and gained acceptance during the past century. Let's follow the progress of just the single word alright:
(1) In 1926, Fowler's Modern English Usage stated definitely that "... all right should always be written separately; there are no such forms as all-right, allright, or alright, though even the last, if seldom allowed by the compositors to appear in print, it is often seen ... in MS."
Many people today still want to consider this book as being the ultimate reference for proper English usage, but there are several factors that need to be recognized. First of all, it's hardly 'modern' as the title suggests. This work was started almost one hundred years ago in England back in 1911 by Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) in collaboration with his brother Francis George Fowler. Francis died in 1918, so Henry completed the work himself and it was published in 1926. Henry W. Fowler was an ex-schoolteacher, classicist, and lexicologist who evidently was a self-absorbed egotist who had nothing but disdain for anyone who did not recognize his rules of composition. He used such belittling terms as 'uneducated,' 'illiterate,' and 'lady novelists' when speaking of writers he considered to be beneath his own perceived level of linguistic perfection.
In the introduction to a later 1957 American edition of this volume, it was wisely noted in part that "... there are peculiarities of American speech and writing not recorded by Fowler, and many of us today, English and American, have neither the time nor the scholarship to follow through the fascinating but sometimes exasperating labyrinth of Greek and Latin parallels and Fowler's Socratic method of teaching by wrong examples."
After many years of studying languages and consulting Fowler's quite often myself, I personally think the book has only generated a certain degree of outdated snobbery.
(2) Forty years later, in 1966, the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedic Dictionary signaled a slight weakening of such stringency by stating that alright was "a spelling not yet accepted." At about the same time, the 1968 edition of Webster's New World Dictionary says that alright is "a disputed variation of all right."
(3) By 1981 the huge Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) then recognized that alright was "in reputable use although all right is more common."
(4) Finally, by 1990, reality set in when Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary summarized the whole matter as follows: "In now obsolete senses all right or alright was formed in Old English as ealriht. Variation in early scribal and printing practices and in spoken stress patterns has given us this and similar pairs in all ready, already and all together, altogether. Since the 19th century some have insisted that alright is wrong, but, though it is less frequent than all right, it remains in common use and appears in the work of reputable writers."
Other current dictionaries say essentially the same thing, that alright is simply used less often than all right, but I find no statement anywhere that declares alright as being wrong or as not being a legitimate word. I feel it's all a matter of usage and personal choice, depending on how much of a purist a writer imagines himself to be. Another way of looking at it is that ealriht is still a word, we just spell it differently now. And here's a thought: When someone is speaking to us, how do we know whether he's saying all right or alright?
Okay, enough of that!
Somewhat related to this subject (though not spelling), I thought it might be of interest to mention that many years ago, while scrounging around in a thrift store, I found an 1885 edition of The New Excelsior Dictionary of the English Language. One of its several appendices is a section of slang words and phrases. Since the 1880s is one era that many of us are interested in or write about, I find this book to be helpful in validating a word or phrase as being contemporary with those years when used in fictional dialogue. I offer this as a suggestion for something to look for the next time you're in an old book store. (By the way, I think it's amusing that neither all right nor alright appear in any form at all in this 1885 dictionary.)
Also, has everyone noticed the declining use of the comma in today's writing? Nobody seems to be suffering because of it. I tend to be from the old school in this matter, however, and I probably (and correctly, as I see it, of course) use a few more commas in my writing than many other writers do.
Our language generously provides quite a bit of latitude for creative writing these days, and if you do a lot of it you'll unconsciously develop your own style. That's what distinguishes certain authors from others. Whether it's Dickens, Hemingway, Mickey Spillane, or Louis L'Amour, their styles and dramatic differences were their own. Hemingway once said, "Why use a big word when a little one will do?" Well, that was his approach, as opposed to that of the more literate novelist Wilbur Smith, who is perhaps one of the best wordsmiths in the world today. Smith, by the way, uses only a single quote for dialogue, 'like this' instead of "like this," but there was the even stranger style of Mackinlay Kantor, who didn't use quotation marks at all! His stunning novel, Andersonville, received the Pulitzer, though, so I guess it didn't bother the prize committee much. So much for literary correctness.
Personally, I shrug and say I have my own style and I try not to be influenced by others. I'm sure you all probably feel the same way. Rigidly formulated writing is too journalistic, and in the end usually more boring. If that's what you're striving for, then writing school text books is just the thing for you, but we all definitely want to do more than that!
CHL Book Enterprises
http://www.chlbooks.com
Nippers Grammar Nits
 by Pat Decker Nipper
Verbing Nouns
I once overheard a conversation between two friends where one said, "Hey, I knew how to party before it was a verb."
Other people have bragged they could "verb any noun." Apparently, the English language offers more mutations in parts of speech than most other languages. But we might have gone overboard with verbing nouns. For example, highway crews are now "coning off" lanes. Olympic athletes are trying "to medal," or, worse yet, "to podium."
While these new verbs might be ugly, how often do we "floor the accelerator," or say "we were doored," when somebody opened a car door and knocked us off our bicycles? We become angry at people who "mouth off," or who "eye the waitress." We "elbow our way" to the front of a line, we "nose out the truth," or we "trash the office."
This creative language eventually becomes part of accepted grammar, especially when the media uses such short cuts to explain whats happening on our highways, in our homes, and with our sporting events.
On the other hand, we are also good at nouning some of our verbs, such as calling a book a "good read."
Pat Decker Nipper
http://www.patdeckernipper.com/
PONY BOY
by Erv Bobo
Tully Bodine leaves Bed Tick Station at 10PM. New to Pony Express, he is put off by the name of the station, imagining bugs crawling over him, burrowing into his skin. Because of his imaginings, he thinks he has slept little during the three days of waiting for a relay to take back to Sweetwater, though the station agent swears Bodine's snoring is the loudest he ever heard from a boy. Riding east into the winter night, he continually rolls his shoulders, trying to dislodge imaginary ticks from his back.
While taking the mochilla and throwing it onto the waiting horse, he heard Ed Washburn say something to the hostler; something about Indians, and now the night worries him. Before changing mounts for the first time at La Bonte, he has forgotten the ticks, bedbugs, ants, and spiders, instead searching every shadow and sagebrush for an ambush.
Fifteen years old, Bodine has been alone since the age of twelve. The Pony Express is his first real job: he does not consider his other work to be anything more than low-paid chores, the same kind of work he did when living with his parents in Iowa before they died in a cholera epidemic.
Spared their end, he spent the intervening years moving from one farm to another; some owned by uncles or cousins, some owned by strangers who had no boy of their own to fetch water, clean the barn, slop the hogs and whatever other menial work they found for him. Some of the work was for wages, most for meals and a bed in the barn, all of them ending with the harvest.
Until he found the Pony Express, his age and small size kept him from finding a job. Though his years are few, he looks even younger. His features are regular, distinguished by smooth skin and a fair complexion he considers girlish. To offset this look, he keeps his light brown hair cropped short, going at it with knife or shears whenever it seems too long. The result is uneven and patchy, giving him the look of a dog with mange, which he appreciates as manly. A chipped front tooth unbalances his smile and gives him a slight whistle when he talks.
This winter is his first of not living in a town and in spite of the icy wind blowing across the plain, it is no colder than the nights spent in front of a saloon, waiting for someone from whom to beg a dime, or someone drunk enough to stake him to a dollar or a meal.
***
Hunger was always a rat, gnawing his belly from the inside out, and bed was always a stable. On milder nights he liked the hayloft, but on the coldest night preferred a clean stall with a warm horse. One day, while rummaging through trash, looking for food, he found a pistol.
In an alley between saloons, the gun lay half-buried in mud. Probably lost by a drunk, the small pocket pistol had a broken trigger. It waggled loosely, not setting when the hammer was cocked. He went outside of town and experimented, finally firing the pistol by pulling back the hammer and letting it fall. With the recoil, he realized he had a new livelihood, if he dared take it.
***
At Elkhorn and again at Horseshoe stations, he changes mounts. "Heard anything about Indians?" Bodine asks as he mounts at Elkhorn station. Wearing only a short leather jacket, he envies the hostler his long bearskin coat.
"Hell, no. Too damned cold for Injuns."
The hostler reaches into a pocket, produces a long rag.
"Tie this over your ears or you're like to lose 'em."
Taking the filthy cloth, Bodine ties it over the crown of his hat and under his chin, drawing down the brim of the hat to cover ears already numb.
"See you." He spurs away.
***
Although he made the broken pistol work, life for Bodine changed in only one way: he spent much of his time thinking about robbing someone.
Farm work had made his wiry frame strong and hard, but did nothing for the frame of mind that reminded him of his size in relation to adults. Walking the frozen ruts of winter streets with his coat collar held up around his neck, or sitting in a weak ray of winter sun, he studied the faces of other men, wondering about accosting this one or that one in the darkness of an alley.
Besides the fear, he worked to overcome what he knew to be an immoral act. When not worrying about someone wresting the broken gun from him, he tried to justify acts not done, crimes not committed. All the reasons for robbery had to do with food, warmth, and clothing; thus, they were selfish reasons and he doubted his Maker would forgive them. The sense of guilt would not wait for commission of the act, settling in like a weight on his shoulders and a dark cloud in his mind.
***
As Tully Bodine approaches Cottonwood station, a tiny light swings in a short arc: the station agent in the road with a lantern. The light, and its intimation of warmth, beckons in more ways than one, reminding Bodine of darker and colder nights when he looked through snow-frosted windows at warm families, thinking he might not live till morning.
He rehearsed the crime repeatedly, seeing in his imagination a dark alley and a staggering drunk; seeing himself step out of deep shadow, putting the small pistol in the man's face or in his back. He imagined confidence in himself, surprise and fear in the stranger; imagined himself stuffing money in his ragged coat pocket as he ran away. It was not enough. He would have to leave town quickly after the robbery.
In the stable where he slept, there were always horses and saddles. Because he was a familiar figure at the stable, stealing a horse would be easy, but that same familiarity would lay the theft at his feet and be a poor way to repay the owner who let him sleep there. He did not know the Missouri penalty for horse theft, but did know many places punished it by hanging.
Stealing a horse was something to weigh, consider and finally discard. A robbery, even if the law caught him, would assure him of jail food, but he was unwilling to risk a hanging.
***
Bodine changes mounts at Star Ranch, and again at Fort Laramie. From the station at Fort Laramie, he can see a scattering of campfires to the north, close by the river, emigrant wagons caught by winter and waiting for spring. Bodine has become familiar with several of the emigrants and when not riding he frequently lends them a hand at finding firewood or taking the settlers' supply order up to the freight station. It is his way of repaying a favor once done him by a drunken man.
After Fort Laramie, Bodine must ford the river. The deep water moves slowly here and he is wary of quicksand. His jeans are soaked to his thighs during a ride that is long, cold and tedious. The half-mile width of the river places him beyond arrow-shot for much of the crossing, but that is little comfort.
When he dismounts at Bordeaux station, he is crippled, icy pins and needles shooting through both legs as he hobbles in a circle while the hostler changes the mochilla.
"You want coffee?" the hostler says. He wears a bearskin coat and a cap with flaps that cover his ears and tie under his chin.
"No time." Bodine groans as a fresh wave of needles races up his legs.
"I poured it when I heard you comin'. It should be cool enough to drink."
The coffee is tepid but to Bodine, it feels like a rush of warmth. He leads the fresh horse to the corral fence and stands on the bottom rail, needing only small steps and a short reach to get one foot into the stirrup. The pain in his legs is great and he rests a moment, his head leaning against the saddle. Then, taking a deep breath, he makes the last effort of swinging his leg over the horse.It doesn't work and he falls back against the rails of the corral. His foot is still in the stirrup and if his back is hurt, he is too numb to feel it. The hostler comes over, gives him a boost, and Bodine finds his seat.
"You all right?"
"I'm fine, now," Bodine says.
Stiff legs cannot spur the horse so he whips the long reins against the rump and again is off into the winter night. Moving fast warms him somewhat, although he must still keep his bandanna in place to protect his face. Vapor from his breath catches in the bandanna and freezes, leaving a patch of ice that stretches from his nose to his chin.
***
Cold and hunger finally drove Bodine to a state he remembers as a kind of madness. He walked slowly down a rutted street lighted by occasional lanterns hanging from awning posts. One hand was in his coat pocket, clutching the cold pistol; the other held his collar tight around his neck.
The gnawing in his belly was now of two rats, one of hunger and the other of fear. Lurking in the alley that ran between two saloons, he saw a quick flash of light as the door of the saloon opened, then saw a man come staggering into the alley, one hand against the clapboard wall for support.
Stepping out of the shadows, the small gun in a trembling hand, the fourteen-year-old Bodine said, "Halt!"
The drunk stopped, head hanging as though examining his feet, then raised his head with a quick jerk.
"I I've got a gun," Bodine said, thrusting the pocket pistol forward. The hammer was down. In spite of the cold, his hands were sweaty and he did not want the hammer to slip, did not want to hurt anyone.
"You hear me?" he said, "I've got a gun."
Afraid of discovery, Bodine looked both ways in the alley, and then did it again. This was taking too long, far longer than he'd imagined.
"I've got a gun and I want money!" he cried, close to tears of frustration.
"Do you understand?"
The drunk tried to turn, tottered, finally swayed backward and braced himself against the wall of the saloon. He shoved both hands into the pockets of his open coat, mumbling incoherently. When he did this, Bodine saw his victim wore a gun belt and if not for the gnawing in his belly he would have ran away. Then the drunk extracted his hands, looking first at one and then the other, and Bodine saw each hand held crumpled greenbacks.
"Give you fi' dollars for it," the drunk said, extending one hand.
Mouth dropping open, Bodine reversed the pocket pistol, holding it by the short barrel and extending it toward the man, then grabbing the offered money. There were greenbacks and coins but he did not count it. Whether two dollars or five, it was all the same to him.
"Thanks, mister." He backs away, toward the street. "Thanks."
"Hey!" the drunk calls. "Gotta broken trigger!"
But Bodine was already running down the street toward light and warmth.
***
At Scott's Bluff station, Dan Cullen is waiting to take the mochilla further east.
"Watch out for Indians," Bodine warns.
"You must be crazy," Cullen says, spurring away.
"Go on in and get warm," Turner, the station agent says. "I'll take care of the horse."
"Seems like I've spent my whole life trying to get warm," Tully Bodine says, pulling the frozen neckerchief down from his face, grinning.
"You sure as hell picked the wrong line of work."
"Guess so. It's a sure-enough job, though."
FRED CHIAVENTONE
Award winning novelist, screenwriter, consultant and commentator.
ESCORTS ARMY OVER HISTORIC BATTLEFIELDS
Fred explains interesting facts:
Had a strange call last week from honchos at the 1st Infantry Division at
Fort Riley, Kansas (just back in from service in Iraq). Seems my novels on Little Bighorn and Red Cloud's War are a big hit with our folks in both Iraq and Afghanistan where, despite the fact that they're novels, the officers have been using them for what is termed "professional development" (how counter-insurgencies are or are not fought - clash of civilizations, etc..).
The upshot was that the officers of the 1st Infantry Division have asked me to take them around the battlefields at Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming and Little Bighorn, Montana on what we call a "Staff Ride." This is a technique we used for years at the Command & General Staff College to see who did what and try to figure out why..and, most importantly, not to make the same mistakes. At any rate I'll now be up in Wyoming and Montana with the 1st Infantry Division 26-29 June which, coincidentally is the same time that the BBC will be filming a special on the Little Bighorn (I have worked with the fellow directing their action sequences).
Cheers,
Fred
Books:
GONE TO KINGDOM
MOON OF BITTER COLD
A ROAD WE DO NOT KNOW
http://home.earthlink.net/~chiaventone/
2 Chiaventone
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