Claiming of the Deerfoot

by Peter Dawson

Book Overview

Selected with the classic Western fan in mind, this series draws from the work of the acknowledged masters of Western fiction and some contemporary authors writing in the traditional Western style.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 084395163X
• ISBN13: 9780843951639
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Battles of wits in the West

Like his brother, Luke Short, Peter Dawson could well be described as "a thinking reader's Western-writer"; though his novels and tales have all the elements we expect in a Western--strong, lone heroes, starkly beautiful countryside, lawlessness met with bursts of violence--his characters know how to use their brains as well as their guns. In these two novellas from the late pulps (one originally published in 1939, the other in 1942), we see this ability in full flower. "Barbed Wire" is the story of Jim Lance, who wins a Colorado homestead in a poker game and finds himself opposed by "range hog" Ed Nugent and his foreman Ben Starr, who want all the "little guys" off the range. Their primary tactic is not one of shooting, but of legal maneuvering, and Jim must find equally legal and creative means of blocking them by trying to anticipate what they'll do and finding a way to head them off each time. The title story takes us to the mining camp of Ledge, where Ed Thorn, a former stagecoach driver disgraced by the rumor that he was connected to the bandits who held him up and killed his shotgun guard in Montana, comes looking for work. The local short-run stage line is owned by the father of the dead guard, and Ed has rough sailing to convince the man to give him a chance. Then, just when it seems he's got his life turned around and even found a girl who's beginning to care for him, a figure from his past turns up, and Ed, like Lance, must try to stay a step or two ahead to save his name--only to find that his nemesis may be two or three steps ahead of *him*. The moral of the two stories might, indeed, be something like, "Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you." Though "Deerfoot" turns rather heavily on coincidence, I think it works better as a story than "Barbed Wire"--which, oddly for a pulp story, lacks even so much as a token female character. On the other hand, both pieces are tightly written and offer vividly drawn people, a strong leaven of action, and elements of humor and nearly poetic description. These novellas show that Dawson was equally skilled in shorter fiction as in full-length pieces.