Westerns

Robert E. Howard hoped one day to write an epic history of his native Southwest. He didn’t live long enough to do so. But he did leave us the next best thing in his wealth of Western stories that teem with the action, color, independence, violence, and rowdy comedy of the Texas spirit. In these stories, inspired by the legends of Billy the Kid and other desperadoes, he records the bloody deeds of badmen who storm across the plains like six-gun Conans. These tales stand comparison with the classics of 20th Century frontier literature, from The Searchers and Lonesome Dove to True Grit and Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy.

The Vultures of Wahpeton

In “The Vultures of Wahpeton,” Howard combines somber violence with an underlay of dark satire worthy of Ambrose Bierce. Steve Corcoran, a Texas pistoleer, finds a job as deputy of the boom town of Wahpeton. At first, he doesn’t know that his boss is the secret head of the outlaw gang of “Vultures” who are preying on the town. When he finds out, he is seduced into joining the scam. But Corcoran is his own man, and when danger threatens his saloon-girl sweetheart, he has to decide whether to remain quiet or to dispense his own brand of .45-caliber justice.

Vultures’ Sanctuary

Conan meets the Spaghetti Western – thirty years before Sergio Leone invented the movie genre. In the sun-blasted Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas, El Bravo’s outlaw gang captures a pretty young pioneer woman. Her only chance of escape is a man she hates, the hot-tempered cowpuncher Big Mac McClanahan. Alone, Big Mac invades El Bravo’s remote hideout, one man against a dozen renegades in a game where superior cunning and strategy may even the odds just a little.

Wild Water

An overlooked classic that recalls the angry populist spirit of John Steinbeck and the violent atavism of Sam Peckinpah. In the post oak country of 1930s Texas – Robert Howard’s own homeland – the rawhide spirit of the Old West lives on in hired hand Jim Reynolds. To save his brother-in-law’s farm from foreclosure, Reynolds shoots the creditor, rapacious financier Saul Hopkins, the king of Bisley. Pursued by the law, Reynolds comes to a reckoning at the storm-lashed dam of Bisley Lake, where another tormented outcast has set a dynamite charge that threatens Bisley with extinction. The town’s only hope is a man who hates it … Jim Reynolds.