An Odd Setting for a Western

Del Monte Hotel, Monterey, California

No Peace, A Steve Dancy Tale takes place at the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, California. A resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean may seem an odd setting for a Western, but not to worry, Steve finds a way to get into trouble.

Actually, it's difficult to get further West than the Pacific Ocean, and California had its share of desperadoes. The Hotel Del Monte provides an interesting setting and remains in use today. During WWII, the building and grounds were requisitioned by the navy. In 1951, the Naval Academy postgraduate school moved from Annapolis to facilities in Monterey. The hotel is now called Herrmann Hall, the main building of the Naval Postgraduate School.

No Peace takes place a few years after Steve and Virginia ride off to enjoy their honeymoon at the end of Crossing the Animas. Life has been quiet for the newlyweds, so a family gathering in Monterey seemed to pose no apprehensions. Steve could not be more wrong. A duly elected sheriff and gang leader has consolidated his outlaws with the local Mexican bandits and a Chinese tong that controls the docks. With peace between the three rival gangs, there is no peace for the residents and visitors.

“How can I find this leader of the white gang?” Dancy asked.
“People don’t go looking for him. Ever. He sends people to find you. If you did find him, you’d be out of your element … and outnumbered. He never meets anyone alone. He’s always got mean killers around him. Ruthless men, capable of anything.”
 “I have friends,” I said.
“A gentleman like you doesn’t have the right kind of friends for men like this. My advice: pay the ransom, go home.”
“I may pay the ransom, and I certainly will go home.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “If you won’t tell me how to find him, at least tell me his name?”
Nelson looked down at his lap and shook his head. Eventually, he looked up at me and shrugged. “Listen, his name is unimportant.” He leaned forward, hands folded, both forearms on his desk. “Stay away from him. He’s a murdering cutthroat who’d skin alive his own mother if there was money to be had. These are bad people. Very bad. Pay … and get the hell out of here.”

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

The Tricks Women do With Ropes

I was wandering around YouTube and found a fun video of Eleanor Powell tap dancing her way through some impressive rope tricks. Reputed to be the best female tap dancer, Powell was the first wife of Glenn Ford. For the impatient, her roping begins at about 1:30 into the video.




Powell once said, "A tap dancer is really a frustrated drummer." To prove her point, she danced with Buddy Rich, reputed to be the world's best drummer.

And now for something completely different...

Preserving Western culture through photography

Don Schimmel Photography

There are many ways to preserve our Western Culture. I prefer books, of course. I have no visual or musical talents, but I still appreciate Western film, music, and photography. Schimmel has a talent for catching a mood. Take a look at his site through the link above and enjoy some great photographs.

Louis L'Amour, The Read Deal

If your name was Louis L'Amour and you wrote about men tougher than nails, would you adopt a penname? Frederick Faust used Max Brand to publish his rough and tumble Westerns. Of course, that was partly because Faust was a Teutonic name, and the Great War had made Germans unpopular.

Saul David, editorial director of Bantam Books, told Donald Jackson a story he included in a Smithsonian Magazine article. "That was the heyday of the paperback Western. We had lost Luke Short, our Western Star, and I was in California looking for a new one. I got a call - the word was out that I was in town - and a voice said, 'This is Louis L'Amour, you've never heard of me but I want to see you right now.' He came up with an envelope, made a pitch and told me to read his samples. He said he was going to be the next great Western writer and we'd do well to take him on. I read it while he waited. It was Hondo, and it knocked me out. I signed him to a long-term contract on the spot … David's boss in New York had doubts about their new author's name - L'Amour on a paperback sounded like ‘a Western written in lipstick,’ he said - but no one had grit enough to ask him to change it, ‘I didn't want to get punched out,’ David explains.”

At the time David met L’Amour (1908-1988), he was nearly fifty. He had mellowed a bit in middle age, but could still throw a hefty punch. For almost his entire life he would spend over an hour each day lifting weights, skipping rope, and punching a bag.

It might seem that L’Amour started late in the writing field, but that would be incorrect for two reason. First, he wrote for the pulps before WWII. (He took an extended hiatus during his enlistment.)  After the war, he sold at least one story per week prior to the film Hondo. There is a legend that John Wayne made L’Amour’s career when he bought the theatrical rights to a short story that became Hondo. Wayne also endorsed of the later novel as the best Western he had ever read. The Duke certainly gave L’Amour a big boost, but L’Amour was making a decent living from writing prior to Hondo. He had already sold several novels to paperback publishers and had sold several other projects for movies and TV.

The second reason would be research. He spent his early years living the life he would later write about. During his upbringing in North Dakota, his father’s veterinary practice and his other relatives exposed him to ranching and genuine cowboys. As a youth, L’Amour traveled the world as an itinerate worker. He hoboed, skinned cattle, baled hay, worked in mines, saw mills and lumber yards, circled the globe as a merchant seaman, and boxed all over the globe for money. He went out of his way to meet lawmen and outlaws. He traveled everywhere, noticed everything, and read constantly. He bragged that from 1928 until 1942 he read three books a week. By the time he met David, his life experiences and pulp writing had thoroughly prepared him to be a novelist.

Louis L'Amour wrote over one hundred books, of which more than 30 have been made into movies. He was extremely prolific and once signed a thirty book contract with Bantam. His books have been translated into over fifteen languages. A few days before he passed away, L’Amour was notified that sales of his books had topped two million. Today, that number is well in excess of three million. None of his titles have ever been out of print.

He loved writing and storytelling. He said, "I can transport myself to another time and place and put myself there." 

Critics panned his dialogue and one-dimensional characters, but praised his pacing and historical accuracy. L'Amour dismissed their criticism. "If you write about a bygone period east of the Mississippi River, it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi it's a Western." He added, "I don't give a damn what anyone else thinks, I know it's literature and I know it will be read 100 years from now." 

Twenty-five years after his death, his prediction looks accurate.

Cowboy Tribute to Arizona

Last night I went to the Phoenix Symphony to hear Rex Allen Jr. in an Arizona Tribute. It was a great presentation that mixed movie and television Western scores with cowboy songs by Rex Allen Jr. This was not a night for experimentation. The symphony and Allen did the standards of Western music; Buckaroo Holiday, The Big Country, William Tell Overture, Bonanza, Ghost Riders in the Sky, Cool Water, Streets of Laredo, and several others. The performance concluded with I love you Arizona, which was written and sung by Allen and adopted last year as the official theme song for the Arizona bicentennial. The audience insisted that Allen sing the song again for an encore.

It was a full house and I hope the popularity of the two-night performance will encourage other similar events.