An Elmer Kelton Western by Steve Kelton and John Bradshaw
— A Hewey Calloway Adventure —
Prologue
Yay! A nice simple western yarn … no serial killers or other-worldly apparitions I hope.
Here’s another writer milking a profitable literary franchise by co-authoring new books under his name plus another writer. Here the book bears Elmer Kelton’s name and his and a third fellow named John Bradshaw.
Elmer, the original money-maker, died in 2009 but there’s more bucks to be had from cranking out more Hewey Calloway adventures.
A epilogue note says that the son, Steve Kelton, also died (in 2022) and John Bradshaw finished the book. So that’s a lot drama we and even gotten to the book yet!
That sounded meaner than I intended. This was a delightful book to read!
The book
Hewey finds himself out of normal his West Texas element. He is in southern Colorado, outside Durango. He pulls up at an isolated cabin, and there’s a dude with inside sweating out a bout of smallpox!. Hewey nurses him back to health. The fellow sneaks off in the middle fo the night (why?), then Hewey gets a mild case(!?) of smallpox. I’ve never read about a mild case of smallpox before! When smallpox shows up in a book, the person dies. But I guess rough, tough cowboys in the wild west can just shake if off and keep riding!)
70 Pages in
Lovely descriptions of the Colorado Rockies.
Pure mountain lakes like you don’t get in Texas etc.
Kind of a nice travelogue so far!
This is my first Hewey Calloway book and I think I’m a fan!
In a little Wyoming town he passing through he needs to get his horse re-shod, so he works a deal with the local blacksmith to shoe a couple of mules for in exchange for getting his horse fitted out … hilarity ensues …
We spend 10 pages or so on the details of how to shoe a horse or mule in the old west. Maybe this is what Hewey is all about … we shall see!
105 Pages
Hewey gets it in his head to go to Laramie for the Cowboy Roundup! Plenty more local color and cowboy trivia.
The Familiar Stranger of the title is I think, Bob Wilson: the guy Hewey helped survive the smallpox.
This Bob fellow snuck out on Hewey in the first part of the book because he had been unjustly accused of bank robbery.
He turns up again in Laramie at the blacksmith shop. Small world out there! 🙂
145 Pages
If you’ve ever driven through Wyoming you know it is a very big place! But this small group of main characters keep running to each other in each town they go to.
Anyway… the evil bank robbers abduct Bob Wilson from the Laramie jail while the Sheriff is having dinner with the pretty girl (there’s only one :). Hewey and the Sheriff and the retired Ranger guy catch up with them at the blacksmith’s.
Then the whole plot wraps up in a few pages.
- The bad guys get the drop on the good guys.
- Bob Wilson does something really brave and gets shot in the chest.
- The nice blacksmith has conflated Wilson with his dead son. When he is shot the blacksmith is so enraged that kills the lesser bad guy with his tongs.
- In the confusion the retired Ranger knocks out the major bad guy and handcuffs him.
- Side note: I don’t think they ever recovered the bank money.
- Bob Wilson will survive (yay!).
- He will probably marry the pretty girl and stay in Laramie (yay again!)…
- so she can be near her dad and …
- Bob can work under the blacksmith and be a surrogate for the son he lost a few years ago.
Very neat and tidy, right? Just the kind of simple plot I was looking for!
Hewey is still a-hankerin’ to see Canada, so he heads north.
There are a couple of odd little stories in the last few that don’t fit the plot at all, e.g. Hewey finally see a Mountie in his cool red jacket way the heck up there somewhere…
In view what I described in the intro where both Keltons died off and the book was finished up by a third party, I think these are stort fragments from Kelton’s notes that the last guy tossed in here so they would live in these pages rather than just throwing them away.
Good for him, and a lovely book all in all!