{"id":1570,"date":"2026-03-04T10:01:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T10:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp_stories\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2026-05-27T18:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:16:17","slug":"six-bills-a-day-2005-elmer-kelton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/?p=1570","title":{"rendered":"Six Bills a Day (2005) Elmer Kelton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hewey Calloway’s stomach growled like an angry bear.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

That is the first sentence of the book, and it’s a reminder that I’m not in the world of international spy rings any more!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a very early Hewey Calloway adventure. He is only a couple years out of East Texas, still drifting ever-westward with his younger brother Walter in tow, looking for work or for spaces that even more wide-open than the very wide open space he’s in now..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike his brother, who just wants to meet a nice girl and get a job, Hewey larger ambitions to see the world. Gettin interested in a woman would just slow you down! \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He likes the idea of cowboy’in although he hasn’t done any yet. He has found that he’s good with horses, and likes jobs that you can do on a horse. He’s not good with guns. The two brothers have one gun between them, an ancient wooden-handled revolver Hewey keeps in a saddlebag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They make a few rookie mistakes, like signing on with a coupla fellows they meet in the middle of nowhere. They agree to help them herd their steers …. Only it turns out that those steers<\/strong><\/strong> weren’t theirs<\/strong>! Oops!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They find this out the hard way, when a group of riders gallop hard towards them! You guessed, it was the real owner and his outfit. The other two fellas, experienced cattle thieves that they were, just melted away into the night at the first sight of the riders. Hewey and Walter, clueless rubes that they were, waaited for the riders, then were left to try to convince them not to hang them as cattle thieves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brothers learn ranch life<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

They spent one night locked in the root cellar under suspicion, but the next day, the actual Marshall rode through looking for the rustlers. He’d met Hewey and Walter on the trail a few days ago. So they are released from the root cellar and allowed to join the outfit … at a wage of six bits a day, hence the title. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m already noticing something I remember from the only other Hewey book I read: Even though these are truly huge wide-open spaces out here, the main characters of the book keep running into each other in the tiny towns!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hewey testifies against the rustlers in a court of law in the big city of Pecos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the way to prison, the bad-ass rustler conks the marshall on his head and escapes. By now we have learned that he’s a pretty bad dude, wanted for murder “back East” for killing the guy that testified against him there!.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When these cowboy types say <\/em> “back east”, they mean the middle of Texas :))<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

So far it’s a nice study of cowboy life in the 1860’s(?). … which so far is a little too uneventful and boring!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cowpokes from the two competing cattle “empires” are friends … or at least drinkin buddies at the one and only bar in town. They manage to get into an epic bar fight. Pretty entertaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may not make it to the end, this is pretty boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may skip ahead and see if Walter nails the shop girl he likes so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

… I guess I didn’t! I’m returning this one to the library!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hewey Calloway’s stomach growled like an angry bear. That is the first sentence of the book, and it’s a reminder that I’m not in the world of international spy rings any more! This is a very early Hewey Calloway adventure. He is only a couple years out of East Texas, still drifting ever-westward with his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[52,33],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-kelton","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1679,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}