ELMER KELTON (1926-2009)

"My dad wanted to make a cowboy out of me, but every time he turned around to see where I was, I was reading a book."

Crane, Texas (1940s)
"In an oil-patch town like Crane a boy who excelled in English and won spelling bees was automatically suspect."

No writer ever knew West Texas better than Elmer Kelton.  No, that's not quite correct.  Let me start over.  No writer ever knew west Texas as well as Elmer Kelton.

After all, he was born on a west Texas ranch where first his grandfather and than his father was the foreman.  He grew up near the town of Crane on the McElroy Ranch located in Upton and Crane counties where his father, R.W. "Buck" Kelton, was employed for over thirty years.  His mother was Neta Beatrice "Bea" (nee Parker).

Kelton wrote in his autobiography, Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer (2010), that:

"Dad gave me every chance to learn to be a cowboy.  I was probably the greatest failure of his life.  I was always better talking about it, and writing about it, than I ever was at doing it .... By the time I was eight or nine years old, I fantasized about someday writing the Great American Novel."

A good listener, Kelton was quoted as saying that "Cowboys, especially in the days before television, were pretty good storytellers.  As a kid I loved to sit around and listen to them talk.  I soaked it up like a sponge."

After high school he attended the University of Texas at Austin and was a semester shy of graduation when he was drafted into the army during WWII and served in the infantry in Europe from 1944 to 1946.  A Bronze Star was among his ciatations.

After the war he finished his degree in journalism at the University of Texas.  Beginning in 1948 he wrote for over forty years about farming and ranching in west Texas for various agricultural newspapers and journals, before retiring in 1990.

Kelton's mother, a former school teacher, encouraged him to be a writer, but his father was rather dubious about his son's career choice.  His response was "That's the way with you kids nowadays, you all want to make a living without working for it."

When asked if he had any advice for young writers, Kelton said: "Keep your day job.  Read, read, and keep on reading.  Write, write, and keep on writing."

Kelton took his own advice.  He kept his day job.

During those four decades as an agricultural journalist he wrote fiction in his spare time, in the evenings and on the weekends.  He began writing short stories for pulp magazines and published his first novel, Hot Iron, in 1955.

He went on to write more than forty novels, all westerns, and, with few exceptions, set in west Texas.

His first real recognition was due to the publication of his novel, Buffalo Wagons (1957), which received the highest honor that a western novel can receive, that being a prestigious Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.

That was just the beginning, for six of his later novels would also win the award.  They are: The Day the Cowboys Quit (1971); The Time it Never Rained (1973); Slaughter (1992); The Far Canyon (1994); Eyes of the Hawk (2001); and The Way of the Coyote (2002).

In addition, three of his novels have received Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.  They are: The Time It Never Rained (1973); The Good Old Boys (1982); and The Man Who Rode Midnight (1987).

Note that The Time It Never Rained is the only Kelton novel to be honored by both organizations.  This is only fitting since it is his most popular and most critically acclaimed work, as well as being his personal favorite.

In 1995, The Good Old Boys was made into a TV movie on TNT, starring Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed and co-wrote the script.  To date, it is the only Kelton story to be adapted for film.

That same year Kelton's peers in the Western Writers of America organization voted him the "All-time Best Western Author."  I don't know where the two biggest selling authors, Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, placed, but it was somewhere behind Willa Cather who finished a distant second.

When asked in an interview how he felt about the vote, he said, "I'd hate to have to stand up and defend that in front of a jury.  I appreciate the compliment, but I can't say that I believe it."

Kelton's primary theme in his novels "has always been change and how people adpt to it or don't adapt."  Never is this more apparent than it is in his most acclaimed novel, The Time It Never Rained.

It is the story of an actual drought that occurred in west Texas during the 50's, one that lasted seven long years.

During those years the ability of ranchers to adapt was severely tested year after year.

Kelton not only wrote about the drought in his novel, he lived it.

He said that "I could never have written it without my experience as a reporter.  That drought was my daily running story as an agricultural writer for seven years."

Charlie Flagg is the story's primary protagonist.  Kelton said, "I have heard Charlie described as a mythical character representing old-fashioned ideals of rugged individualism and free enterprise.  To me there was nothing mythical about him.  He was real."

And so were you, Mr. Kelton.

 

THE GOOD OLD BOYS: The Movie

Elmer kelton wrote more than forty novels, all set in the American West.  One would think that more than one of them might have been filmed, wouldn't you?

After all, Zane Grey's stories were filmed over and over and over.  The plots were rewritten so many times that in the last productions the only two things they had in common with the original product was Grey's name above the title -- and the title.

This despite the fact that, let's face it, he wasn't a good writer.

Two good writers whose novels were many times adapted to the screen were Ernest Haycox and Luke Short, though not as many times as Grey's.

Of course, when all three of these writers were publishing the Western dominated all other genres in print and on the screen.

Louis L'Amour, who sold more Western novels than any other writer, including Zane Grey, began his writing career in the early 50's and many of his did make their way to the big screen, but they were written in the 50s and 60s.  By the time the 70s arrived his books were still selling but they weren't being adapted for movies though some did become TV movies.

Did I mention that Elmer Kelton wrote over forty novels and that only one was adapted as a movie? 

That didn't happen because Kelton wasn't a good writer.  In fact, he was a great one.  The Western Writers of American even named him the greatest Western novelist of all time.  

Of course, one factor that explains the lack of screen adaptations of Kelton's novels is the explanation of L'Amour's drop-off at the end.  Western movie production was curtailed in the 60's due to the competition of the little screen in the living room and even more so during the 70's and later.

However, I am still flabbergasted that only one Kelton story made it to the screen -- and it wasn't even a theatrical release, it was a TV movie.

That movie was THE GOOD OLD BOYS (Turner/TNT, 1995).

DIRECTOR: TOMMY LEE JONES; PRODUCER: SAM NEWMAN; WRITERS: TELEPLAY BY TOMMY LEE JONES & J.T. ALLEN BASED ON NOVEL BY ELMER KELTON; CINEMATOGRAPHER: ALAN CASE

CAST: TOMMY LEE JONES, TERRY KINNEY, FRANCES MCDORMAND, SAM SHEPARD, SISSY SPACEK, MATT DAMON, WILFORD BRIMLEY, WALTER OKLEWICZ, BLAYNE WEAVER, BRUCE MCGILL, LARRY MAHAN, PARK OVERALL, JIMMY DON COX

Here's what Jonathan Taylor had to say about the film in Variety at the time that it debuted:

"THE GOOD OLD BOYS has 'vanity project' written all over it.  Tommy Lee Jones not only stars but also makes his debut as director and writer .... By rights, it should be an indulgent and self-conscious effort, instead, it's a work of uncommon charm and poignance.  It's being shown on TNT but would look just fine on the bigscreen."

Good for you, Mr. Taylor, those are my exact sentiments.  But there's more:

"It's enormously entertaining and marks an auspicious directing debut.  It's not so much of a vanity project as a virtuosity effort."

Well, now, that is indeed high praise.  And it would not have happened had it not been for Tommy Lee Jones' "vanity project."  Look at that cast list; not quite what one would expect for a TV movie.

Tommy Lee Jones is Hewey Calloway

The movie is set in West Texas and is filmed there around Brackettville, Alpine, Del Rio, and Fort Davis.

It is an "end of the West" story in the tradition of films such as SHANE, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, and THE WILD BUNCH.

It is, however, a story of quiet characterization, with a lack of gunplay.  Hewey doesn't carry a gun and was a notoriously bad shot. Only one shot is fired in the whole movie and it is a warning shot fired by a county sheriff. 

Therefore, it doesn't portray the violence that takes place in the previously mentioned films, especially the last one.  It is much more akin to MONTE WALSH, but even that film had a shootout near the end.

Jones and his co-writer must have admired Kelton's novel for the script adheres closely to what the author had written and many of the good lines and humor are taken directly from the book.

Hewey Calloway is one of the good old boys whose only ambition, like that of Monte Walsh, is to be a cowboy forever, and, in the year 1906, that sets him off from most of the rest of the world, for the life he desires to live forever is being rapidly replaced by techological progress.

Elmer Kelton wrote in the introduction to my copy of the book:

"[Hewey] tries to remain a horseback man while the world relentlessly moves into a machine age .... He lives in an impossible dream, trying to remain changeless in a world where the only constant is change."

The movie opens with Hewey riding toward the homestead that his younger brother, Walter (Terry Kinney), is farming in west Texas.

Along the way he has a conversation with his horse, Biscuit:

"Biscuit, I'm tired of this cowology.  I'm tired of these mountains.  And if you won't take it the wrong way, I'd just as soon talk with somebody can talk back, every once in a while.  You ain't said nothin' in two years."

Before he arrives at his brother's place he meets up with a former employer and big rancher and banker C.C. Tarpley (Wilford Brimley), who, as it turns out, owns the mortgage on Hewey's brother's farm:

C.C. has designs on Walter's farm

C.C. TARPLEY: "All you got is a brown horse past his prime, an old saddle, and maybe twenty dollars.  Now that ain't much to show for them years, is it?"

HEWEY: "I went north one time into Canada and seen the glaciers.  You ever see a glacier, C.C.?"

Eventually he arrives at his brother's farm where he spies his brother and his brother's youngest son, Tommy (Blayne Weaver), plowing a field.

Father and son are tickled and pleased to see Hewey who had been drifting for two years.

He expected a warm welcome from his brother and nephews, but he knows his appearance will not be welcomed by Eve (Fances McDormand), his headstrong, temperameltal sister-in-law, who seemed to always like him more when he was going than when he was coming.

headstrong and temperamental Eve (Frances McDormand

Before Walter married Eve he was as footloose as Hewey and beginning at an early age the two had ridden many a trail together.

That changed, however, after Walter met Eve, a pretty young woman working in a boarding house.  Despite Hewey's objections and efforts to abort the relationship Walter married Eve.

After their marriage Eve insisted that Walter take a job as a ranch foreman rather than jumping from one job to another as he once did, and as Hewey still did.  She grew dissatisfied with their situation on the ranch and she talked Walter into staking a homestead claim so that they could raise their two sons on land that they owned.  Walter, cowboy, became Walter, farmer.

Eve fears the effect that Hewey might have on Walter and their two sons.  She is afraid that Walter may be influenced by Hewey and long for the days in which he too had the freedom to roam at will.  She knows that Hewey loves her sons and they love him in return, but she is fearful that they might grow up to emulate their wandering uncle.

Eve was always lecturing Hewey about settling down, about responsibility, respectability, always trying to change him.

EVE: "A man with a good woman to help and encourage him can make a garden out of a desert."

HEWEY: "If he's anything like me he'd make a desert out of a garden."

The way Hewey saw it, the Lord had purposely made every person different.  He could not understand why so many people were determined to thwart the Lord's work by making everyone the same.

 

Hewey, riding his horse "Biscuit" flanked by his nephews (L) Cotton (Matt Damon) and (R) Tommy (Blayne Weaver)

 

Fourteen-year old Tommy has grown a good deal in the two years since Hewey last saw him, but he's young enough that he still worships his uncle Hewey.  Cotton, age 16, is a different story.  He has not only grown, he has changed, and he has grown distant from both Hewy and his parents.

young Matt Damon, in one of his earliest screen roles, is Cotton Calloway

Cotton talked of the future as a time of automobiles and great machines and fantastic inventions waiting to burst forth upon the world.  Hewey shuddered.  He tried, but could picture no place in such a world for him.  The wonders that made the future look golden to Cotton made it bleak and terrifying to Hewey.

COTTON: "Yov ever ride in an automobile?"

HEWEY: "No. Only ones I've been around are broken down or fixin' to explode."

COTTON: "World's movin' faster all the time.  You either go on with it, or you get left behind.  I'm gonna be part of it.  I'm gonna help build it."

HEWEY: "Well, I hope you like it when you get finished."

Hewey is approaching middle age, but has never married, and posseses no desire to change that situation, at least not until he meets the boys' teacher, Miss Spring Renfro. This casuses him to examine and re-examine the life he has chosen to pursue.

Miss Spring Renfro (Sissy Spacek)

Kelton states Hewey's quandary in the introdution to his book:

"To fulfill a wish we often give up something of equal or nearly equal value.  Hewey feels drawn to the life his brother Walter has found: a home a family, a piece of land that is his own.  But to have it he knows he must give up his freedom to go where he pleases, when he pleases, to travel his own road without considering the needs of someone else ....

He cannot have it all: nobody can.

He asks Spring to marry him and they make plans.  Enter Snort Yarnell (Sam Shepard), Hewey's saddle pal and partner in making mischief.  He has a string of horses that he is taking into Mexico and asks Hewey if he would like to go with him.

Which road will Hewey choose?  Will it be the open road with Snort or a settled domestic life with Spring?

Sam as Chuck Yeager, his most famous role

Sam as Frank James  

Elmer the Great

******

REVIEWS

".... a charming cowboy yarn that Jones also directed, artfully blending romance and adventure, the call of the hearth and that of the open sky.  He plays Hewey Calloway, a true Texas cowboy trying to keep the modern era from tossing his era out of the saddle. -- Steve Johnson, Chicago Tribune

"This is a Western without gunfire or even the threat of serious violence.  The characters and builders we see, to quote novelist Elmer Kelton, are the West's 'main event,' not the storied gunslingers whom Kelton brushes off as 'the sideshow.'" -- Ray Loynd, LA Times 

THE END 

THE HEWEY CALLOWAY TRILOGY by Elmer Kelton

Elmer Kelton (1926-2009)

I haven’t read all of Elmer Kelton’s forty books, but I’ve read about thirty of them and I like some more than others, but I have never read a bad one.

Among my favorites are the novels comprising the Hewey Caloway trilogy: The Good Old Boys (1978); The Smiling Country (1998); and Six Bits a Day (2005).

That's the order that they were published, but it isn't the chronological years in which they are set.  The Smiling Country is a sequel and Six Bits a Day is a prequel.

THE GOOD OLD BOYS

Hewey Calloway is one of the good old boys whose only ambition is to be a cowboy forever, and, in the year 1906, that makes him a living anachronism, for the life he desires to live forever has had its place in the sun, but that sun has set.

As Elmer Kelton writes in the introduction to my copy of the book:

"[Hewey] tries to remain a horseback man while the world relentlessly moves into a machine age…. He lives in an impossible dream, trying to remain changeless in a world where the only constant is change."

The story opens with Hewey riding toward the homestead that his younger brother is farming in west Texas, but he approaches with trepidation. He expects a warm welcome from his brother and his nephews, but he knows that his appearance will not be welcomed by Eve, his sister-in-law, who seemed to always like him more when he was going than when he was coming.

Before Walter married Eve he was footloose, but only out of necessity, being of a more pratical bent than Hewey, he wished to live a more settled existence.  At an eary age, however,  they had ridden many a trail together. 

After their marriage Eve insisted that Walter take a job as a ranch foreman rather than jumping from one job to another as he once did, and as Hewey still did.

She grew dissatisfied with their situation on the ranch and she talked Walter into filing a homestead claim so that they could raise their two sons on land that they owned. Walter, cowboy, became Walter, farmer.

Eve fears the effect that Hewey might have on Walter and their two sons. She is afraid that Walter may be influenced by Hewey and long for the days in which he too had the freedom to roam at will. She knows that Hewey loves her sons and they love him in return, but she is fearful that they might grow up to emulate their uncle.

Eve was always lecturing him about settling down, about responsibility, respectability, always trying to change him. The way Hewey saw it, the Lord had purposely made every person different. He could not understand why so many people were determined to thwart the Lord’s work by making everyone the same.

Fourteen-year old Tommy has grown a good deal in the two years since Hewey last saw him, but he is young enough that he still worships his Uncle Hewey. Cotton, age sixteen, is a different story. He has not only grown, he has changed, and he has grown distant from both Hewey and his parents.

Cotton talked of the future as a time of automobiles and great machines and fantastic inventions waiting to burst forth upon the world. Hewey shuddered. He tried, but could picture no place in such a world for him. The wonders that made the future look golden to Cotton made it bleak and terrifying to Hewey.

Hewey is thirty-seven, never married, and possesses no desire to change that situation, at least not until he meets the boys’ teacher, Miss Spring Renfro. This causes him to examine and re-examine the life he has chosen to pursue.

Kelton writes in the introduction:

"To fulfill a wish we often give up something of equal or nearly equal value. Hewey feels drawn to the life his brother Walter has found: a home, a family, a piece of land that is his own. But to have it he knows he must give up his freedom to go where he pleases, when he pleases, to travel his own road without considering the needs of someone else…."

He cannot have it all; nobody can.

Which road will he choose?  Will it be the open road or a settled life with Miss Renfro? 

 ******

I give you Hewey Calloway, philosopher:

If a bath always felt this good, I would take one every week or two.

Looks like to me if they want people to pay attention to the rules, the rules ought to make sense.

He had never seen harm in an occasional small liberty with the facts, provided the motive was honorable.  The motive in this case would be to keep Eve from raising hell and later regretting her lapse from grace.  It had always ben his policy to protect her from herself.

I was ducked for a Baptist.  But the water didn't soak very deep.  I taken up my old and willful ways again pretty soon.

I always liked God better when I found Him outdoors.  He always seemed too big to fit into a little-bitty cramped-up church.

Lots of folks talk about what the Lord wants.  Wonder how many has ever asked Him.

If it cost a hundred dollars to go to heaven I maybe make it to Fort Worth.

And Hewey Calloway, citizen:

I'm a free born American.  I even went to war.  I'd be a taxpayer, and proud to say it, if I owned anything to pay taxes on.

and finally:

Folks have got to take me like I am or leave me alone. 

But does that apply to Miss Renfro?  

******

“Some things we just can’t have, because if we try to hold them they die.  There’s no way I can have you without changing you.  So go ahead, Hewey, go with Snort.  I know it’s what you really want to do, deep in your heart.  Go on then … go on to Mexico.”

 

And he does.

 

“Hewey turned once, reined up and waved his hat.  Then he rode on. 

The sun broke over the prairie in a sudden red blaze.  The family all pulled together, arms around each other, Spring standing to one side, still alone.  They watched as Hewey seemed to ride into the fire, sitting straight-shouldered and proud on Biscuit’s back.  And finally he was gone, melted into the relentless glow of a new day.”

 

And so ends The Good Old Boys.

******

 

The story ended in such a way that it might have been written to allow for a sequel.  If so, Kelton waited a long time to write one, since The Good Old Boys was published in 1978 and its sequel was published twenty years later.

 More than likely, Kelton was looking for a story idea and decided to resurrect Hewey Calloway, one of his – and his fans’ – favorite characters.  The happy result was The Smiling Country, which was also set in west Texas, but in the year 1910, four years after The Good Old Boys.

 

Many of the same characters from The Good Old Boys will be re-introduced, including:

 Walter and Eve Calloway – Hewey’s brother and sister-in-law

Tommy Calloway – Walter and Eve’s youngest son (their oldest son Cotton does not make an appearance; he has gone to town to work in an automobile garage)

C.C. Tarpley – wealthy rancher

Frank “Fat” Gervin – C.C.’s son-in-law and Hewey’s nemesis

Alvin and Cora Lawdermilk – Eve and Walter’s neighbors

Snort Yarnell – Hewey’s sometimes saddle pal and mischief maker

 And –

Miss Spring Renfro – school teacher and Hewey’s ex-fiancée

******

THE SMILING COUNTRY

 The story begins:

“Hewey Calloway did not know how old he was without stopping to figure, and that distracted his attention from matters of real importance.  In his opinion anyone who wasted time worrying about his age had more leisure than was good for him.  He had not acknowledged a birthday since he had turned thirty a dozen years ago – or was it fifteen?”

 “…. In horse years, Biscuit was older than his rider, but the brown gelding was equally indifferent to the passage of time …. He could outguess a cow nine out of ten confrontations and outrun her the other time.”

 “… Anybody who couldn’t get where he was going on horseback or in a wagon was in too much of a hurry.”

Hewey, true to his fiddle-footed, happy-go-lucky personality, was opposed to owning property for he viewed it as a handicap rather than an asset.  He never wanted more property than he could tie to his saddle and carry with him to his next job.

 

“I’m satisfied with myself the way I am.  Ain’t much I’d want to change.”

 

He hated giving orders, found responsibility smothering, and preferred to work as a top cowhand at thirty dollars a month.  Unfortunately, responsibility came knocking in the person of his young nephew, Tommy, who was now eighteen and who wanted to be a cowboy, just like his Uncle Hewey. 

Hewey loved Tommy but he knew that his sister-in-law’s greatest dread had  become a reality.

 

EVE TO TOMMY: “Don’t do everything your uncle Hewey does.  Use your head and don’t let him get you hurt.”

HEWEY: “Tommy’s levelheaded.  Like as not he’ll be lookin’ after me more than I’ll be lookin’ after him.”

 EVE: “That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

 

Hewey did look after Tommy and the responsibility put him in the hospital. with a broken arm, ribs, knee, and internal injuries.  It happened when Hewey refused to allow Tommy to ride a mean, unbroken, outlaw bronc and instead did it himself.  Hewey rode the horse but he was badly injured.

He realized that his days as a cowboy and bronc buster were behind him and he was forced to “ponder the imponderable price of freedom.”

After leaving the hospital he went to his brother Walter and sister-in-law Eve’s farm, even arriving in an automobile.

Spring Renfro was the only woman he had ever loved.  In the four years he had been gone she was never far from his thoughts.  He wondered if he should ask her to marry him – a second time.  Unfortunately, he discovered that she and Farley Neal, a good man, with both boots planted firmly on the ground, was also in love with her.

 

Who would she choose? 

******

REVIEWS

 

“Elmer Kelton does not write Westerns.  He writes fine novels set in the West – Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

 

“Elmer Kelton is to Texas what Mark Twain was to the Mississippi River …. Each page of this novel resonates with the authenticity that only Kelton can bring to this stirring adventure tale …. Kelton’s clean, crisp writing makes this a most enjoyable addition to the body of this author’s always memorable work. – Jory Sherman, author of Grass Kingdom

 

Old timey dialogue, newly minted, rhetorical stretchers and whopping good humor right out of Twain. -- Kirkus 

******

SIX BITS A DAY 

In Six Bits a Day we learn the back stories of the Calloway brothers: Hewey, age twenty-two, and Walter, who is a year younger. In the year 1889, they have put the farming life in east Texas behind them, at least Hewey has, and have traveled to west Texas to become cowboys, at least Hewey wants to.

The brothers have different outlooks on life and do not share the same goals.  Hewey is carefree, fun-loving, can't remember how old he is, and can't shoot straight.

But as a Kirkus reviewer wrote: "One has to appreciate a Western whose hero is so bad with a revolver that he couldn't hit water if he was standing knee deep in a lake."  

Walter, on the other hand, has a more practical nature and is more grounded.  He's already tired of the wandering life and wants to settle down, especially after he meets Eve, a pretty girl working at a boarding house, whom he falls for like a ton of bricks, and tells Hewey that he is going to marry.

Hewey feels that it is his obligation as the older brother (he's not sure about how much older) to rescue Walter from a fate worse than death.

If you have read The Good Old Boys you know if he succeeded or not .

the author

Meanwhile, they are hired on by a tough, big rancher, and total skinflint named C.C. Tarpley and because the brothers are rank amateurs when it comes to cowboying they are paid six bits a day (75 cents) rather than the going rate of a dollar a day.

The reader also learns C.C.'s back story, a character whose name is familiar to readers of The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country, and they will get the back stories of practically every character that appears in the other two books, including Snort Yarnell and Fat Gervin.

Hewey, as one would expect, gets himself into some scrapes of his own making and that of others, but through his wit and dumb luck, mostly dumb luck, he escapes, tattered at the edges, but more or less unscathed.

Like the other books in the trilogy, this is not a shoot-em up Western.  There is little gunplay, and that's a good thing for Hewey because he would not have survived.  It is also a little shy on plot, but that's not a bad thing, since Kelton provides color and humor and memorable characterizations, along with the good writing that is the hallmark of his work.

It is my least favorite of the three books, but it's still a 5-star read for me -- and that ain't bad atall.

THE END (for now)

THE MAN WHO RODE MIDNIGHT by Elmer Kelton

Back in 1973 Elmer Kelton published his most critically acclaimed novel, one that won both Spur and Western Heritage awards.  It is The Time It Never Rained, which one admiring critic conceded wasn't "the Great American Novel," but may very well be "the Great Texas Novel."

It was the story of Charlie Flagg, a tough-minded Texas rancher who in the 1950s was hanging on with all he had as he tried to survive the worse drought to hit that part of Texas since the Dust Bowl days of the '30s.

Wes Hendricks, the primary protagonist of The Man Who Rode Midnight is cut from the same cloth and could be viewed as the reincarnation of Charlie twenty years down the road.  In his seventies, Wes is not facing drought, though like Charlie he is forced to run sheep on his west Texas hill country ranch because they are profitable, which allows him to stay in the cattle business which isn't profitable.  It is a sacrifice that any self-respecting cattleman would regret, but a man has to do what a man has to do.


"I hated sheep at first, but they growed on me.  I decided they can't be all bad if they make you more money than cattle.  Besides, an old cow'll sometimes try to kill you.  So will a horse.  An old ewe may be dumber than dirt, but you don't find any malice in her."


But Wes does have to confront another problem, one even more relentless and intractable than prolonged drought; his foe is progress.  In his youth Wes had swung a wide loop as a cowboy, bronc buster, and rodeo rider.  He was one tough galoot.  After all, he was "the man who rode Midnight."  All he wanted now was to be left alone so that he could live out his days on his ranch.  But then progress intervened.

The little town of Big River is dying and on its last legs and its citizens are behind a proposal by developers to dam the river and create a lake that would attract tourists.  The only fly in the ointment is Wes; said lake would cover his ranch.

Pedernales River in Texas Hill Country

Wes is offered much more money than what his ranch is worth but that isn't the issue.  He doesn't want to sell for any price, not even when the local sheriff who has vested interests threatens him.


"Strange, the way life changes things on you.  That time I rode Ol' Midnight, they taken my picture.  My name was in the papers.  People went out of their way to shake my hand and talk to me.  I was a hero for a while, and people liked to brag that they knew me.  Now all that's gone; it don't mean a damned thing anymore.  I'm just an old man standin' in everybody's way."


Other characters in the story include Wes' grandson, Jim Ed, a city boy who grew up in Dallas, but comes to live with his grandfather after flunking out of college during his senior year.  He has been sent by his father to try to convince Wes to sell and to take up residence in a retirement home.  Jim Ed, nicknamed "Tater" by his grandfather, a name he detests, finds himself falling for a young woman from a neighboring ranch named Gloria Beth Dawson, nicknamed Glory B., a name she embraces.


Jim Ed shoved aside a coiled rope and a bridle to make room on the seat.  He had to move an assortment of stock medicine, wire pinchers and general working tools to make footroom on the floor.  He bumped his head on a rifle racked against the rear window.

"What's that for?" he asked.

His grandfather replied in a gravelly voice, "You never know when you may run into a son of a bitch that needs shootin'."


Like The Time It Never Rained, The Man Who Rode Midnight is not a "western novel," but a novel set in the West.  The winner of a Western Heritage Award, the themes of The Man Who Rode Midnight examine a generation gap, the conflict between old and new ways, love of land, uncompromising values, romance, and even aching despair over faded love.

Some evenings Wes takes his fiddle and moves away from the house in order not to disturb his grandson and each time plays the same haunting melody, one that his grandson does hear, and eventually recognizes.

As I look at the letters that you wrote to me
It's you that I am thinkin' of
As I read the lines that, to me, were so dear
I remember our faded love
I miss you darlin', more and more every day
As heaven would miss the stars up above
With every heartbeat, I still think of you
And remember our faded love
As I think of the past and all the pleasures we had
As I watched the mating of the dove
It was in the springtime that you said goodbye
I remember our faded love
I miss you darlin', more and more every day
As heaven would miss the stars up above
With every heartbeat, I still think of you
And remember our faded love

And remember our faded love
Written by Bob Wills, James Robert Wills, Johnnie Lee Wills. copyright Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.


The world according to Wes Hendricks:

"There's somethin' way out of balance in the world.  People over in Africa are starvin' because they can't buy food.  People here are starvin' because you can't sell it."

"But that's the way with dreams: the bad ones just haunt you, and the good ones never come true."  

"People moved away from the country in them days; they didn't move to it .... Now it's in style for people to quit the city and move to the country, only they want to bring the city with them.  Time they get through changin' it into everything they come here to run away from, there won't be nothin' left of the country .... They'll pave over the last blade of grass someday, and drown the last tree in an artificial lake so some damnfool from town can race a motorboat.  You ought to at least remember what it used to be like."

"Things ain't like they used to be ... Times, I wonder if they ever were."

"There ain't no better cure for a socialist than a little dose of capital."

"There's no limit to what a man can do once he makes up his mind he ain't allergic to sweat."

Elmer Kelton (1926-2009)