“No
one but Randy Locke and Frank Farmer knew just what it was that blackened the
blood between them, but it didn’t lose its kick with time.”
The feud began in 1868, for reasons unknown, when the
two traded drunken shots in an El Paso saloon. It escalated the following
morning when Randy broke one of Frank’s ribs with a .44 slug, and their lifelong
co-dependence was cast with Randy’s crushed leg; an injury caused by Frank’s misjudged
pistol shot, which placed the pill in the horse rather than Randy. From there
the two men dance across the Western frontier, their sole reason for living the
taking of the other’s life—they trade barbs in Salt Lake City, hunt each other in
Wyoming and San Francisco, and plan, with the aid of huckster Abraham
Cripplehorn, a live pay-per-view duel to the death in Indian country.
The
Long High Noon is the tallest of tall tales, and its
power isn’t a telling of the West, but rather a telling of the mythology of the
West. It is told in vivid strokes, whimsy and humor. The humor often exposed in
fine dialogue—
In an early passage the
narrator—an unidentified gentleman who, from time to time, slips into first
person—tells of Randy’s success with women (sometimes not having to pay at
all), and Frank’s reaction: “That little
stump’d have to pay a sheep.”
In a later passage Abraham
Cripplehorn tells Randy: “It never occurred
to me you had a mother.”
It chronicles, tongue-in-cheek, the settlement of the
American West; from the post-Civil War expansion to its ultimate settlement and
civilization. It is something of a mythology of the mythology of the West. It starts
with the dime novels, the sensationalism of early western journalism, the traveling
Wild West shows, and ultimately the rise of settlement and the fall of men such
as Frank Farmer and Randy Locke. A fall both men take quite fittingly.
The
Long High Noon is smooth, vivacious, and curious. There are
moments—splashes of dialogue, shimmering narrative, clever twists—when Mr.
Estleman appears to be showing off; it isn’t cheap or distracting, but rather a
display of how good a writer he is. He has mastered his art, and it shows. It also
displays a deep understanding of both the westward expansion and the literary
genre that grew up around it; the reality and mythology wrapped into one neat
package.
I
wrote this review for Ed Gorman’s fine blog New Improved Gorman. If you haven’t been there, you
should.
Purchase a copy on Amazon.
Purchase a copy on Amazon.
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