STORYTELLERS-7: VICKY J. ROSE by Tom RIzzo

Vicky J. Rose grew up a small central Texas town listening to stories about gunfighters, outlaws, buried treasure, and Indians. So it made sense to write about them. And she did. 

In the sixth grade, she wrote a play about Jesse and Frank James. The desire to write pushed her to complete a couple of novels in her twenties that, by her own admission, didn't find the light of day.

About a year after submitting them, an editor finally got around to looking at one of the stories. 

"Obviously searching for something, anything, complimentary, to say about it, the editor said, 'It has a very nice title,' ” Vicky recalled. "I quit writing for a long time, thinking I needed to gather further experience and wisdom before trying again," she said. 

Several  years later, she tried again. This time, the results were different.  

She has written articles for Angelo State University’s Oasis and other publications as well as the anthologies of the Texas Folklore Society. 

Her short story, "A Promise Broken, A Promise Kept," in La Frontera’s Broken Promises anthology, ranked as a 2014 Spur Finalist. 

Lately, Vicky has turned her focus to writing novels.

1. You received an award last year for your short story—"A Promise Broken, A Promise Kept"—which ranked among the top three stories in Western Writers of America’s short fiction category. Tell us a little about that memorable author moment.

I could lie and say, “Oh, I was so thrilled; it was such a great honor,” etc., etc. But my first feelings were of disappointment because I didn’t win the Spur! I had a great belief in that story. 

Later, I did begin to realize what a great honor it is be a Spur finalist, and I am thrilled.  

2. You've written in the novel and short story formats. What different challenges to each present? 

It’s hard not to be too verbose in a short story. Everything has to be leaner. Every sentence, every word, has to count toward the point the author is trying to make. 

I took a class in screenwriting at Sam Houston State University, Dan Rather’s alma mater. The professor had us do an outline and all that stuff first. 

Then he told us our script could only be ten pages long. You should have heard the whining and complaining that it couldn’t be done but it is possible to pare down a story to its basic idea.  

When an author begins a novel, he or she is getting into a canoe and rowing down a river. The challenge is to stay on course, keep moving, and not be led down byways that go nowhere

3. What was the inspiration behind your novel, "Treasure Hunt in Tie Town"?

I had done some interviews around my hometown about local buried treasure legends for a paper I wanted to present to a history organization I belong to. It was turned down, and instead, the woman who was choosing the papers talked about her mother-in-law’s plate collection.

I tweaked it, submitted it to Lost Treasure magazine, and they jumped on it. Later, I thought it would make an interesting premise for a novel. Being shoved aside for somebody’s mother-in-law’s plate collection was the best thing that happened to that story. 

On a broader note, when I sit down to write a novel, it helps me to ask myself, “Who am I writing this for?”

Larry McMurtry stated he wanted to write a really good Western that would debunk the mystique of the Old West. With Lonesome Dove, I think he added even more layers to the mystique of the Old West, but he did write a fantastic novel. 

With Treasure Hunt, my goal was to simply write a really good Western. I don’t know how men feel about it. Women tell me they love it. But that’s the difference between men and women. 

I used to cut hair for a living. Men will say, “Thanks,” and that’s about it. With women, they either love it, or they are crying because they don’t like what you’ve done. That’s the reason I cut mainly men’s hair; I couldn’t take the drama. 

Another novel, tentatively titled Muskrat Hill, has been picked up by Kensington and will soon be published in their e-book and print-on-demand line.

 4. You write both fiction and non-fiction. How does your background play into your storytelling?

I grew up in a small town steeped in the history of the Wild West. After the Civil War, it became a hotbed of violence. It was so bad, Print Olive and his family had to leave and move to Colorado.

I had ancestors with ties to both sides of the law. It took vigilante justice to put a stop to the bloodshed because the law was afraid to even go there.

We knew we were from a backward small town that other people in the county looked down upon even years later, but we also realized we were special because of it. 

While in my fifties, I went to SHSU and later earned a degree in journalism from Angelo State University. Screenwriter and movie producer Frank Q. Dobbs told our newspaper writing class, “English majors read; journalism majors write.” 

 5. When did you first discover your love for writing? Any particular book or film or anything else inspire you? 

I’m not sure about a book or film, but when I was in sixth grade that play I wrote about Jesse James earned me praise from my family and friends. Since I’d never been praised for anything else, I thought it might be something I could possibly be good at. All my life, I’ve been a sporadic writer.

6. How do you approach the storytelling process once you get an idea? Do you plot things out or create as you write? 

I never was good at outlines, but since taking that screenwriting course, I’ve had good luck writing a screenplay about an idea first, and then turning it into a novel. 

They don’t always resemble one another closely when I’m finished, but writing a screenplay helps me to visualize the story I’m trying to tell.

  7. If you could meet one person from the Old West, who would it be and what one question would you ask? 

I would want to talk to my g-g-g-grandmother, Zillah Thompson Jackson, and I couldn’t stop with just one question. I would want to ask her: 

• Why did you allow my g-g-g-grandfather to put a ladder against your window and steal you away on a fast horse when you were engaged to another man?
• Why did you come to Texas? What was it like to be on the run from Santa Anna’s army?
• How did it feel to be so close to the Battle of San Jacinto, you could hear the gunfire?
• How did you tolerate living in fear of Indian attacks?”

And when she answered, I would hope that just a little bit of her courage would rub off on me.

More about Vicky Rose:

• Website 
• Broken Promises Anthology 
• Treasure Hunt in Tie Town

_______

Siege at Rabbit Trap

by Phil Truman

Ned Christie the Warrior

When the thirteen-year-old boy ran from the burning house, trying to escape the attack on his

stepfather’s home, a federal marshal shot him in the back.

But it wasn’t 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. It was 1892 at Rabbit Trap, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.

The posse of lawmen sent from the federal court in Fort Smith, Arkansas claimed the man they were after was a killer, the cold-blooded murderer of one of their own – Deputy U.S. Marshal Dan Maples.

The fugitive was a conservative Cherokee senator, a member of the Executive Council, a respected citizen in his community.

Ned Christie had grown up a keetowah, that sect of the Cherokee Tribe who believed in strict adherence to traditional tribal ways, their language, their religion, their education; not their assimilation into the white man’s culture as the U.S. government had insisted. 

He was a man given to impassioned speeches on the legislative floor of the National Council; speeches against the incursion of the United States into the lands of their sovereign nation, particularly that set forth by the Dawes Act of 1887 which mandated the breakup of Indian lands into allotments.

But Christie had his enemies, even amongst his own. And he had a weakness: he liked to drink.

In May, 1887, Christie was in the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah to attend a Council session. One evening he and an acquaintance, John Parris, a known whiskey runner, set out to get a bottle. They ran into Bub Trainor, a local hell-raiser and another illicit liquor dealer.

Deputy Maples was also in town that night along with his posseman George Jefferson. Maples had warrants for the arrest of Parris and Trainor on charges of introducing liquor into the Indian Territory, a common felony of the time.

Maples and Jefferson had set up camp near Spring Branch Creek, which happened to be near where Christie and four of his drinking buddies, including Parris and Trainor, had decided to party.

While crossing a foot bridge on the Spring Branch late that night coming back to his camp, Maples was ambushed and killed. 

Posseman Jefferson named Christie as the shooter, all based on circumstantial evidence.

Christie claimed he was innocent, mainly because he’d been in a drunken stupor, but also saying he had no gun on him, had not brought one to town.

Heck Thomas

He was willing to turn himself in if the Fort Smith court would grant him bail so he could prove his innocence, but Judge Parker refused. Not thinking he’d get a fair trial in a white man’s court, Christie fled to his home in the dense forested hills near Tahlequah know as Rabbit Trap.

Over the next two years several deputy marshals were sent to ferret-out Christie, but he always ran them off with gunfire, wounding several. In 1889 a new marshal in Fort Smith decided the stand-off with Ned Christie had gone on long enough, and sent his best deputy, Heck Thomas, to bring him in.

Deputy Thomas had his posse surround Christie’s cabin one pre-dawn morning, and called out for the outlaw to surrender.

Ned responded with a loud turkey gobble and several shots from his Winchester. A gun battle ensued. 

Christie’s wife ran from the cabin escaping into the deep woods. Her son, James, stayed with his stepdad.

Deputy Thomas decided to set fire to an out-building thinking to smoke Ned out, but the flames leapt to the cabin setting it ablaze. Sometime during the fight, Christie took a bullet to the face which broke his nose and took out his left eye. The ball lodged in his back leaving him temporarily blinded and paralyzed, but the lawmen didn’t know this as young James kept firing from the cabin. 

Soon the flames and smoke became too much, and unable to move his stepdad, the boy fled. He made it to a rail fence before the bullet caught him in the back. Still, he managed to hobble off into the woods.

Cherokee Senator Ned Christie

One of the deputies in Thomas’s posse had taken a bullet leaving him severely wounded. Realizing he needed to get his colleague medical aid, and thinking Christie’s wife would soon return with re-enforcements, Thomas decided to withdraw. They supposed their quarry was probably dead inside the burning cabin.

Ned’s wife did return with help, and finding Ned still alive, pulled him out of the cabin and away to safety. He eventually recovered and regained sight in one eye. Knowing word of his survival would get out and back to the law in Fort Smith, he returned to Rabbit Trap and started rebuilding. But not just a cabin, a fortress.

With help from his confederates, Ned cleared land out to fifty yards around the site of his new bastion.  

They constructed a two-story double-walled rock and log structure, the space between them filled with dirt and sand. It had no windows, just gun ports on all four sides. It was virtually impregnable. 

An entourage of family and friends came to live with Ned, including his stepson, who'd also survived his wounds.

Filled with bitterness and hatred for all that had befallen him over a crime he said he never committed, Christie sent word back to the law in Fort Smith, to Heck Thomas in particular, that they should come and get him if they could. For three more years, time and again, lawmen did try to extricate Christie from his stronghold, but were always repelled. By that time a reward of $1,000 had been placed on Ned Christie’s head.

Some of the Posse Who Brought Christie to "Justice"

Finally, in the fall of 1892 a posse of dozens of men was formed to make an all-out assault on Christie’s citadel. They even brought along a cannon borrowed from the military.

A battle raged for more than a day. Thirty-eight cannonballs were fired at the walls, but had little effect. A dozen of the possemen were wounded. 

Then in the dark of night, twelve sticks of dynamite were placed at the base of one wall and set off. The explosion blew out a corner of the fort and set it afire. Christie came charging out of the smoke and flames firing his rifle and screaming his war cries. He was cut down in a fusillade of gunfire.

The reign of what the press called the most dangerous and blood-thirsty Indian outlaw ever was over.

Because Ned Christie was the only suspect, the murder of Dan Maples was never officially solved, but in 1918 the truth came out. A Tahlequah blacksmith, Dick Humphrey, said he saw the whole thing while walking home from work on the night of May 5, 1887. It was Bub Trainor who shot Maples, and then threw the gun down near the passed-out Ned Christie, and it was Bub Trainor who’d first said Ned was the shooter. Because the Trainor family was a powerful one in the town, and because Bub was a mean SOB, Humphrey never said anything out of fear of reprisal. But now that they were all dead, and he himself was 87, he thought it only right that he set the record straight.

Though fictionalized, one of the best accounts of the Ned Christie affair is Larry McMurtry's and Diana Ossana's novel Zeke and Ned. For those who love historical fiction, I highly recommend it.

Phil is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr. His other novels include GAME, an American Novel, a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football, and Legends of Tsalagee, a mystery/adventure in a small town. His western short story “Last Will for an Outlaw” appears in LaFrontera Publishing’s anthology, Dead or Alive, released June 2013. 


 
Phil’s website is: http://philtrumanink.com/ 

Favorite Novels Dept.: The Lonesome Dove Saga

Six month ago in this space I talked about one of my favorite western novels that deserves to get a lot more attention: The Ghost with Blue Eyes, by Robert J. Randisi. Today I am going to discuss another favorite, but this one has had plenty of attention: Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. A Pulitzer prize; two Spur Awards (one for the novel in question, another for the prequel Comanche Moon); five TV miniseries (with a Spur for screenwriter John Wilder); a television series; and a ranking of #2 on WWA’s list of the greatest novels of the 20^th century (right behind Shane.)

I know that Lonesome Dove sits at or near the top of the list for a lot of WF members besides me. I also know a lot of WF members who flat-out don’t like it –but I’d say they’re in the minority.

For this article I’m going to talk about, not only the novel, but all four novels in the cycle. Again, some people who love the first one don’t like the others, but I like them all. Taken together they make a complete cycle –I feel the same way about Godfather 3, by the way, I feel it ends the story perfectly.

Speaking of cycles, I believe that McMurtry’s will one day be considered the 20^th century equivalent of James Fenimore Cooper’s 19^th century cycle, The Leatherstocking Tales –the five novels about Hawkeye, alias Nathaniel Bumppo.

Like Cooper’s books, McMurtry’s were not published in the chronological order in which they should be read (I guess you could throw George Lucas in there, too. Or throw him somewhere.)

Order of publication:

1.      Lonesome Dove- 1985

2.      Streets of Laredo- 1993

3.      Dead Man’s Walk- 1995

4.      Comanche Moon- 1997

Chronological order:

1. Dead Man's Walk – set in the early 1840s
2. Comanche Moon – set in the 1850–60s
3. Lonesome Dove – set in mid-to-late 1870s
4. Streets of Laredo – set in the early 1890s

I’d like to point out a couple of things I like about McMurtry’s writing:

1.     1.  His use of humor. Some of his characters can be hilarious; others not so much, but can still be in humorous situations. In particular, the author uses humor to draw the reader in and make them fond of the characters, as well as to set them at ease. Then –pow! Something horrible happens to that character, and it impacts you far more than it would’ve had you not grown so fond of them.

2.      2.  The way he plays with history. You might think this is an odd thing for a historian to say –and western fans in general tend to be history buffs, and immediately jump on any anachronisms or historical inaccuracies. McMurtry, who does his historical homework, knows this. You can be reading along in the Lonesome Dove saga and realize “Oh yeah –I recognize this story. Woodrow and Gus are Goodnight and Loving, and Deets is Bose Ikard.” Or you might encounter actual historical figures as supporting characters, such as Judge Roy Bean, or Bigfoot Wallace. And then, once again, you are set at ease: “Oh, I’ve read my history, I know what happens to this character.” And then –pow! Out of the blue, they meet a grisly fate that you never saw coming, and you are totally caught by surprise. And while one part of you may say “Hey! This is historically inaccurate!” another part says: “Wow, that scene really had a lot of dramatic impact.”

3.      3.  His use of longing. All the main characters in Lonesome Dove desperately want something they can never have, and their yearning resonates with the reader.  

The saga deals with some themes that show up in a lot of McMurtry’s work, which I discuss HERE –but as a whole, it tells a very specific story. I’ll use The Godfather saga again, as a comparison: that cycle tells of the rise, and ultimately the very hard fall, of Michael Corleone; that character goes from innocent to diabolical to tragic, as he reaps the whirlwind he has sown.

The Lonesome Dove cycle, too, is ultimately one person’s story. That one person is Texas Ranger Woodrow Call. This may sound odd, as the novel entitled Lonesome Dove –and three-quarters of the saga, altogether –tells of the lifelong friendship of two men, Call and his Ranger partner Augustus “Gus” McCrae. McCrae dies ¾ of the way through, however, and the final book (chronologically) is all about Call. And it is Call’s life that is the complete cycle, as I will explain.

The two partners, who start out as Rangers in their late teens, are complete opposites in almost every way. Gus is a starry-eyed romantic, likes to think of himself as a philosopher (certainly not as a laborer!), is very vain, generally liked by most who know him, is very impulsive, and wears his heart on his sleeve. Woodrow is a pragmatic realist, whose entire focus is always the job at hand and getting it done. He is not comfortable with his own feelings, or with women (Gus is very comfortable with women), and most people –while they respect him –see him as a hardcase, and not the most enjoyable company. The one thing they have in common is an almost superhuman competence at what they do.

Call does have his impulsive streak, though. He has an intense temper –his fury is a sight to behold. In each of the four books, at some point, he is provoked to beat someone nearly to death and explains “I can’t abide rude behavior in a man. I won’t tolerate it.” And I think you could argue that the turning point in the saga, and in Call’s life, is when he decides –almost on a whim, urged on by the irresponsible Jake Spoon –to abandon everything and drive a herd to Montana to start over.

In many ways, though, Woodrow Call is emotionally crippled. He never tells the woman he loves (maybe) how he feels about her, even though she continually sacrifices for him. He never admits his paternity to the only son he ever has, Newt, even though Newt’s whole life is an effort to get that simple recognition.

Gus chastises him all along the way, providing the voice of conscience and a perfect example of how to live in the moment and truly appreciate life. And while Gus is often a blowhard, he is truly kind and loving –no one has to wonder where they stand with him.

Gus dies when an Indian arrow in his leg causes an infection. He allows the doctor to amputate one leg, but when the gangrene spreads to the other one he chooses to die rather than live a complete cripple. Woodrow views this as a waste, and an expression of Gus’s vanity. Gus views it as a matter of living life the way he wants, or not living it at all. It may well be that, having finally, completely lost the love of his own life, Clara, Gus has no desire to go on.

At one point in that same novel, Call had said “The best thing you can do with death is to ride away from it.” And after fulfilling his lifelong friend’s dying wish to be buried at the Texas site where he had been happiest with Clara, Woodrow does just that. Streets of Laredo picks up many years later. The Montana ranch venture had not worked out, Newt was killed in an accident without ever hearing Woodrow admit he was his father, and Call has become a bounty hunter.

 

In this final novel (though it was written second), Call is shot by the psychotic young bandit Joey Garza. Call is now the one whose leg is amputated- and in the novel (though this is not clearly explained in the miniseries), he also completely loses the use of one arm. He is taken in by his old corporal, Pea-Eye Parker, and his wife Lorena, and develops a very close relationship with Garza’s sister Teresa, a little blind girl. He spends his time with her, sharpening knives for a meager living, working the stone with his one leg and telling the little girl stories. When old friends –like Charles Goodnight and his cowboys –come by the Parker place and see what the great Woodrow Call has been reduced to, they are overcome by sadness and pity.

And this is how the saga ends.

You may not realize it, but two very important things have happened to Woodrow Call.

1.      1.  When faced with the same circumstances as Gus, he chose to continue living.

2.      2.   In his relationship with little Teresa, Call has finally taken to heart all the lessons his friend Gus spent a lifetime trying to teach him; he has finally learned how to live, by learning how to love. He has been broken physically, but redeemed as a human being. Charlie Goodnight's cowboys –and perhaps the readers –may look upon Woodrow spinning his whetstone and think what a horrible waste it is… but this scene is the first scene in the entire series where Woodrow Call actually seems happy.

That’s what makes Streets of Laredo (like Godfather 3) such an important capstone. We see the ultimate transformation of the protagonist, and the story comes full-circle.

The Lonesome Dove Saga is the story of how Woodrow Call finally learns to be human. His physical crippling has led to his emotional uncrippling.