What if Conan rode in with a gun?

 Strange though it may seem, it wasn’t his fantasy characters such as Conan the Cimmerian (aka Barbarian) or King Kull who Texas writer Robert E. Howard expected to make his reputation. It was his Westerns. He was adept at mixing Westerns with his other story genres – fantasy, horror, even his comic boxing tales. Still, I did a double take when Steve Corcoran, the antihero of today’s story proved to be a physical twin to Conan, “tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped … (whose) unruly black hair matched a face burned dark by the sun, but his eyes were a burning blue.”

Corcoran matches not only Howard's usual physical descriptions of Conan but his psyche as well, "too direct by nature, or too proud of (his) skill to resort to trickery when it was possible to meet enemies in the open. . . "

(It's also interesting to note the similarity between Corcoran's name and that of the two-fisted sailor Steve Costigan, hero of sone of the fight stories for which Howard was famous during his life.)

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The Vultures of Whapeton

by Robert E. Howard

As the story opens, Corcoran is peacefully minding his own business – at least in as peaceful a way as he can manage, considering that he’s just shot another gunfighter – when John Middleton, sheriff of the embattled mining town of Whapeton Gulch, happens upon him. Strangely, Middleton is not in the least nonplussed to find Corcoran’s opponent, who he had hired as a deputy to help tame the lawless elements of his town, lying shot through the heart, and promptly offers the deceased employee’s job to his killer. Not that either Corcoran or the sheriff has any illusions about the character of the dead man, whose Colt’s stock is nicked with the record of those he had killed.

 The thing is, the sheriff says, Whapeton is overrun with a gang of outlaws who call themselves the Vultures. What sheriff Middleton wants is not good character but “. . . a man who can handle a gun like a streak of forked lightning . . . I’ll offer you the same terms I meant to offer him. . . You know what to do with the really bad men. We’re not bringing any more murderers into court to be acquitted through their friends’ lies!”

Image: wikimedia commons

 And before readers can say, gee, sheriff, that offer smells downright fishy, Corcoran is installed as the newest deputy of Whapeton. The Vulture gang, he soon learns, has spies all over the little town, giving them word of any shipment of gold or goods in or out of town. And the town’s newest lawman also begins to have serious doubts about the law-abiding nature of his fellow deputies.

He manages however, to gain the friendship of some of Whapeton’s citizens, including golden-haired Glory Bland, when he prevents her from braining one of her fellow bar girls in a saloon brawl that has left Glory’s dress suggestively torn and her bosom suggestively heaving. No matter what the other woman’s offenses, Corcoran tells Glory, “(t)hat wasn’t no excuse for makin’ a public show of yourself. . . If ladies have got to fight, they ought to do it in private.”

 In spite of his sententious words, readers have to believe it’s Glory’s fighting nature as much as her disheveled clothing that has caught Corcoran’s eye and heart. And if you’re wondering whether Glory’s friendship will be enough to ensure Corcoran’s survival in the rattlers’ nest of deceit and betrayal that is Whapeton Gulch, read it for yourself here.

 (Note that although the story’s original publication in Smashing Novels spelled the town’s name “Whapeton,” the notes of Howard and his agent use the spelling Wahpeton. You’ll find it listed both ways in the REH canon.)

Wordcraft -- Robert E. Howard Days in the heart of Texas

How many wonderful writers have come from Texas? More pertinent, how many have stayed in Texas? Among the few who toughed out Texas during some of the state’s bleakest days was Robert E. Howard, most famous now as the creator of Conan the Cimmerian (aka the Barbarian). But on June 11, 1936, Howard, then barely thirty years old and facing the imminent death of his beloved mother, ended his own life. Weirdly but reverently, fans still gather on the weekend closest to the anniversary of his death to remember him. This year that remembrance, titled Robert E. Howard Days is this Friday and Saturday, June 10-11.

Actually, there’s a preview Thursday, as Howard’s family home and museum at 625 W. Highway 36 in Cross Plains opens from 2-4 p.m. (Unlike the house’s regular open hours, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday of the festival, there will not be a docent available during the Thursday hours.)

Fittingly for the remembrance of a man who hated “clock-like regularity,” REH Days activities are low key and mostly fee-free. Visitors swap stories and swag at a small pavilion adjacent to the Howard house, drop in to the Cross Plains library with its exhibits of Howard’s magazine publications, and attend whichever of the panels of Howard fans and scholars appeal to them. Among this year’s speakers is Michael Scott Myers, screenwriter for the film The Whole Wide World, based the memoir One Who Walked Alone, by Novalyne Price Ellis, one of Howard’s rare sympathetic listeners.

Other speakers include writer Mark Finn, author of the World Fantasy-nominated biography Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, and Chris Gruber, editor of Boxing Stories, a compilation of the often humorous tales Howard was actually better known for in his own time.

For a complete schedule of events, see the Robert E. Howard Days 2016 site. (link) Visitors may also drop in at the gravesite of Howard and his parents (he and his mother died within a day of each other) at Greenleaf Cemetery in nearby Brownwood, Texas. 

In some ways, it’s easy to blame the tiny West Texas town of Cross Plains where Howard lived for his entire adult life, for his death. He, like his characters, was a “fish out of water,” as described by biographer Mark Finn. 

Howard’s chronically ailing mother smothered him, his country doctor father stood aloof, oblivious to Howard’s deepening depression. Neighbors thought him at best odd, at worst annoying, as he read his stories aloud while typing them near an open window in the small Howard home. (Fortunately for modern visitors, the Howard House Museum is now air-conditioned.)

Howard himself confessed to hating his days in both school and town. He became a writer, he said, not because of the stultifying environments of school and his small town (remarking “an oil boom. . . will teach a kid that Life’s a pretty rotten thing about as quick as anything I can think of”) but in spite of them.

“I am not criticizing those environments. . . ” Novalyne Price Ellis reported him as saying. “The fact that they were not conducive to literature and art is nothing in their disfavor. Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among whom one’s lot is cast.”

Ironically, it was the bust of Cross Plains' short-lived oil boom that helped preserve Howard’s physical legacy. While more prosperous cities tore down or built over landmarks associated with more famous in their day Texas writers such as Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley) or Katherine Anne Porter (Pale Horse, Pale Rider), the Howard family home in Cross Plains was left standing until rescued and refurbished when the movie incarnations of Howard characters revived interest in his stories.

Drop in and marvel at the power of Howard’s imagination to transform the world, if not his little town.