A lone wolf and a beautiful spy in REH's Great War story

 I'd love to know whether "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau read Robert E. Howard's El Borak stories to prepare for his "Sorkh Razil" aka "Red Rascal" storyline. Red Rascal is the alter ego of one of Doonesbury's youthful slacker characters, Jeff Redfern. El Borak, aka ex-gunfighter Francis Xavier Gordon, no slacker in the least, is the protagonist of Howard's Son of the White Wolf, among other Middle Eastern adventure stories.

And perhaps even more so than Conan, the alter-ego of Howard himself.

After all, Howard made Gordon a Texan, like himself. And as Rusty Burke notes in the introduction to The Best of Robert E. Howard, Howard had lived the El Borak stories longer than any of the others, creating the character when he was only ten.

In Doonesbury, young Redfern has been channeling his alter-ego's adventures for years, while his parents wait for him to get a real job --  dare we say, as Howard's parents might have? In the comic strip, Redfern has attained seven-figure book advances for a book about the Rascal -- Howard could only have dreamed of this! But, as with so many of Sorkh Razil's exploits I keep wondering if the book is "real" in the storyline or will turn out to have been only a dream.

image: wikimedia commons

(If you've read this blog very long, you know I can't resist searching for the influences behind many fictional characters: King George VI as Roman Emperor Claudius, the aged, grieving Queen Victoria as the very aged, grieving "She." How about "Mad" Bavarian King Ludwig as the king of Bohemia?)

It's a particularly irresistible game in the case of Son of the White Wolf, in which El Borak combines traits of T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) and explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. (Frederic Leighton's painting of Sir Richard -- the Victorian explorer, not the actor -- illustrates this post. I find the resemblence to El Borkak's dark hair and eyes striking.)

And could the story's "Olga" -- a  pseudonym, of course, have existed without the inspiration of intrepid British traveler Gertrude Bell?

In his appendix to The Best of Robert E. Howard, Steven Tompkins called the likes of Lawrence and Bell one of the few "glamourous" sideshows of the Great War. And despite a relatively realistic setting, there's more than a trace of glamour in Olga -- young, beautiful, brave -- and a spy.

Son of the White Wolf finds El Borak in the middle of Ottoman Turkish territory in the waning days of World War I, where a Turkish outpost deserts in favor of a rebel leader whose banner carries the image of  a white wolf. In their retreat, the deserters destroy an Arab village which has given shelter to Olga and her guide. One of Gordon's followers, also wounded in the attack, survives long enough to warn his leader, who promises revenge.

As Howard wrote, "(Gordon) not only understood the cry for vengeance, but he sympathized with it. And he always kept his promise." 

How? Well, telling you that might spoil your own fun in reading the story in Grim Lands: The Best of Robert E. Howard, volume 2, or quite possibly your local library.

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That's all for now, on this final session of REH Days 2026 (70th anniversary of Howard's death). But I'll post pictures and tips from the editors of the inaugural class of REH Emerging Writers! 

Adventure classics: Saki turns down his empty glass

“The Open Window”

by H.H. Munro (writing as Saki)

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‘When . . . Oh, Saki, you shall pass

Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on the Grass,

And in your joyous errand reach the spot

Where I made One – turn down an empty Glass!’

(Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald translation)

In all the company of Edwardian Age short story writers, Hector Hugh Munro wielded one of the wittiest, most satirical and certainly most bittersweet of pens, calling himself “Saki,” after the immortal cupbearer in Edward FitzGerald’s translation of Persian poet Omar Khayyam.

Born in Burma in 1870 during the British Raj, Munro began a career as a historian and newspaper journalist. Not until 1904 did he begin publishing the satirical stories with their trademark “twist” endings, that would bring him lasting fame.

Although for American readers, Munro’s “Saki” stories are reminiscent of the wry twists and often dark humor of contemporary writers O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) and Ambrose Bierce, mutual influence seems unlikely. It was as if something in the spirit of the times led them to write tales such as Saki’s classic ghost story, “The Open Window,” the subject of today’s Adventure classics.

Poor Mr. Famton Nuttel has retreated to the countryside, hoping the peace and quiet will cure the nervous exhaustion that plagues him. His sister, however, fears social isolation will merely make his nervous condition worse. To avoid that, she has produced a list of acquaintances in the area for him to call on. Among these is a Mrs. Sappleton, whose 15-year-old niece, Vera, opens the door to Nuttel in her aunt’s temporary absence.

“(So) you know practically nothing about my aunt?” she asks. “Her great tragedy happened just three years ago. . .  that would be since your sister’s time. . . You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon. . . Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back (and) their bodies were never recovered (but) poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk.”

At first Nuttel is relieved when the aunt returns, but his relief soon disappears as she prattles cheerfully about the eminent return of her husband and brothers from their shooting expedition. “It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence,” he thought, “that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.”

Published in 1914, “The Open Window” is widely available, so treat yourself, Dear Reader, to a very wry ghost story on what I hope is a fine October day for you, also.

In a twist reminiscent of his own stories, Munro enlisted in the British army during World War I, although he was then well into his forties. The Modern Library’s edition of his collected stories includes the account his sister, Ethel M. Munro, wrote of his death in France on November 13, 1916. “It was a very dark winter morning. . . a number of the fellows sank down on the ground to rest, and Hector sought a shallow crater, with the lip as a back-rest. (His captain) heard him shout, ‘Put that bloody cigarette out,’ and heard the snip of a rife-shot.”

In the attack that followed, Munro’s company lost track of his body. Whether he now lies in an unmarked grave, or simply vanished as so many did in the war’s devastation, only the divine cupbearer knows.

(Next Friday, Adventure classics continues an October of Halloween horror with H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls.”)