Illustrators of frontier fiction:W. Herbert Dunton

Taos Society of Artists, 1915 (Dunton, 3rd from left)

William Herbert "Buck" Dunton (1878-1936) was born in Maine. An outdoorsman from an early age, he travelled frequently to the West. After working in New York as a magazine and book illustrator, he eventually settled in Taos, New Mexico, which had become a thriving artists colony. There he gave up a career as an illustrator and took to painting and hunting. He was an original member of the Taos Society of Artists.

Like the writers Zane Grey (1872-1939) and Will James (1892-1942), Dunton had a nostalgic regard for the Old West, preserving and celebrating in his work and pastimes the mythology of frontier scouts, cowboys, and other singular figures who lived independently off the land as it was before westward settlement. Here are a number of his book illustrations from the years 1904 - 1919.

Quoth the raven

Wind farm at the foot of San Jacinto

This will be a little short. I have been having too much fun to get serious about posting to this journal today.

About the nicest thing that has happened to me during this whole past year is the receiving of two greeting cards signed by colleagues from the department where I used to teach. Such warm and generous comments they made, I must’ve had a grin from ear to ear. On top of that, they passed the hat and sent me a very generous gift card from Amazon. I’m totally touched. Writers, artists, and musicians who teach writing are the best on Earth.

Francis Lynde, Empire Builders (1907)

There are train spotters and railroad enthusiasts, but so far as I know, no one today writes fiction for this particular market. Anyway, not since Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (1933). Travel by railway was still novel enough at the turn of the last century, however, to keep writers like Francis Lynde (1856–1930) selling books with plots about railroading.

This one is typical of his others and concerns a young superintendent of a line running from Denver into the Rocky Mountains. Stuart Ford is an ambitious fellow, who hatches a plan to extend the line to eventually connect Chicago and the West Coast. His chief competitor is the Transcontinental with its eye on hauling freight to and from the same regions of the West, profiting from the mining and crop-raising industries. In other words, there is a lot of money to be made for the railroad that can first lay its tracks there.

Books BITS enjoyed in 2014

Here’s a top-15 list of novels, novellas, and short story collections by writers of frontier fiction reviewed here at BITS this year. Like last year, it’s a mixture of old, not-so-old, and recent. Click through for the full reviews.

Novels

After the muddled The Bounty Hunters (1953), Elmore Leonard’s skill as a novelist took a quantum leap forward with this novel. Hombre is a tense western thriller that is also a fascinating study of an enigmatic character. That character is John Russell, the “hombre” of the title. More.

Illustrators of early frontier fiction, Maynard Dixon, cont.

Magazine cover, 1904, Maynard Dixon

Last week I blogged one day about the artist Maynard Dixon, with examples of his book illustration for several novels. Today I have gathered some of his illustrations for the western novels of another writer, Clarence E. Mulford (1883–1956), best known as the originator of the character Hopalong Cassidy.

Cassidy had already been portrayed by another illustrator, Frank Schoonover for a story, “The Fight at Buckskin,” first published in the December 1905 issue of Outing Magazine and later appearing as the opening chapter of Mulford’s Bar-20 (1907).

The bunch of Texas cowboys at the Bar-20 comprised the dramatis personae of a series of Mulford novels, following the example of B. M. Bower, who had her own set of recurring characters from a Montana ranch, the Flying U.

Adventures

Bus ride

My wife Lynda and I have gone through many a rough patch in 49 years of marriage with a mantra: “We’re resourceful people; think of this as an adventure.” And so when we got my diagnosis of brain cancer a year ago, this new development became a “medical adventure.” That frame of mind has pretty much seen us through so far, including now, as she has sustained a broken arm.

As I said here last week, her broken arm has required us to switch roles as each other’s caregiver. That has meant among other things for me having to use public transportation to get from our house to/from town, the post office, the grocery store, medical appointments—yet another adventure, though not a new one.

Edward A. Grainger, Further Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles

As part of his education of a pulp writer, David Cranmer has been reinventing the traditional western over the past several years with his introduction of two deputy U.S. marshals, Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles. The two peace officers work out of 1880s Cheyenne, Wyoming, bringing in malefactors, felons, and fugitives from justice, of which as we know, there were plenty in the Old West.

Both men are admirable in their own ways not to say distinctive in their manner and personal style, as is often the case in pulp fiction. Cash Laramie has acquired a reputation as the Outlaw Marshal, stepping at times outside the precise requirements of his job description to bring undesirables to heel. Historians will recognize in him the thin gray line that separated the lawful and unlawful activities of frontier lawmen whose skill with side arms also qualified them as gunfighters.