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| 7th edition cover |
This is yet another
logging camp novel, set in the Canadian woods somewhere north of Winnipeg. The
story is a familiar one of a young man who is toughened by the strenuous life
and grows into his manhood, thereby winning the respect of others and the love
of a sweetheart.
Plot. Bill Carmody is the son of a wealthy Wall
Street financier who expects the young man to learn the banking business. But
Bill has no enthusiasm for it. Disowned by his father, he heads west, where his
plans are literally derailed in a train accident. In the wreckage, he comes to
the aid of a passenger who turns out to be a lumberman, H. D. Appleton, who
senses greatness in the young man and gives him a job as a logger.
Before even reaching
the logging camp, he kills a savage she-wolf that has stalked him. Assigned to
a crew bossed by a brutal thug, Buck Moncrossen, he miraculously survives
Moncrossen’s plots by to do away with him and develops a reputation as The Man
Who Would Not Die.
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| Hudson's Bay post, Lake Winnipeg, 1884 |
Injured in one of
these “accidents,” he is given shelter and medical attention by an Indian woman
with a “half-breed” son and daughter, Jacques and Jeanne. To the Indian woman
Bill is the only good white man she has known since her husband’s death.
Confirming their mutual trust, she breaks a sheath knife in two, each keeping
half and promising to come to the other’s aid should the other’s half be sent
to them.
In a second winter
season in the woods, Bill is made foreman of his own logging crew. Appleton
brings a hunting party to the camp, and the women in attendance are marooned
there after an early snowfall. Among them is a sweetheart, Ethel, whom Bill
left behind in New York. Believing that she is now engaged to be married to
another man, he maintains a respectful distance.
When her little
brother, Charlie, is lost in a blizzard, Bill goes out into the storm to
retrieve him. After days pass, the two are found near the camp, fallen in the
snow and freezing to death. Ethel keeps a bedside vigil until he recovers.
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| Illustration, Hendryx' Connie Morgan in Alaska |
In time Bill and
Ethel confess their love for each other and are married at the logging camp.
But in the moment their vows are exchanged, Jeanne arrives with her mother’s
half of the sheath knife. Bill races off with her, fulfilling his promise, and
the shocked Ethel is left at the altar before the assembled guests.
Bill and Jeanne
eventually reach Moncrossen’s camp, where the villain is keeping the old woman
a prisoner and without food, after she prevented his attempt to take Jeanne by
force. Bill beats the man into a bloody pulp and then supervises the break-up
of a logjam on the river. Afterward, Bill and Ethel stand together under a
starlit sky, ending the novel with an embrace and a kiss.
Character. For Ethel’s little brother, Charlie, Bill has
always been an idol and sums him up in a word, “square.” Recovering from minor
injuries sustained during the train wreck, Bill won’t take a loan offered to
him by Appleton, and he refuses to sue the railroad for damages. He’s sustained no damages, he says.
“Getting something for nothing is not playing the game” and no different from
being a pickpocket. That’s pretty square.
In the woods, he
learns to overcome his sense of superiority to mere ordinary men. After
condescending to those he first meets there, he quickly sheds any claim to
entitlement. As he addresses them as equals, in the vernacular of the woods, he
is warmly accepted as one of their own. In Appleton’s words, he is a
“gentleman” who “is not afraid to get out and work with his two hands—and work
hard—and who has never learned the meaning of fear.”
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| Illustration, Hendryx' Connie Morgan in Alaska |
Romance. The “half breed” Jeanne loves Bill tenderly and
wants to be his wife. He is a powerful man, feared by others, and she would
gladly give herself into his protection. She tells him that he will learn to
love her if he doesn’t already. Bill admits that he owes his life to her and he
loves her like a sister, but marriage to her would be wrong. “Only evil would
come of it,” he explains.
By comparison, Ethel’s
feelings for Bill run hot and cold. From the start, she loves him but her love
is conditional. He needs to clean up his act if he intends to marry her. Much
later, when he is found near dead in the blizzard, she is moved to discover
that he has kept a pledge to abstain from alcohol. She sobs and stays by his
bedside.
Alas, when he utters
the name of Jeanne in his delirium, she is filled with sudden hatred. And we
are told that “centuries of supercultivation and the refinement of breeding”
give way in her, as does “the artificiality of years of unconscious eugenic
selection.” Gentle lady no more, she is reduced to animal rage and regret. She
has lost him, she realizes—and to an Indian! And so it goes between them.
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| Illustration, Hendryx' Connie Morgan in Alaska |
Style. Hendryx is not a great stylist,
but the storytelling is competent and the action and settings well observed. In
an early chapter there is a vividly described train wreck, and he is deft at
describing physical conflict. The killing of the she-wolf is told in
breathless, minute detail. When Bill beats Moncrossen in a bare knuckles fight,
each blow and its bloody impact are vividly rendered.
Hendryx is also
masterful in the creation of suspense. There is a long account of Bill’s search
for the boy Charlie and his discovery as a snowstorm strands them in a cold cavern. The
description of their difficult, painful trek back to camp through the blinding
blizzard is told with the gradual nail-biting revelation of their escalating
peril.
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| James B. Hendryx |
Wrapping up. James B. Hendryx (1880-1963) was born in Sauk
Center, Minnesota, the son of a newspaper publisher. After dropping out of
university, he traveled widely in the U.S. and Canada. Adventure prone, he
tried his luck on the gold fields of the Yukon. Returning to the States, he
held numerous jobs for short periods of time, before settling on a career of
writing. He chose to live in upper Michigan, where like Zane Grey he was an
avid hunter and fisherman.
During his lifetime
he produced 45 or more novels set typically in the Canadian West or Montana. An
additional series of books, the Halfaday Creek stories, are set on the
Alaska-Yukon border. He was also author of the Connie Morgan series of
adventure novels for young readers. FictionMags Index lists well over 200
titles of novels and short stories published 1912-1953 in the pulps. Five of
his stories and novels were made into films during the Silent Era, including The
Promise (1917).
The Promise is currently available online at google books
and Internet Archive, and for kindle and the nook. For more of Friday’s Forgotten
Books, click on over to Patti Abbott’s blog.
Further reading:
Sources:
Geoff Sadler, ed., Twentieth-Century
Western Writers, 1991
Burke, et al., eds., American
Authors and Books, 3 rd
edition, 1972
Image credits:
Author's photo, halfadaycreek.com
Book illustrations from Hendryx' Connie Morgan in Alaska (1916)
Coming up: Saturday music, Sanford Clark
I see the hardcover edition uses the same cover as the magazine version which was serialized in ALL STORY in 1915. Very effective cover.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reprint project that plans to eventually publish all the Halfaday Creek stories. I wonder if it will ever see completion...
Sounds cool to me. Every once in a while I like to slip a "Northern" into my reading pile... Hendryx was one of the best... the later novels have some great humor, too, I've noticed.
ReplyDeleteI've just finished reading The Promise, based on your review. At first I thought to find the logging camp bits for research purposes, but I started at the beginning and read it every evening for the past 5 nights. And I enjoyed it. Except for Ethel, his light o'love crying so much. I don't think the author knew quite what to do with her. I don't recall reading any Hendryx as a teen. I may even read more of his books. So, thanks for that interesting review.
ReplyDeleteYes, Ethel is a little problematic.
Delete