Guns of the Timberlands (1955)

Louis L’Amour was near the start of his career as a western novelist when he wrote Guns of the Timberlands in 1955. It’s a good read, though not one of his best. Like a number of L’Amour’s stories, it’s a retelling of David versus Goliath; in this case, a quiet, minding-his-own-business cattleman fights off a robber baron who wants the timber on his range.

Our hero, Clay Bell, runs a ranch in the Deep Creek Range, which L’Amour describes as a fifty-square-mile group of mountains surrounded by desert, with virgin timber in its high basin. That sounds pretty cool, so I was eager to locate the exact locale, but it soon became clear that the geography of Guns of the Timberlands is largely, if not entirely, imaginary. If we’re talking about anywhere, we’re talking about New Mexico. The robber baron, Jud Devitt, wants to log off Bell’s timber and sell it to the Mexican Central Railway. A quick search reveals that the Mexican Central operated across the border from El Paso. There are mentions of Santa Fe, and there is a Deep Creek in the mountains of New Mexico about 150 miles (as the crow flies) from El Paso. Still, none of the geographical names that L’Amour supplies (Emigrant Gap, Piety Mountain, Black Butte, Tinker’s Creek, among others) can be found near Deep Creek, or anywhere else in New Mexico for that matter, and the terrain L’Amour describes does not match that of the actual Deep Creek. There are other signs that L’Amour is making it up, as well, including the statement that Bell’s timber is the “finest in the state”: New Mexico didn’t become a state until 1912.

The location may be mythical, but L’Amour gives us a detailed description of the territory, which is only proper. After all, Guns of the Timberlands is the story of a range war, and a war needs terrain. The information is scattered throughout the book, but from a careful read we can determine that Bell’s range sits in a valley, dominated by Piety Mountain and subsidiary peaks to the west, with a lower mountain range to the east. Deep Creek runs roughly southeast through the valley, joined by a smaller tributary, Cave Creek, which runs down from Piety Mountain. Deep Creek flows out into the desert via a canyon that opens into Emigrant Gap, and from there the creek runs for a few miles to the town of Tinkersville. An abandoned road runs from Tinkersville, up to Emigrant Gap, through Bell’s range, and out the other end via “The Notch.” Bell has been canny enough to acquire title both to Emigrant Gap and The Notch, and Bell’s ranch buildings lie on either side of Emigrant Gap. Between his legal title and his battle-hardened ranch hands Bell is well-prepared to defend his turf against all comers.

The year is never mentioned, but there are several clues. Clay Bell served in the calvary in the Civil War and he rode with Nelson Story on the first cattle drive from Texas to Montana, which was in 1866. Then we’re told that he rode with “McNelly” in the Texas Rangers. Leander H. McNelly was a legendary Ranger who operated as a law unto himself in south Texas in 1875-76. Bell has been operating his ranch in the Deep Creek area for six years before the action starts. Add those years to 1875-76, and we get to the early 1880’s. We also know that Devitt has a contract to sell railroad ties to the Mexican Central Railway, and a quick search tells us that the Mexican Central completed its main line from Mexico City to Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, in 1884, again pegging the action in Guns of the Timberlands to somewhere in the early 1880’s.

Like so many westerns, this one starts with our hero riding into a dusty town. The description is classic L'Amour: “Wind stirred the street’s hot dust. A fly buzzed lazily against a windowpane and sleepy horses stood hipshot at the rails. There was nothing to see in Tinkersville. It was just a sprawling small town with some ancient buildings of gray stone, and a few of red brick; the rest of the stores and houses were gray, wind-worried clapboard buildings, sun-dried and unpainted. Out on the plains dust-devils danced and the heat waves shimmered like clear liquid. A horse stamped to free his hocks of flies, and distantly, from across town, a hammer rang on an anvil.”

And who lives in Tinkersville? Classic L’Amour, again: “Some of those early men had gone on, but others had stayed. Tall men stayed . . . short men . . . but strong men. Men with skin like saddle leather and clear eyes that saw beyond today. These men who stayed had not been wealthy men, but they had been steadfast men, confident men, strong with an inner strength that knows not defeat.” The town is named after its founder, Sam Tinker, who acts as a sort of Greek chorus throughout the book, sitting on the veranda of the Tinker House, observing and commenting on all he sees.

Clay Bell has a typical curriculum vitae for a L’Amour hero. He is “an easy-going man with the wide shoulders and lean hips of a desert rider, a man who looked cool, competent, and ready, yet one in whom behind the quiet of his eyes the humor lay close to the surface. He wore his gun with the same casual ease that he wore his hat or his shirt.” L’Amour tells us that “Until he had come to Tinkersville and located on the Deep Creek range, he had been a drifting man.” In one of the delightful inconsistencies that we celebrate in L’Amour’s books, Clay may have just drifted into town, yet the locals somehow know his entire life story: “Knowed him since he was a boy, ‘cept for the time he was in the war. He was man-growed at fourteen, skinnin’ mules with a freight outfit on the Santa Fe Trail. Out o’ Tennessee by way o’ Texas. He rode with Nelson Story on the first cattle drive to Montana. He rode with the Rangers, down Texas way. With McNelly. Men with the bark on, them Rangers.” “Bell was fightin’ Comanches when he was fourteen. Then he was in New Orleans a while, doin’ I don’t know what. After that he was a Texas Ranger two years, and then in the cavalry durin’ the War Between the States. Got to be a major. After the war he rode with trail herds, hunted buffalo, and prospected the goldfields up to Bannock an’ Alder Gulch. This man knows how to fight and when to fight.”

Good stuff, Louis. We almost feel like we know the fellow. Moreover, from this resume, we can estimate Bell’s age. He finished his service in the Union calvary as a major. A web search tells us that the average age for a Civil War major was around thirty years old, though there were outliers, of course: Armstrong Custer became a brevet general at just twenty-three. Let us be generous, then, and assume that Bell was on the young side for an officer of his rank, and make him twenty-four when the war ended in 1865. In that case, by the early 1880’s he would be in his forties. At least three times in the book Bell is referred to as a “young man” or a “young sprout,” but that’s just L’Amour is taking poetic license with his own timeline.

Bell’s idyllic bachelor existence is ruined by the arrival of Jud Devitt, “a big man in laced boots, with a dark, well-tailored suit and white, stiff-brimmed hat.” He has “impatient eyes, domineering” and "the strong, almost brutal jaw, the powerfully boned face and the taut white skin”—the "smooth-shaven, white-skinned face” of a stranger from eastern parts. It’s a description we can work with, marred only by another of L’Amour’s trademark inconsistencies a few pages later. We’ve just been told about Devitt’s “smooth-shaven face”, yet Bell describes him whimsically as “A large—rather forceful gentleman with a mustache and an opinion.”

Devitt comes right to the point in Chapter One, addressing Bell—you are allowed to cringe—“as if he were a Digger Indian.” He wants Bell to move his cattle off his range so that Devitt can log it for railroad ties. Bell, of course, isn’t moving, because, as L’Amour puts it, “He had come to love that land as a man may love a woman. Not any woman, but the woman, the one woman.” In the ensuing face-off, the two exchange challenges to a fistfight, setting up the inevitable brawl in the last chapter. To keep us rooting for the supposed underdog, L’Amour tells us that Devitt is “At least thirty pounds heavier than Clay’s one-ninety.”

Devitt has fifty lumberjacks, but they turn out to be no match for the dozen hands on Bell’s ranch. In addition to the lumberjacks, Devitt has brought along James J. Riley, whom Devitt has arranged to be appointed “Federal Judge in the district” because “It always paid to have one’s own judge.” (Lawyers reading this will raise their eyebrows: appointments of federal district judges are neither easily nor quickly obtained.)

But it’s the judge’s daughter, Colleen, who really counts. She has dark red hair and “eyes full of Irish,” a “composed girl” who is five foot seven inches tall. Colleen and Bell meet across the lobby of the Tinker House. Colleen is engaged to Devitt, but it doesn’t stop her from admiring Bell’s “strongly cut face,” “the broad shoulders, the lean hips.” A short while later, she finds that “he looked fit and handsome this morning, a lean, powerful man who filled out his gray wool shirt as a man should.” Bell likes what he sees, too. “He watched her with appreciation. There was depth to her, and a quickness of mind that he liked. Young as she was, she was no child. She was a woman with all a woman’s instincts. He felt a vague uneasiness stir within him.”

It’s obvious from the start where things are heading with Bell and Colleen. Let us reflect, then, on the mismatch in their ages. Bell, as we have determined, must be at least forty years old. Colleen is a mere girl, still living with her father and just out of school. Let’s say she is in her late teens, to be generous. That gives us at least a twenty year spread between them. No wonder L’Amour has Bell described as a young man elsewhere in the book. The age difference aside, I am sorry to report that their relationship is entirely chaste; we get nothing more than a quick brush of the lips in the hotel restaurant and some hand-holding.

For all L’Amour’s efforts to set Bell up as the underdog, it’s a one-sided fight. Early on, Devitt’s men beat up a couple of Bell’s ranch hands, and someone dry-gulches Bell himself, putting a bullet through his shoulder. Otherwise, though, Devitt gets beaten again and again. Twice, Bell and his men disarm groups of Devitt’s lumberjacks and send them walking across the desert without their boots. Bell’s crew sets fire to Devitt’s camp and equipment, including his “donkey engine.” (I had to look that one up. A donkey engine is an early version of a portable, steam powered saw mill.) Bell even out-maneuvers Devitt legally, despite Devitt’s hand-picked judge, U.S. Marshal, and Washington lobbyist.

Still, we love to see a bully get his comeuppance, and Guns of the Timberlands does the job. After losing one round after another, and having Colleen quit him for Bell, Devitt hires a couple of gunmen to kill Bell, but of course that goes badly, too. By the penultimate chapter both of Devitt’s hit men are dead, and in the last chapter Bell beats up Devitt in front of the whole town and loads on an outbound train.

We always enjoy calculating the ratio of male to female characters in L’Amour’s novels, and Guns of the Timberlands does not disappoint. By my count we have Bell and his dozen hands (seven of whom get names and speaking roles); Devitt has his fifty lumberjacks (four with names and speaking roles); and Devitt’s two hired killers and his lobbyist in Washington. The novel also has Judge Riley and Sam Tinker, and another seven men who get names and minor roles: the hotel keeper, Bell’s lawyer, the local banker, the doctor, a rival rancher, the dry goods merchant, and the railroad representative. In all, that comes to twenty-five male characters with names and speaking parts, and many more unnamed lumberjacks and ranch hands. On the other side of the ledger, we have Colleen, and that’s about it. Late in the book we hear about a dance hall performer with a heart of gold by the name of Randy Ashton, but she never gets a spoken line and her relevance to the plot is minimal. Otherwise, there is only a reference to an “old Mrs. Weber,” and mentions of two men’s wives and another man’s daughter. If we are generous and give Randy Ashton half a point, we have a ratio of men to women of 25 to 1.5—pretty typical for L’Amour.

As for the body count, it’s relatively low. Devitt’s hired killers are both gunned down, and one of Bell’s hands dies after getting beaten up by lumberjacks. Other than that, I counted fewer than five deaths, though I might have missed some.

As always, we raise a cheer when we find inconsistencies and plot holes in L’Amour’s novels, and Guns of the Timberlands delivers. We’ve noted a few already: Devitt’s smooth-shaved face that nevertheless has a mustache; the description of Bell as a young man though he must be at least forty; and the huge disparity in age between Bell and Colleen. Beyond those, there aren’t any laugh-out-loud moments, but we still get some smiles. Bell takes a bullet through his shoulder and loses so much blood that he can’t stay on his feet, but he still manages to whip the larger Devitt in a brawl less than two weeks later. Early in the novel, L’Amour tells us that only two men (he is talking about white men, of course) had preceded Bell in the Deep Creek country, but later we find out that there is a mining ghost town up on Piety Mountain. And perhaps we should also count the one major loose thread in the story: the local banker is in cahoots with Devitt, and there are hints that he hopes to take over Bell’s range because he has found a valuable mineral deposit there, but it’s a teaser that never comes to anything.

We also read Louis L’Amour for his incorrigible name-dropping and his historical references. As noted above, we hear about Nelson Story and Leander McNelly, who make for enjoyable searches. L’Amour also drops the names of Bob Wright (mayor and cattleman in Dodge City) and the gunfighters Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin. And he pays homage to his favorite source of legal wisdom, when Judge Riley pores over a volume of Blackstone while having a change of heart, and Blackstone leads us to Hammurabi, Moses, and the Magna Carta. That’s the total count for the name-dropping, though. Like the body count, it’s low for a L’Amour western.

We look, too, for L’Amour to help us understand what it means to be a man. The Code L’Amour was important to me as a teenager seeking to decipher the code of masculinity in our society. Here is a contribution from Guns of the Timberlands:

“A man must be respected by those of his community, and in this country, where fighting courage and skill were respected social virtues, he could not leave. Too long had these people lived by the gun. These men and women had crossed the plains, they had fought Indians and outlaws, and they had built homes where it took strength to build and courage to fight—and the willingness to fight was still a social virtue of the first order.”

I liked Guns of the Timberlands as a teenager, because I liked the Shangri-La feel of Bell’s range. I still like the novel, but upon re-reading it I find it to be a fairly garden-variety example of L’Amour’s oeuvre. Yet even when he is just cranking them out Louis L’Amour remains a compelling writer and great storyteller, and you can always count on him to salt in a few nice turns of phrase:

“Chomping his food like a restless horse over a cold bit.”

“The sound of wind in the tree tops was like the rushing of a distant train.”

“More stars blossomed in the clear field of the sky.”

“That boy could trail a quail across a salt flat.”