David J. West

I wanted to like this anthology of weird western stories. It has the things I like: a series of linked stories, epigraphs opening each one, and each story purporting to be from a document. And it was obviously a work of love from West who even includes a map and purported photos of some of the stories’ location around the town St. Thomas at the center of the book and now beneath the waters of Lake Mead.

The stories take place between 1885 and 1938, and West presents them as a collection of documents he found, along with a toad statue, in a discarded trunk at a Mormon thrift store. And there are plenty of weird elements: ghosts, evil medicine men, liches, ghouls, giant Gila monsters, thunderbirds, haunted lost ruins, and spectral riders.

But I found most of the stories uninteresting to the extent I didn’t make any notes on individual titles.

Not all of the 18 stories are dull. A member of John Wesley Powell’s Colorado River party makes some disturbing discoveries in “Gods of the Old Land”. I’ve already reviewed “Right Hand Man” which features Porter Rockwell. “The Thing in the Root Cellar” is about a household servant who tries to warn his employers of a menace lurking there. “Black Jack’s Last Ride” is about the doom that overtakes an outlaw for a heinous crime committed long ago. A mysterious woman a man meets in a saloon turns out to be a harbinger of death in “A Rose for Dolly”. The final story, “Bury Me Deep”, concerns activities around a notorious local man’s grave and his daughter showing up to request a favor of the narrator. She’s an interesting enough character that I’d like to see her in another story.… (mais)

You could call this, the fourth book in West’s Dark Trails Saga, the Porter Rockwell bestiary. West even provides an illustration, usually a petroglyph, for each story. And some of those beasts (jackelopes! Tumbleweeds!) are pretty audacious choices by West.

“Cold Slither” is a long and very Robert E. Howard-type story. There’s a maiden to be sacrificed, a giant snake god, and lots of action. Porter Rockwell encounters a Ute shaman who is holding a ritual and keeping a sacred fire burning to keep the Blood Gods asleep. Rockwell isn’t keen on the shaman’s suggestion that he take over the duties. And other Indians want the Blood Gods back. The gods may have demanded human sacrifice, but they kept the white man at bay too. Naturally, Rockwell gets caught up in the battle to keep the snake god Coatlicue locked up. As he notes, “Sometimes the best you do in these situations is just survive.”

Rockwell battles the quintessential American monster, the thunderbird, in “Black Wings in the Moonlight”. He’s called in to take care of the critter which has already killed and eaten several people on the banks of the Mississippi. It’s another well-done action tale.

“Soma for the Destroying Angels Soul” has zombies, escaped slaves, a patent medicine salesman, and a Haitian witch doctor. Rockwell comes across a town where people have been infected by some kind of fungus. He puts paid to the troublemaker in quite an unusual way.

“Rolling in the Deep” takes place after a real incident in Rockwell’s life when he cut his hair – the source of his invulnerability to blade and bullet – to provide a wig for a widow who lost hers after a fever. Rockwell finds himself shanghaied and aboard the Dagon. And, yes, Captain Quinn does seem to have an affinity for a Lovecraftian creature.

“Tangle Crowned Devil” hints at a link between the Rockwell of the Dark Trails Saga and the Cowboys & Cthulhu series since Bloody Mary of Let Sleeping Gods Lie is mentioned. On the trail of some rustlers, Rockwell is called by the men of a mining camp to destroy some beast that has killed and eaten a bunch of people. It is, of all things, a jackalope.

“Fangs of the Dragon” is a long story is chockful of several elements. First, there is the backdrop of a Mormon dispute of traditional Mormons under Brigham Young faced with the reformist Godbeite movement which argues that the church should be open to new revelations, including that allegedly provided by spiritualists. They, fearing that the US government wants to come down on the Mormons for the Mountain Meadow Massacre and other things, wish to make Utah less of a theocracy and hope that will also lead to more material prosperity. We also hear, for the first time, that Rockwell has a Bowie knife blessed in Navoo. This one has two beasts with one being an early example of an American cryptid.

There’s Mormon folklore in “Garden of Legion” with a reference, in the opening scene, to the Three Nephite, disciples of Christ’s in the New World who will “tarry” until Christ’s return. It’s a tale of demonic possesion.

“Red Wolf Moon” is a ghost story combined with yet another lost Spanish mine. Rockwell stumbles across both when he finds a gang he’s been tracking mysteriously slain.

“Killer Instinct” is West’s version of Beowulf and involves a leftover dinosaur. This story, full of some memorable lines, emphasizes the value of Rockwell’s talent for killing and how it’s a good thing sometimes.

“Right Hand Man” is narrated by a former Mormon dissident, George Watt, who has been reunited with the traditional church. He goes along with Rockwell when the call is put out by local Indians for Mormon help to put down a Paiute shaman named Toohoo-emmi. He was kicked out of the tribe for dabbling in “black magic” and being “too removed from the Great Spirit”. Giant snakes, shapeshifters, and a dying race of dwarfish warriors get thrown in the mix. This one ends up being an explicitly Cthulhu Mythos story.

There’s an old supernatural menace “Striding Through Darkness” in another town seeking help. This time it’s a strange, wasting disease. Maybe it has something to do with strange screeching at night and red eyes in the dark.

These are all well-done action stories, and Rockwell frequently delivers some nice lines. However, I can’t claim any of these stories stuck in my mind in the seven months between reading them and writing this review.… (mais)

Things aren’t looking good for Porter Rockwell and his friend Quincy Jackson at the beginning of this novel.

The girl Emily was dragged over a cliff and into the Colorado River by Mala Cosa’s dead body at the end of Crazy Horses, and Territorial Marshal Shaw is going to use the lack of her exculpatory testimony and other evidence he’s forged, suborned, or misinterpreted to send Rockwell and Jackson to the gallows.

And Mormon leader Brigham Young, who comes off a bit prissy here, isn’t going to intervene for church protector Rockwell. The US government is still investigating the Mountain Meadow Massacre, and Young doesn’t want any impression about that the church sanctions murder. So the importuning of his daughter, aka Roxy Lejune, goes for naught.

By this time, the relationship between Roxy and Quincy has firmed up into true love for each other, and Roxy takes steps to bust Quincy out of jail, and Rockwell manages his own escape.

Hearing rumors of a new criminal gang in the area, he heads for Montezuma City, the ruins of an ancient civilization of giant white men. There he’ll meet criminal mastermind Iblis and Emily, who isn’t dead after all.

In Montezuma City, Rockwell will encounter earthquakes, the Haunter of the Abyss, and make new allies.

This one is probably my least favorite of the three Dark Trails Saga novels. Perhaps that’s because it’s the shortest, and the escape scenes didn’t interest me as much. Again, though, West provides some good characters, and it was nice to see the development of Roxy’s and Quincy’s relationship.… (mais)

There’s a lot less lead thrown about in this sequel to Scavengers, but I liked it more.

It’s a pursuit story with Porter Rockwell and friends Roxy Lejune and Quincy Jackson both the pursuers and pursued.

At the end of Scavengers, Rockwell’s blood brother Chief Redbone showed up asking for Rockwell’s help after Mexican slaver Matamoros, who survived the carnage at the lost Spanish gold mine, kidnapped Redbone’s daughter.

That carnage produced 63 missing people in the Thorn massacre, and Territorial Marshall Brody Shaw thinks Rockwell had something to do with that. Brody wants to see Rockwell hang, and, as we see, he’s not above forging evidence to produce a conviction. Shaw’s hatred of Rockwell goes back to New York State when Mormon founder Joseph Smith stole Shaw’s flock away.

So, Rockwell and friends are pursued by Shaw as they pursue Matamoros through the desert around the Colorado River. They’ll encounter some of the women Rockwell freed from Matamoros in Scavengers after the slaver killed their husbands and raped them. One girl, Emily, stows away with the Rockwell party as they travel down the Colorado to follow Matamoros.

There’s a lot to like here. There is the Uninvited, a vampiric entity who appears as an old man seeking camp fires, the final showdown between Rockwell and Matamoros, and the bloodbath at the lair of Mala Cosa. He’s a sorcerer Matamoros needs to redeem himself with, and the price of redemption is Redbone’s daughter.

This one ends on a grim note.… (mais)