Western Short Fiction: A Cross-Section

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Western fiction on here, and I decided it was time to do something about that. Today I’d like to share some short story collections by Western authors who’ve influenced much of what I’ve written in the genre so far.

Why did I begin by writing short stories myself? Well, probably because I thought the mindset of years back still prevailed—the years when hundreds of all-fiction magazines were the proving-ground for young authors. You started with short stories, got your name in front of the public, and then you graduated to novels. Also, at the time I got into indie publishing there was a lot of excited talk about short fiction undergoing a revival in the digital age because of convenience and short attention spans (although now many people are agreeing that the e-short renaissance never really materialized as much as they thought it would). Anyway, I began by writing short stories and I don’t regret it, because the work I put into them was so much honing of my writing skills.

When it comes to the Western genre, I think I’ve probably read equal amounts of novels and short fiction. But many of my favorite Western authors made their mark during that heyday of magazine fiction, and so about half the books on my list of top favorite Westerns are short story collections. Here are three of the best:

Heart of the West by O. Henry

Though perhaps best-known for his New York City stories, O. Henry spent a significant amount of his life in Texas and wrote around forty Western stories altogether. Only a baker’s dozen of them are collected in one all-Western volume, Heart of the West; the rest are scattered throughout his other collections. If you’ve got his Complete Works on your shelf like I do, you’re all set—but otherwise, Heart of the West is a good place to begin. When I talk about O. Henry’s Westerns here, though, I’m referring to his whole body of work. To get an idea of the variety of tone and subject, compare just a small sampling: “Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches,” a lyrical, almost-novelette-length ranch romance; “The Roads We Take,” a brief tale of outlaws with a twist ending that packs a sharp punch; “The Pimienta Pancakes,” a pure comedic cow-camp delight; “Art and the Bronco,” a wry combination of frontier legend with politics and publicity; and “Friends in San Rosario,” in which we are shown a small Texas town in which the early pioneers have settled down into leading citizens. All these, and more, show the same wit, wordplay and eye for colorful detail as the most famous of Henry’s stories, applied to the landscape of the turn-of-the-century West.

The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard

I’ve long been meaning to re-read this volume from cover to cover and try to write a good review. I can’t 100% recommend every single story in it, but most of them are excellent. I’ve never read another author who can sketch character and setting and describe action in so few words. Leonard’s territory is the Southwest—there’s even a map at the beginning displaying the area in which most or all of the stories are set—a desert landscape of Army posts and Apache reservations, abandoned silver mines and adobe villages. Often the stories build high suspense, from the well-known “3:10 to Yuma” to the highly creative “Under the Friar’s Ledge.” Many of them—and I’d say this is a defining feature of the collection—take a familiar Western scenario, such as the pursuit of bank robbers by a posse in “Blood Money” or cattle thieving in “The Rustlers,” and lift it to another level through a keen focus on the interplay between characters.

The Hanging Tree by Dorothy M. Johnson

I’ve always hated the idea of a divide between “westerns” and “serious historical fiction,” but the best way I can think of to describe Dorothy Johnson’s writing is that it bridges that gap completely. Her characters and her stories are complex and the outcome often bittersweet, and in reading them one glimpses the scope of the whole West against whose backdrop they are set. Each story in the collection is equally well-crafted and will stick in your memory, but my favorites are the poignant “The Gift by the Wagon,” the title novella “The Hanging Tree,” and the rare dash of humor in “I Woke Up Wicked,” a tongue-in-cheek tale of a cowboy who “accidentally” joins an outlaw gang.

What is it that these three very different authors have in common? I’ve thought about it, and noticed three things.

• One: good writing. I don’t need to elaborate on this; read any of them and you’ll see that for yourself. Each author’s style is different, but their command of the English language is uniformly excellent.
• Two: unexpectedness. We all know about O. Henry’s famed twist endings, but one thing that I noticed and appreciated about both Leonard’s and Johnson’s stories was that in very few could I make a guess at how they would end. As I’ve said before, I don’t think you have to avoid the tropes of the Western genre to achieve originality or unexpectedness; I think the key lies in filling those situations with well-developed, complex human characters, who will make the reader question what they’re going to do next.
• Three: variety. All three of these writers successfully mined the wide, colorful panoply of characters and situations the American West has to offer. Pile all three of their works together and survey the casts of characters and you will see what I mean: men, women and children; black, white, Mexican and Indian; miners, soldiers, settlers, sheep ranchers, cooks, storekeepers, schoolteachers, politicians, doctors, bankers, plus plenty of appearances by the three essential figures of lawman, outlaw and cowboy.

Have you read any of these stories? Which were your favorites, and why?