Reading from The Last Ride, Berkley, NY, 1978, pages 79-91
Unpublished in his lifetime, Howard’s short western Knife, Bullet and Noose is perfectly paced for a story of its length and genre. The plot is too basic to discuss without ruining it for the reader.
The setting is a cow town in Kansas where cowboys and buffalo hunters express their mutual distrust and occupational rivalry.
The hero is Steve Allison, The "Sonora Kid," who brings to mind Anton Sepulvida, who was killed in a fight with the Nez Perce, and was famed for his boots and knife. His skin is, like Conan, burned dark “...of many dim trails.”
The antagonist is one Grizzly Gullin, a cannibalistic knife fighter seemingly patterned after Liver-Eating Johnson.
In the place of the manipulative sorcerer of a Conan yarn, is a cattle buyer: “If not typical, he was a good representation of one of the many types that followed the steel ribbons westward across the Kansas plains, where, at the magic touch of the steel, new towns blossomed overnight, creating fresh markets for cattle that rolled up in endless waves from the south.”
The Sonora Kid is a gunfighter of the offbeat type that would have been played in film by Steve McQueen rather than a Gary Cooper or John Wayne. His employer distrusts the banks and bankers after the fashion of a Depression Era man who had seen banks close, not to reopen.
What I enjoyed the most about this story was the contrast between the cowboys—who are explained as having adopted the way of the gun in response to the hazards of the trail, including white outlaws and savage Indians—and the buffalo hunters:
“All were burned dark as Indians, and they wore their hair long. Living an incredibly primitive life, they were hard and ferocious as red savages, and infinitely more dangerous.”
Few words are spared on the setting though they are telling:
“All was primitive, wild, raw as the naked boards of the houses that stood up gaunt and unadorned against the prairie stars.”
In a mere 12 pages, Howard tells a complete action adventure without the need to worry the reader over the childhood and bad parenting suffered by the hero as a child, nor the equally stifling, sentimental touch of assuring us that Steve Allison lived happily ever after.
Good story. I read this when I was nine in The Book of Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Jeff Jones.