First published in Cross Plains #4, in 1974, reading from pages 127-37 of The Last Ride by Berkley, 1978

Grizzly Elkins is one of Howard’s most savage characters, a moccasined buffalo hunter who brings to mind Wulfere the Skullsplitter from the Cormac MacArt stories. Grizzly Elkins really is a Viking in the Old West:

“Elkins stood out, even in that throng of tall men. He was hairy as a bear, burly and powerful as a bear. Burned dark as an Indian, he wore the buckskins and moccasins of an earlier day.”

Not only is Elkins dressed for another time, he carried the morals of another time. When the card dealer refuses to give him change for his twenty-dollar gold piece, he kills him with his knife, immediately, openly and becomes a marked man, hunted by the entire community, including law men who do double duty as crooks. The action is brutally comic, with Grizzly Elkins glaring through his small eyes at a world changed for the worst, a man of another age more akin to the enemies of his race than of other white men.

Law-Shooters of Cowtown is quite an enjoyable read.