Man-Branders of Dodge City by Art Lawson
In the mid-1870s, Dodge City, Kansas, just inside Osage territory and heir to the prosperous Santa Fe rail line, flourished as the last of the great prairie cattle towns. With the state legislature backing up homesteading farmers, Abilene, Ellsworth, and Wichita were moving on to agriculture based economies, and most of the lucrative Texas longhorn trade was left to that branch of the Chisholm Trail leading to Dodge. In 1877 alone, 22,940 cattle left the city, headed east on the train. Prosperous times would last relatively unabated until 1884 when the state of Kansas denied any of its increasingly fenced lands to Texas herds, citing outbreaks of splenic fever.
Prosperous times, and legendary too. Wyatt Earp worked in Dodge City as a lawman. So did Bat Masterson, and his brother James. Doc Holliday lived in town.
And according to Art Lawson, sometime in there, though the year isn’t immediately clear, Texan Dan O’Connell and his British friend Archibald “The Duke” Telford squared off against a trio of mean coyotes called the Clancy brothers in the writer’s Complete Novel, “Man-Branders of Dodge City.” Broken down into five hard driving chapters, the entire tale isn’t all that much longer than some of the other entries in the July 1942 issue of 10 Story Western Magazine, but it’s packed with action and contains a neat subplot that eventually nails down the date.
Cattleman Dan O’Connell is on his way into Dodge City to prepare a place for his 10,000 head of Texas longhorns when he crosses the Cimarron and meets up with Swift Clancy, saloon-keeper and hell bent vigilante with the entire town in his criminal grip. Clancy offers “insurance” against agitators, protection for O’Connell, his men, and his beef…for a price. Brushing off the obvious shakedown like any good ramrod should, O’Connell says he’ll take his chances.
Within hours, he’s set up and knocked down on the boardwalk in front of the Texas Bar.
Witnessing what he believes to be a malicious attack on an innocent young girl, O’Connell steps in to the rescue, only to be accused by Joe and Pete Clancy of accosting the maiden himself. He sees the setup –but too late. A fight breaks out. Townsfolk gather to gawk. The girl skeedaddles. A tall stranger from the crowd lends Dan a hand. They both get clobbered. When he wakes, Dan is tied up in the Blacksmith’s shop. Joe and Pete are heating the irons. Just before the town marshal arrives, the brothers brand our hero with an arbitrary letter.
Through it all, Dan hangs tough:
They ripped the shirts from their prisoners’ backs. Dan stared straight ahead. Pete came over with the bar. It was white hot at the tip and tiny sparks leaped from it.
“What’ll it be?” Pete asked.
“Make it an R,” someone suggested.
The iron touched his chest. Try as he would, Dan could not keep from cringing from it. A terrible sickness welled up within him as the searing bar slowly drew its pattern on his chest.
“I’ll kill you for this,” he told Pete.
And that’s only the first chapter. In Chapter Two, Dan learns that the tall stranger is an Englishman named Archibald Telford, called Duke, or sometimes referred to with the definite article: The Duke. (There’s some irony there, because it was O’Connell’s mannerisms and speech patterns, not Telford’s, that reminded me of none other than the real-life Duke, John Wayne.)
O’Connell talks to the town marshal, who tells him to drift. Determined to see his cattle heading east on a rail, he and Telford hatch a plan. In the midst of their palaver, they’re interrupted by the girl who was involved with the initial ruckus on the board walk. Naturally, she’s an innocent pawn of the Clancys. Before she can explain, the men send her packing, though not without first commenting on how familiar her features seem.
While the trail boss makes his way back to his herd, Telford pretends to leave town.
In Chapter Three, Dan helps roust his herd, then sneaks back into Dodge. Telford has led the Clancy boys on a goose chase out of town. Unmolested, Dan commandeers an entire train, complete with a lumber car he’ll use to build loading chutes and a keg of whiskey for his cowhands. Instead of bringing the herd to the railroad, O’Connell is bringing the railroad to his herd. (Double page illo above.)
When the Clancy boys realize the duplicity of The Duke, they hightail it back across the prairie, through Dodge, and straight into Chapter Four and the Kirkland farm, a patch of land on the railroad tracks where Dan is loading his cattle. Shots are fired. Chaos ensues. The good guys fan out across the prairie on their bellies and, making careful use of their weapons, pick off the oncoming vigilante gang. With most of his herd loaded, Dan sends the train packing. Eventually he and his men win the day –or evening as it turns out—and the time of day makes all the difference in a nifty strategy Dan employs:
Then he had an idea that might help for a while. He passed the word along to Duke: “Spread out farther, Duke. We’ll pretend these boys we’ve knocked out are our own men. It’s so dark the Clancys won’t know who they are. They’ll just see ‘em lying in a row with us and they won’t know if they are alive and fighting—or as dead as a busted barrel of herring.”
Chapter Five dawns with the next morning. Now that the cattle are safely away on the train, Dan and the Duke are back in Dodge for their final confrontation with the Clancys. The men have a score to settle. Once again, they find themselves stopped short by the unnamed Girl. She tells them that the situation has been explained to her father, a man who is now offering his support. Dan says it’s too late for that and proceeds to the Texas Bar where he finds the three Clancy brothers and tries to goad one of them into shooting first, to “dot the initial branded into my chest –with a bullet.”
But who will fire first?
“Maybe we ought to take a vote—or something,” Pete suggested.
Dan laughed at him. “Skunks don’t vote,” he jibed. “Neither do snakes. And this is the first time I ever heard of a yellow coyote wanting to mark a ballot. What’s the matter, Pete? No guts, huh? Afraid you might get hurt?” Dan stopped laughing. “Okay, jellyfish.” Deliberately he turned away from Pete to brother Joe. He was playing what he called skunk psychology. He asked, “ You want to jot down that period, Joe? Seems the weasels’ too scared to try.”
The story finishes up with Dan taking a non-lethal slug, but not before he lays a leaden sheet into the three ornery siblings, and not before an enigmatic punch line from the author.
Just before darkness got him Dan learned why the Clancy henchmen had not shot him in the back. The marshal was in the door with his two hard-faced deputies.
The girl was there too. Dan saw her hurrying across the floor toward him. He knew now why she had said her father would give him protection. With the two of them together the family resemblance was plain. She was the daughter of the lawman who had formerly refused to help him. She had told her father the truth of the fight on the boardwalk.
Yesterday, I suggested that a more careful reading of 10 Story Western might offer a greater reward. This last bit from Lawson is the sort of thing I meant. Typically, I’d read the story as a straight ahead piece of fast fiction and move on, as a good many readers might. I’d maybe overlook the historical element, the fact that this is Dodge City in its heyday, that two hard faced deputies flanked the town’s marshal.
Real life: Bat Masterson’s brother Ed was killed in Dodge in April of 1878. With that, Charlie Bassett became city marshal. It would be a violent year for the growing cattle town, a year during which Wyatt Earp and his brother James worked as deputies.
Perhaps Lawson’s heroine was none other than Charlie Bassett’s daughter, and the deputies his villains feared were two of the legendary Earps. If so, its puts the story firmly in 1878.
on November 25, 2009 at 1:25 pm
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Great post. From what little I’ve read of Lawson’s work, he turned out consistently good stories. Like a lot of the authors who wrote for the Western pulps, he’s almost completely forgotten today, so it’s very nice to see a post like this. I’m looking forward to your thoughts on the rest of the issue!
on November 25, 2009 at 1:47 pm
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Dang, boy! You tell a fine tale. And that Lawson feller ain’t bad, neither.
on November 25, 2009 at 5:41 pm
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An excellent survey of an intriguing story. Like Dave says, you know how to tell a tale.
on November 25, 2009 at 7:23 pm
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Thank you for the kind words, folks. I generally don’t give these old pulps much thought –so it’s a lot of fun to slow down and do it. Next up are the “Novelettes” — “Wilderness Partners” by John Starr and “Sixguns, Salvation–And Sin!” by Fred Gipson, aka: the author of OLD YELLER.
on November 26, 2009 at 12:14 am
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Thanks for the review of this story. Most collectors/readers don’t bother to comment at length on the stories, so I’m always interested when I come across any extended discussion. Another thing of interest since I also collect pen and ink interior pulp art, is the illustration at the beginning of the story. I can’t figure out the artist but the illustration is very well done and quite detailed showing a horse, five human figures and a train engine. For all this the artist was paid maybe $10.00. I have managed to find many of the cancelled checks paid by Popular Publications and Munsey for the artwork and stories, so I now have an idea what they were paid. Cover artists for instance were paid anywhere from $75 to $150. Doesn’t sound like much but in the 1940’s $150 would be around $2,000 in today’s money. Hope you discuss additional stories.