New York 1837, and twelve year old Thomas
Walker’s father’s business, supplying spectacles, is not going well as the US
economy sags. However John Walker gets wind of a new invention by one Samuel
Colt – a factory produced (so cheap) hand gun with a revolving chamber that
gives “five pistols in each hand” – and decides to take the job selling them.
But the market for such weaponry is in the
wilder west – Illinois & Indiana – so equipped with an order book, a dozen
samples, and a working wooden replica, father and son set off by wagon as
travelling salesmen dealing in death and destruction.
At an early stop at a frontier town called
Milton, the sales pitch to a storekeeper is interrupted by a drifter emerging
from the bar, who ridicules the claims made (and the wooden toy) and forces
father and son into a humiliating exit from the store and the town.
But there is no escape; as they camp that
night their tormentor, and three henchmen, arrive to continue the discussion.
John Walker again attempts to walk away but pays the price of a bullet in the
back (no spoiler here – it is only page 30).
The men take the money and guns but leave Thomas
with the wagon, horse, wooden gun and order book, which he gathers up and
leaving his father’s corpse under a blanket returns to Milton.
His one aim is to get back home and to that
end he latches on to ex-ranger Henry Stands who is heading that way.
Reluctantly at first, Stands takes charge of him, and just as well as the
murderous gang realise Thomas’s testimony could get them hanged, and so are in
pursuit.
Adventures ensue with young Thomas also at
danger from religious do-gooders and a reclusive mountain man who is rather too
welcoming.
Related by the now mature Thomas looking
back, the prose reflects a mid-western slow drawl that adds authenticity at
some cost to fluency. But at just a couple of hundred pages that is no drawback
to a very readable western.
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