"Story goes that he was a man of proper wit and adventurous
spirit...nobody
knows from whereabout he come from, but it don't seem to
matter much. He
was a young man and ghostly stories about the tall hills
didn't scare him
none.
He was looking for a Hawking gun, .50 caliber or better. He
settled for a
.30, but damn, it was a genuine Hawking, you couldn't go no
better.
He bought him a good horse, traps and all the other truck
that goes with
being a mountain man, and said goodbye to whatever life was
down below..."
Colloquial as hell, a sort of backwood version of Chandler's
"Down these
mean streets" rap, doncha think?
Another film I can sorta see as frontier noir is the
adaptation of Brian
Moore's Black Robe. And I still think someone should do a
nasty, dark
version of Last of the Mohicans.
And I know these aren't really crime flicks, but then, it's
only because
there wasn't enough law around back then to make anything a
crime. There's
certainly enoughmurder and treachery and revenge and all that
good stuff
like to keep the things moving....
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
The February issue has the results of The 1998 Cheap Thrills
Awards.
Plus thrilling detective fiction from Robert Iles and Leigh
Brackett. And a
contest! Yippy!
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