Conagher

Mrs. Teale, a woman who has been widowed without knowing it, runs a stage way station and dreams of raising cattle when her husband returns with the stock he is supposed to be buying. Taking care of her two step-children, she shows courage and foresight. Once she realizes that her husband is not coming back, she welcomes Conagher into her home and heart.

The descriptions of the western landscape and the people who lived there in the late 19th century make this book worth reading.

I read this book over several days on my morning bus ride into work. Waiting for that bus in frigid five-degree weather gave me a great appreciation for Conn's trek through the snow searching for the rustled ST cattle. L'Amour described it and paced it perfectly. It served to show Conn's integrity and commitment to his word, to his employer and to a higher ideal of right and wrong.

But Conn isn't a one-dimensional white-hatted cowboy, he's introspective and questions his unflagging commitment to the brand. He knows his romanticism resulted from reading too much Walter Scott as a boy. He does a lot of thinking and dreaming while alone on the range.

The first chapter, in which Conagher does not even appear, is perhaps the highlight of the book. It can stand alone as a short story and I'd highly recommend its inclusion in a Norton Anthology of American Literature.

I can give Conagher only four stars because of several shortcomings that stuck in my craw. First a major continuity error that would have been caught had L'Amour gone back and revised/tightened the book (something for which he's famous for not doing). In the closing chapters Kris Mahler states that the man Conn killed in the hills back of Teale's was his riding partner Hi Jackson. In fact, Conn killed Hi Jackson on the Seaborn Tay ranch far south of the Teale homestead. (The man Conn killed in the hills was never identified.)

A second major shortcoming was the rushed pace of the conclusion. After a several-page blow-by-blow account of a barroom brawl, L'Amour suddenly whizzes us through Conagher's epiphany, throws us a Dickensian coincidental meeting (a textbook example of Deus ex machina), and ushers the reader out the door.

Other more minor complaints include the lack of grief and concern expressed from Jacob's children after their father's disappearance and the inexplicable noble turn taken by the loathsome Smoke when the Ladder Five gang has Conn down and vulnerable. These are the cowards who earlier shot Conn in the back!

These flaws are frustrating because with a little refining L'Amour could have better fulfilled the book's potential. Nonetheless, despite everything, and with a tip of the ten-gallon to Louis' talent, Conagher is great reading. I recommend it highly (especially to women looking to sample the Western genre). I'm already enjoying my fifth L'Amour novel (Reilly's Luck) and am looking forward to tackling many more in the future.