‘The Violence of Men’

James LaFond's review of Gunman’s Debt by Robert E. Howard

Pages 139-162 of The Last Ride, 1978, Berkley Medallion Books

John Kirby, a cowboy and gunslinger, on the lookout for men feuding with his kin down in Texas, rides into a fledgling Kansas town and politely gives over his gun belt to the sheriff. The nagging realization that one is at the mercy of corrupt society and the criminals allied with politicians—even when society only consists of a hopeful main street—nags Kirby as he enters a saloon where a man is beating a woman, a man wearing a gun belt.

Gunman’s Debt is too simple a story to give away any more of the plot. As in most western yarns—short or long—there is an unrealistic proliferation of serendipity. Howard's characters rescue the story from its own crude plotting by acting according to their various unharmonious natures.

Gunman’s Debt does not end as predictably as it begins, spends no time on sentimentality and roisters along, chaos building on every page until the surviving characters literally burn the curtain before it can come down. This would have been a great Spaghetti Western.

Over the course of the story, Howard ladles out bloody themes conveyed in blood:

-Women cannot be trusted in clutch situations.

-Hard men, especially loners, must make and maintain alliances with others of their kind, and that this may only be accomplished by adhering to a code of honor.

-That settled societies all become corrupt and the only way they can be cleansed is through reversion to barbarity.

-And, most importantly, that a society that bans men from arming themselves, never disarms all men, only those targeted for death and diminishment.

(c) 2018 James LaFond