Book Review: Heller with a Gun by Louis L’Amour
King Mabry has a reputation. Some of it’s earned. He indeed is a fearsome man when holding a gun, having killed eleven men “not counting Indians.” But he’s at pains to point out that those men were all armed and facing him at the time. Mabry’s also not keen on being hired for his gunfighting skills, when his preferred skill set is riding herd. The men he killed in the Civil War was because it was war, and the men he’s killed since came looking for violence. In fact, right now he’s riding to tell a potential employer that he’s rejecting a job that’s sure to lead to murder.
Mabry survives an assassination attempt and takes the would-be hit man to the nearest outpost to heal up. While there, Mabry meets a small entertainment troupe that’s headed up into Wyoming. Tom Healy, a fine Irish tenor and their manager; Doc Guilford, piano player; Maggie, who’s been in the business far too long to do anything else; Janice, who’s not the best actress or singer but has a rare beauty; and Dodie, an ingenue who grew up in Colorado and is not as naive as she looks. They’ve hired a guide named Barker, who Mabry doesn’t like the looks of.
Despite this, and despite Mabry’s immediate interest in Janice, King Mabry has other business and can’t get involved. But once that business is concluded, Mabry decides to follow the wagons into Wyoming, assuring himself that it’s just out of curiosity. But the smell of gold and blood is on the trail ahead.
By the time Louis L’Amour wrote this 1955 novel, he’d had several of his stories adapted to movies, and had gotten acquainted with show business people. So we can guess that the small troupe in this tale is based a bit on his experiences with Hollywood. There’s relatively little time given to the show business aspect, however, with the majority of the plot devoted to trying to survive the trek into Wyoming in winter despite robbers and a renegade band of Sioux warriors.
King Mabry is a reluctant killer, who spends the first part of the story trying to avoid gunfights and murder. As is standard for Westerns, eventually his hand is forced. He and Janice share a mutual longing, which causes a bit of a love triangle, as Tom Healy is also very interested in Janice, and Dodie makes it clear she likes Mabry. The bad guys also are especially interested in Janice, but have much shorter term plans for her.
Janice, for her part, likes Mabry in general but wants him to discard his guns and promise not to kill…while they are still being hunted by the robbers! I don’t think that relationship is going to work out.
Content note: While Mabry doesn’t include Indians in his official kill count, he otherwise doesn’t show prejudice towards them and bases his behavior towards them on their actions. Also, it’s all but stated outright that the robbers want to rape the women.
This is an okay Louis L’Amour book, but not one of his top-notch ones. It feels like something he pounded out between weightier stories.
The movie version was titled Heller in Pink Tights, starred Sophia Loren, and featured much more show biz than survival action.
