As I've said before, no poker games ever ended peacefully in the Old West, at least according to the Western pulps. This issue of NEW WESTERN is another example. Although violence hasn't broken out yet, you just know it's about to. So while the brawl's going on, you can read stories by Wayne D. Overholser ("Gun-Cure for Lava City" is a great title), D.B. Newton, C. William Harrison, Thomas Thompson, M. Howard Lane, Ralph Yergen, Theodore J. Roemer, and Charles Hammill, an author I've never heard of. Any Western pulp with Overholser, Newton, Harrison, and Thompson is going to be worth reading.
6 comments:
You've set yourself a challenge...a poker game in a western that doesn't lead to nor end in violence.
Surely someone noted that at some point from time to time in pulps, and wrote at least one story where the players keep being interrupted from their reasonably peaceful game and keep being dragged away by crisis of some sort extraneous to the game...
How many poker games in westerns don't happen in saloons and other public accommodations, as well.
I'm pretty sure I've read stories in which a poker game is played on a blanket spread out on the ground while the characters--usually a gang of outlaws or a bunch of cowboys--are camped. But games in saloons are much more common.
Historically, the most famous western poker game that DID end in violence was in the one in which Jack McColl bushwacked Bill Hickock in Deadwood. But McColl wasn't in the game, so the poker aspect wasn't necessarily primary.
Post-pul, Bill Pronzini's recentish THE BAGS OF TRICKS AFFAIR is another example of a pokcer story in the oldish west ending in violence, though in this case the violence is adoubled by the cover artist, who depicts a draw poker game even though the novel is explicit that stud poker was being played.
I think I've heard some old time radio western shows in which poker games did not end in violence, but mostly it was a matter of "that was in the past and how I got my stake, so let's now use that stake to go do something that will end in violence in a few days" sort of thing.
In Golden Age mysteries, it seems to me there were various examples of bridge games that eneded in violence, notably Agatha Christie's CARDS ON THE TALBE and Georgette Heyer's DUPLICATE DEATH for starters. I can't think of any examples of games of canasta, Russian Bank, or Old Maid which end in violence, but I'd not be surprised if they aren't out there.
There's also the SHERLOCK HOLMES BRIDGE DETECTIVE series of puzzle vignettes. I'd think Holmes might have also had success as a poker detective, but it does not seem to have happened.
And anyone trying to read my above comments in spite of all the typoes (it's late and I don't have my computer eyeglasses on) will probably be harboring violent thoughts of their own. Sorry.
There are also instances of poker games in the Western pulps where somebody has won ownership of a ranch or saloon or some such, but those are usually games that have taken place before the story begins.
I hadn't heard of that Pronzini book, but I looked it up and it sounds very good. May have to check it out.
I enjoyed the Pronzini book, in spite of the cover goof (and the cover, though inaccurate in that one respect, was otherwise attractive). I recommend all of the books in that series (Quincannon and Carpenter), but with the mild warning that if you happen to read the short story collection first, you'll be irked to find they went back and cannibalized several of the shorts to expand them into novels (at least two previous shorts are worked into THE BAGS OF TRICKS AFFAIR, for instance).
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