Review: Once a Fighter . . . -- Les Savage Jr.

Les Savage Jr. was a highly regarded Western writer during his lifetime, a career cut short when he died in 1958 at the age of 35 from a heart attack brought on by diabetes. Many of his novels and novellas are still in print, as resurrecting Savage’s work from the pulps and elsewhere was one of the most successful projects carried out by editor/agent Jon Tuska and his Golden West Literary Agency.

So I was a little surprised to discover that one of Savage’s novels, the Cavalry yarn ONCE A FIGHTER . . ., published as a paperback original by Pocket Books in 1956, was never reprinted and remains out of print today. The book first caught my attention because of its lurid but dramatic cover painted by Robert Schulz. Finding out it was something of an oddity in Savage’s career sealed the deal and made me read it. That’s my copy in the scan above.

The protagonist of ONCE A FIGHTER . . . is a Cavalry officer named Gil Tavister who is unjustly drummed out of the Army by a superior officer who hates him, partially because of political differences and partially because Tavister is romantically involved with the man’s daughter. With enemies on his trail, Tavister travels from Kansas to Texas, uncovers a conspiracy that threatens the Army, re-enlists under a false name, and winds up involved with the infamous Camel Corps, the ill-fated experiment that saw the Army import Arabian camels to Texas and Arizona to find out if they could replace horses. Tavister travels with the Cavalry to Fort Davis in West Texas and then on into New Mexico where a showdown with his old enemies takes place in the midst of an epic battle against the Apaches.

That’s the bare bones of the plot, and it’s a good one for a traditional Western. Savage’s characters are interesting and his writing is top-notch, very descriptive and action-packed. But at the same time, there’s a lot more going on in this book, including the likely reasons it was never reprinted.

Savage liked to push the envelope, as they say, especially when it came to the romance angles in his work. Given the pre-Civil War setting, the first part of this book reads more like a historical novel than a traditional Western, and there’s not just one interracial romance but two. Savage fought with his editors over this tendency in his work numerous times, according to Tuska. It’s particularly dominant in parts of this book, which may well have been responsible for editors shying away from reprints.

For another thing, ONCE A FIGHTER . . . has one of the most even-handed approaches to the causes of the brewing Civil War that I’ve encountered in a novel. There are sympathetic and unsympathetic characters on both sides, north and south, but the main villains are abolitionists, something that would have kept it from being reprinted in recent decades. At the same time, there are no apologies for slavery and it’s never presented as anything less than evil. It’s a complex book and offers no easy answers, other than a general disdain for fanatics and extremists on both sides.

All that said, ONCE A FIGHTER . . . is, at the same time, a rousing adventure yarn, and the final battle against the Apaches is spectacular, mixing camels and sword-fighting with the more traditional soldiers vs. Indians action. I also liked the fact that some of the book takes place at Camp Verde, the Camel Corps headquarters northwest of San Antonio, and Fort Davis in far West Texas, both places I’ve been. I really enjoyed this novel and think it’s worthy of being reprinted, but since that’s unlikely, if you want to read it you’ll have to hunt up a used copy like I did.