1959-10-03 — Page 14

THE CHINA-- MAIL, SATURDAY, OCTOBE

•

Dee Wells ON NEW BOOKS

Why gentle Quasia became a killer

THE widow's lonely homestead on the Texas border was vulnerable

J

very vulnerable

---to Indian

attack. When the Comanches rode up in full feathered regalia, the widow's son bravely brand- · · ished his gun. He was 10 years old. And the gun was unloaded.

escort, a US.

The Iliaire Cavalry Beutenant, smiled: No need for a gun, he saith. Indians were friendly,

These

And su they were. When Davy vislied their camp, he sat cross-legged by the Are and listened to, their legends, The chief, Quasla, even young tousled the boy's straw-coloured hair, and smiled in friendly wonder et his alcy-blue eyes.

SO LONELY

When, suddenly, the friendly Comanches decamped, Davy and Bitle sister Jinny missed them and were lonely again.

A

But day later, Quasia's friendly Indians reappeared. They cantered over the rise, and the children ran forward to greet them.

There was Quasia, his chief's feather clamped into his plaits by a bear clow.

There was War Axe

}

Each homestead set up, each who then ford the river to the wagon trail across the platus, Indian camp.

of territory Linned each bit

Lieutenant Byrne protects his spells misery for the Indians. They know no life but hunting. Indians, But he is unable to if they cannot hunt, they starve. profect their drying buffalo ment. Riding away, the Rangeri As the while man moves in, skish the ropes and trample the their hunting lands disappear. meat into the muddy river, And plunder whito mirn hide-bunters

slaughtering the Indians' food supply, the great herds of buffalo that roam the plains.

*the

In Kansas City a buffalo hide fetches up to five, dollars, The white men know this. And the Indians know that if the herds Bre butchered they and their people will starvė.

Some Indians have

white man's

accepted the

rule. They have signed treatles. They have given up their lands and gone to Reservations. They will still be allowed to hunt, yes. But the will be orderly now. hunis Restricted. And escorted by the U.S. Cavalry.

At this, the Comanches desert the white man's rule and "pro- tection" for ever. Breaking camp secretly, they plungo across the river to wreak bloody vengeance.

by

Outnumbered

Rangers more of them are killed. One of them is Quasin's own brother. The brother who had long tried to convince him of the infamy of white men. Quasia is at last convinced.

ነ

The

This is the moment.

The Byrne Bought. moment moment so many men died in order that he should attain.. All be must do is pull the trigger. Yet he hesitates,

EBSCO his

"Kill him then!"'" Negro Sergeant Salem. does it matter?"

"What

Jast scen

But Byrne has at hate for the pointless, destruc- live exercise it in. And the book ends with a throwaway Une. A Throwaway line, that is heart- felt whispered plea for humanity to triumph over hate.

"I can't," he said

"He said this as if he could not believe it melt, .. He throw away the gun and looked at his emply hands. His picked

up the water canteen ant walked down to Quasia."

"KILL!" Is their only thought as they retreat across the river. And the first in="

It's a very fine book. Not a famous white person they long or difficult word in is. But, kill is the tiny Innocent Jinny. it will take a long and difficult Arine Norvall's loss is total. time for anyone who reads it to Davy, kidnapped. By now per forget it. QUT OF BOUNDS has dead. Little Jinny is dead.

•

on f

There was Red Buffalo, the

The numbed mother sits clutch-

child's ing her dandy, the sun ginting on his

dead body, Quaria is one of the Indians quill-trained buckskin trousers who has agreed to life

und staring vacantly into space. Looting on this scene. Byrne There were the others the Reservation. He genuinely likes

white men, and has learned in is unable to fight down, his own Widn't one whose names they

that their his mission school

their bitter rate and hate. Quasia But they were Indians. Their friendly Indians, word is to be trusted So long has been a "good" indian, but

didn't Perhaps Davy

even as he can believe this, Quaska what is a good Indian? A good guera the truth when Quasia can keep his Comanches peuce. Indian is a dead Indian. no smile now-scooped him up full and low-abiding. at. the gallop and dung him verms the saddle.

know,

Perhaps Jany thought it was a game. If so, it was a game she didn't want to play. When Pakawa leaned towards her, she stepped back Instinctively.

But not for enough. The

Lieutenant Byme CSCOT LS Quasia's Comanches on a week's

ONE BY ONE.....

buffalo hunt. Ов по account Troatics forgotten, his orders are they to cross the Red River to return the Indians to their Re- into Texas. That is Texas scrvation forgotten, Lieut Byrne Hanger territory. And too many rides off with Anne Norvali's homesteaders have been hysterical words ringing in his

cara. "Kill them. Kill the murdered by Indians for the

*******X115

Indian's fingers twisted into her Rangers to have any tenderness all"

ress and swept her off the left for red men. ground High in the

air.

he Tossed her, catching her by one Jeg as she fell.

UNDER ESCORT

Then, swinging her under- hand like & polo maliet, be galloped towards a post and crashed her head at full force into it. Ife dropped her limp body in the dust and galloped ; otr.

Now the scene is set for the

horror of Byrne and his 10 soldiers help momentum-gaining the Indians to look for their two men, whose only thought is buffalo. But what they find is

to kill, pilted against each other. carnage. The hide-hunters have Quasia has headed for the been there before them. And badlands, Desert country, with have left a wide plain covered no water and no protection with bloody carcasseu rotting in from the merciless sun. Elusively the fierce sim.

the Indians keep just ahead, luring the Covalrymen to oure death in this untracked waste- land-

Byrne muffles his nostris to keep from vomiting at

the

stench. Quusia and his Indians

can only stare the devastation One by one Byrne's horses This terrible scene of friend, before them. Devastation and men die from hunger and ship soured into hate and that means a starvation winter, thirst. The rest struggle o murder is the turning point of To them, this slaughter is theft, THE BUFFALO SOLDIERS by Even friendly Quasia feels the John Prebblu (Secker and first king of betrayal. Warburg, 158.), the most power- fully real and complex Western novel I have ever read.

Only technically is this book a novel. For everything in it really happened. Every last convolution of its tightly inter- faced human dilemmas is true Its thane is hote. That he who hates most, and is strongest, wins. Or does her

SILENT ESCAPE

stead they find all that is left Close by the Norvall home

Deep in the desolate country they nd Davy's grave.

At death march's end, only a handful are left.

the of Camanches, only Quasia is still soldiers, only the close-in kill alive. Of the Byrne has any heart left for

There is only one waterhole

of the butchered hend 1wo small buffalo are all they get Not enough for the winter. But wilsin miles. Byrne gets there' better than nothing. The Indian women hang the meat to dry on the banks of the Red River.

Two of Quasia's Indiana go in search of more buffalo. Dis obeying orders, they go астаса

The time is post-Civil War. The late 1860's. America is expanding further and further the forbidden Red River. One West.

of them is killed by Rangers,

first. knowledge that

And waits, secure in the Quaska must come-er die of thirst.

Crazed with thirst, knowing he is walking to his death, Quasla crosses the plain towards Byrne. At 20 yards Byrne raises hist carbine."

The Girl Who Heard The

Call Of New York

ANATOMY OF ME. By

VE

Fannie Hurst. Cope, 16s.

ERY Jewish, very.

German, and together American, the Hurst family dwelt in St

by George

Mr Barr sald gently that he must be going. "No dramatics, no anything except that ho kissed my fingertips carefully, picked up his carefully placed

al Malcolm Thomson hand glover, and closed the

Fannie Hurst'e picture of that

Louis during the early distant age is both touching and

years of the 20th vivid; the work of an expert

century.

They

were reasonably well- to-do thanks to the shoo factory into which papa plough- ed back far more money than mama wanted kim to do, and they kept one oppressed maid.

Mema (born Rose Koppel) a great talker, amusing and hot-tempered. She had an obsessivo dread of poverty.

was

NOT LIKE PAPA

novelist.

NO DRAMATICS

front door softly as if not to leave the imprint of his depar- ture on the silence."

life seems to have been 107 The only real love in Fannie's

Jacques Danielson, a talented and elegant pianist, Everything|

far as - was against him so' The family and the city are, Fannie's parents were concern- of course, only the background. ed. He was a musician, that is, This is Fannie Hurst's' autoblo- & Bohemian. And, though a Jew, graphy; the lovet, dreamz and he had been born in Moscow. problems of an over-weight Dlanster, (which nature crrod), ̈ over- dressed (thanks, to mama), and determined young woman of talent.

Knowledge is 'power, said papa She was the reverse of papa, in his sententious way, encour

"Papa, who had a fine, sirong nose, looked down if and made repetitious · PERUNDUAGGIénta: Foreigners beat their wives. Foreigners wear size 1B collars."M In spite of her, parents' oppo- sition, Tannie married. Jacques.

a heavy conventional man with aging his daughter along the By that time she was a figurd in rigid beliefs: eg, Foreigners beat paths of study. But mama hud New

York The magarkies,

their wives and wear mall her, thotighis on marriage and after rejecting her stories 24 collar sizes. Modesty is a girl's her eys on two nka Jewish boys times, wore accepting them. finest raiment The Tay But the first serious suitor, The Hurste bad one child, Mr Barr, a Minnaarm boy, Fannie, clever, geniallive, and was Beottish Presbyterian by whiare she wikler ambitious. Now a suo descent

sadaful sovellat andatory-taim, #rannie, aged 18, a iried

She had reached the point

nreded papa and DEBUTANO More. But

this book, full of regretmand galety;

sarahile looks back wlis no Clair explain why her parent were shows the has never ceased to

and humbur on dowie Top: 15. aa kuuperable obrable to the miss them,

--[London Express Service),

SO SAD! NO LOVE IN THE COLDEST CLIMATE OF ALL

WILL shot, Won't she? If she does, this Moscow

vamp will shatter a long-standing record in the Russian theatre.

For in his book, ENTERTAINMENT IN RUSSIA (to be published by Thomas Nelson), Faubion Bowers reports that in all his Moscow theatre-going -except for, a few chaste pecks in established clasale he never saw so much as a single kiss exchanged between hero and heroine.

And, he adds, the puritan Communist Govern. ment is dead against such soppy Westernisms.

A sad state. No love in the.. coldest climate of all.

(Picture from Moscow's Operetta Theatre production of "Chenita's Kiss").

JACKYS DIARY

by

Jacky Mendelsohn Age 322.

It's a cosy life at the big store

BOND STREET STORY. By Norman Collins, Collins. 161.

THIS

HIS kind of episodic old-fashioned novel, woven round a large institution; will not, I suspect, survive the Telly age. For this is a sort of Emergency Ward 10, only about a Bond Street department store instead of a hospital.

Doubtless Mr... Norman Highgate pond in his spara Collin's talent scouts will' al- ready have spotted it as a likely

successor to the medical saga under a belter tille,

No worries

It has all the soap-opera Ingredienta.. Extreme length;

lots and lots of different char actera from different walks of

time, and whose friend / is Mir Bloot, the resplendent chlof floor-walker whose hobby 1s bridgies and who makes * dienstrous sécond marriage, to the cripple Helty, who plays poker with bookies? Yünners.

་

The rewards

And to the relationships life, Dil bound together spread outwards and outwards tenuously by, their connection in the beat soap-opera tradition. with Rammeil's,

Lots of things happen. but nothing unexpected, nothing nasty, nothing worrying, nothing illuminating.

Chairman of Rammell's of Bond Street is Sir Charles, eccentric Edwardian; managing director is Eric, victim of dyspepsik and a culture hungry wife; third generation Tony is in danger of becoming one of those long-baired types, till he trit his hand behind the counter in shirts, and falls, for

ttle Irene in silks.

Irene wanted to be an actress indo Nammell'a becouse her futher whe Privelt, the abcond floor-walker, who sails model Jachts It's

but

Last week Mommy took me to a Pet Chop To Buy a Puppyon A Count of My Pet Frog ran a way

PS: it's called a Pet Chop cause if You Per The wrong KIND of Animal in THere You COULD Get Your finger chopped off

दंड

©1959, King Features Shaidicate, 175 World rights ADSETVED.

PET CHOP

Me

Thero's - Marcia, the dumb languorous model who runs through all the Rammell's malès starting at the bottom and end- ing up her ladyship; and there's Mrs Hammell and Mrs Privett and Ted, and, oh, lots of others. And the nice thing is that everyone gets rewarded,

There's retirement and pen- sions for the old, marriage and hoppy-ever-after for the young, and for the middle-aged the consolation prize of recon- cillation,

What could be leer?

---Richard ·

Lister

ACTUALLY he didn't RUN But more Like Hopped.

You Can Tell when a Puppy is Healthy cause his nose is Wet. With me it's just the opposit

Dog is SOME TIMES Called MAN'S PEST Friend. That's on A count of You gotta Take Him our for his Exersize Even if it's Raining,

an other THING YOU gotta watch out for When You Buy a Dog is that He don't HAVE Height-Rophobia CWhich means he's La scared of Height or else You LL never Be able to Train HOT To Sir upc Beg

Недству

DOG

Shiffle

Sick Me

ALSO when you buy a Puppy Dog, it's good if' The GOT a PeT-Agree.. Which is a ThinG THAT! LiF HE don't have one, People Can't Agree

"on What?

Kind of a Pet he is..

18-30

Sofinely We Didn't Buy A Puppy BUT SOT a Gold Fish in STEAD, ANYHOW he's Easier To feed. as ALL YOU GOTTA do is REMEMBER To Give him More Water As soon as He drinks up what's in the bowl

Lee Fish

Food