Louis L'Amour's THE DAYBREAKERS

The Daybreakers marks the point where the Sackett novels start to become Westerns, as Barnabas Sackett's latest round of descendants finally get tired of squabbling with lesser men in Tennessee and decide to strike out west to some farther, bluer mountains: the Rockies.

But first, New Mexico, newly added to the United States' territory and thus the target for arrogant jerk land speculators who think that the settlers of Spanish descent who have already been ranching there don't count as Americans -- don't count as people -- and so the land they've been working for a generation or three is actually up for grabs. Soon our Sackett boys, good lookin', sweet talkin' Orrin and our narrator-hero Tye ("the fastest gun alive"), meet up with the most arrogant jerk of them all, one Jonathan Pritts, whose surname should really end with a "ck" instead of "tts" if you know what I mean, but who also has a pretty blond daughter, Laura. Uh oh.

While Orrin is chasing Laura, who reminds Tye of a difficult horse he once knew, Tye meets up with a classy Spanish family, a grandfather and pretty granddaughter, Drusilla, whom Tye falls for almost as fast as Orrin fell for Laura. Uh oh again.

So conflict between the brothers seems inevitable as the Anglo newcomers and the Spanish landowners prepare to square off, but hey, these are Sacketts. And there is a lot more going on than just a land grab.

For on their way to meeting their lady loves, the Sackett boys join up with a cowboy outfit and hatch a plan to round up all the stray cattle that are wandering wild in Colorado, getting fat and juicy on mountain grass and clean water. And the leader of said outfit is an autodidact of sorts, Tom Sunday, who reads the Greek and Roman classics at night by the campfire and teaches Orrin and Tye how to read on similarly high-minded stuff that gives birth to ideas of making the West a civilized place where children can be raised safely and big D Democracy can flourish. What a guy!

Soon Orrin, already gifted with the gab and all the charisma you could care to call on, is dreaming big dreams about a future as a politician, little knowing that Tom's ambitions have always lay this way. Oops.

This is short, taut, tense story-telling at its best, but also its hokiest, which only adds to its charm. The Sackett family produce heroes of the kind that have become thoroughly unfashionable; there isn't a brooding anti-hero in the bunch. These guys are honest, forthright, capable, daring, brave, and romantic and loyal even when forces seem to conspire to drive a wedge between them. Both of them have to use their gifts of gab and gunfire to survive one fateful day when all that conflict comes to a head.

All in just 200-some pages. All because Orrin and Tye just wanted to do what these dudes did in this terrifyingly catchy but decidedly not cowboy song:

Louis L'Amour's RIDE THE RIVER

I'll admit to having put off picking up this one, even though so far the Sackett books have pretty much been a sausage fest (for all that each one of them is about the winning of a wife as awesome as each novel's hero deserves), partly because I wasn't sure how well Louis L'Amour could really do a female voice, mostly because it seemed from the opening paragraphs, that his version of said female voice was in backwoods dialect, and I'm still getting over the wounds dealt to me on that score by one Mr. Stephen King (see the footnote to my reaction to fan unfavorite Wizard and Glass). So, though I've been loving the Sackett novels as nice, somewhat wistful entertainment, I was not eager to plunge into Ride the River as I had been into its predecessors.

I'm glad I finally got over my aversion, though. Fans of The Hunger Games and whatnot take note: Echo Sackett is the spiritual ancestor of Katniss Everdeen and lots of other plucky young tomboyish heroines (Kaylee from Firefly and Amy Shaftoe from Cryptonomicon come to mind as well).. As in Echo was huntin' and killin' and feedin' her family long, long before la Everdeen volunteered as a replacement tribute in some young adult fiction. Except Echo uses guns. And an "Arkansas toothpick." And, yes, the power of her last name.

Ride the River takes place some two hundred years after the last Sackett story. Echo is a descendent of Kin-Ring, one of the the heroes of The Warrior's Path, and so also presumably of his stupendously badass wife Diana. Moreover, she is the youngest of those descendents, which means she's about to come into a special legacy. For back in the days of Barnabas Sackett, Barnabas had a great friend. And said great friend did well for himself. And felt that he owed so much to Barnabas that he instructed his heirs to make sure that if his line ever died out, all the money and a special puzzle box with a secret inside would go to the youngest descendent of Barnabas' first-born son, Kin-Ring.

Only problem is, Echo lives in Tennessee, and the lawyer working the inheritance case is in Philadelphia. So to the big bad city goes our little paragon, only to learn that the lawyer is more than a little crooked, and he's not the only bad guy after her windfall.

Enter the Chantry family, heroes of another Louis L'Amour series (of which I've only read one book, Fair Blows the Wind, and that reading was back in my early teens). These writers just can't resist the urge to link all their series and characters together, eh? And here it seems a tad gratuitous, but what the hell. Finian Chantry, octagenarian lawyer who can still kick ass, proves himself a more than worthy descendant of Tatton, and so, eventually, does his strapping (and yes, handsome) nephew Dorian, whom he sends after Echo to keep her safe on her journey home with a carpetbag full of gold.

But this is Echo, and she is a Sackett, so who do you think winds up rescuing/taking care of/worrying about whom? Even as she "sparks" on him.

But so basically this novel is fluff, but it's enjoyable fluff. I'm relieved to discover that later Sackett novels will take up with earlier generations again as a Sackett in the years after the War of 1812 is a bit boring even if she is dinky and cute and never misses with a rifle or a pistol and isn't above clocking you with the butt if you get into close range. I wouldn't mess with her, sho nuff.