[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 2

We start with his short story - "Gift of Cochise". That's the base his bestseller and movie "Hondo" came from. Here we study it backwards, looking for technical devices, per W. S. Campbell.

The spread for “Gift of Cochise” as it appeared in Colliers (5 July 1952)

OUR WORK SO FAR: Louis L’Amour got his real start in submitting short stories to the pulp magazines in 1938. This was coincident with his attending classes at Oklahoma University, taught by Walter S. Campbell. That course have an extra letter grade to any story purchased and published. And students were expected to write a 5,000 word story every week, which was then reviewed by Foster Harris, a veteran writer and editor.

Campbell structured his course as non-credit, non-degree — just for freelance writers. And had to place it under the Journalism School as they already dealt with training freelance journalists. It was modeled after his experiences in the Oxford program as a Rhodes scholar.

L’Amour’s big break started when one of his short stories was optioned in 1952 and produced by John Wayne. This was “The Gift of Cochise” which Wayne produced as the movie “Hondo”. L’Amour optioned the novelization rights and released his book at the same time as that movie in 1953.

We’ll take up the dissection of “Cochise” using Campbell’s approach - as he wrote in the same text L’Amour would have been trained in - Campbell’s “Professional Writing”, published in 1938.

Here, Campbell says to study and dissect the story backward. You read the first scene of a short story, then go to its end and read backwards, one scene at a time, making notes. The reason for this is to be able to study at this story at your own pace and not be swept away by the prose (which L’Amour is already very good at accomplishing in his readers.)

In my research, I found a PDF of the original short story, although I’ve not been able to find that link again - so here it is as I found it:

The Gift Of Cochise Louis L'amour

109KB ∙ PDF file

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And the full description of how to do this dissective type of study is in my earlier article:

Forgotten Bestseller Secrets 01

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The Gift of Cochise - first and last scenes

I’ve separated the story into obvious scenes. You can dispute the length of these with me — few space breaks define them.

1 - Beginning

Tense, and white to the lips, Angie Lowe stood in the door of her cabin with a double-barreled shotgun in her hands. Beside the door was a Winchester '73, and on the table inside the house were two Walker Colts.

Facing the cabin were twelve Apaches on ragged calico ponies, and one of the Indians had lifted his hand, palm outward. The Apache sitting the white-splashed bay pony was Cochise.

Beside Angie were her seven-year-old son Jimmy and her five-year-old daughter Jane.

Cochise sat his pony in silence; his black, unreadable eyes studied the woman, the children, the cabin, and the small garden. He looked at the two ponies in the corral and the three cows. His eyes strayed to the small stack of hay cut from the meadow, and to the few steers farther up the canyon.

Three times the warriors of Cochise had attacked this solitary cabin and three times they had been turned back. In all, they had lost seven men, and three had been wounded. Four ponies had been killed. His braves reported that there was no man in the house, only a woman and two children, so Cochise had come to see for himself this woman who was so certain a shot with a rifle and who killed his fighting men.

These were some of the same fighting men who had outfought, outguessed and outrun the finest American army on record, an army outnumbering the Apaches by a hundred to one. Yet a lone woman with two small children had fought them off, and the woman was scarcely more than a girl. And she was prepared to fight now. There was a glint of admiration in the old eyes that appraised her. The Apache was a fighting man, and he respected fighting blood.

"Where is your man?"

"He has gone to El Paso." Angie’s voice was steady, but she was frightened as she had never been before. She recognized Cochise from descriptions, and she knew that if he decided to kill or capture her it would be done. Until now, the sporadic attacks she had fought off had been those of casual bands of warriors who raided her in passing.

"He has been gone a long time. How long?"

Angie hesitated, but it was not in her to lie. "He has been gone four months."

Cochise considered that. No one but a fool would leave such a woman, or such fine children. Only one thing could have prevented his return. "Your man is dead," he said.

Angie waited, her heart pounding with heavy, measured beats. She had guessed long ago that Ed had been killed but the way Cochise spoke did not imply that Apaches had killed him, only that he must be dead or he would have returned.

"You fight well," Cochise said. "You have killed my young men."

"Your young men attacked me." She hesitated, then added, "They stole my horses."

"Your man is gone. Why do you not leave?"

Angie looked at him with surprise. "Leave? Why, this is my home. This land is mine. This spring is mine. I shall not leave."

"This was an Apache spring," Cochise reminded her reasonably.

"The Apache lives in the mountains," Angie replied. "He does not need this spring. I have two children, and I do need it."

"But when the Apache comes this way, where shall he drink? His throat is dry and you keep him from water."

The very fact that Cochise was willing to talk raised her hopes. There had been a time when the Apache made no war on the white man. "Cochise speaks with a forked tongue," she said. "There is water yonder." She gestured toward the hills, where Ed had told her there were springs. "But if the people of Cochise come in peace, they may drink at this spring."

The Apache leader smiled faintly. Such a woman would rear a nation of warriors. He nodded at Jimmy. "The small one—does he also shoot?"

"He does," Angie said proudly, "and well, too!" She pointed to an upthrust leaf of prickly pear. "Show them, Jimmy."

The prickly pear was an easy two hundred yards away, and the Winchester was long and heavy, but he lifted it eagerly and steadied it against the doorjamb as his father had taught him, held his sight an instant, then fired. The bud on top of the prickly pear disintegrated.

There were grunts of appreciation from the dark-faced warriors. Cochise chuckled. "The little warrior shoots well. It is well you have no man. You might raise an army of little warriors to fight my people."

"I have no wish to fight your people," Angie said quietly. "Your people have your ways, and I have mine. I live in peace when I am left in peace. I did not think," she added with dignity, "that the great Cochise made war on women!"

The Apache looked at her, then turned his pony away. "My people will trouble you no longer," he said. "You are the mother of a strong son."

"What about my two ponies?" she called after him. "Your young men took them from me."

Cochise did not turn or look back, and the little cavalcade of riders followed him away. Angie stepped back into the cabin and closed the door. Then she sat down abruptly, her face white, the muscles in her legs trembling.

When morning came, she went cautiously to the spring for water. Her ponies were back in the corral. They had been returned during the night.

Discussion:

Here we have The main characters of Angie Lowe and Cochise introduced. Side characters of her children Jimmy and Jane appear. And the western setting of her solitary ranch is established.

Of note is his use of emotion in sentences, and the clipped style of dialog between Angie and Cochise. All involve the reader directly. The opening paragraph says this is an action story, involving the Amerindian wars - lots of specific guns mentioned. And the stories unsuccessful attacks on the cabin and ranch are measured out in slight detail.

All scene-setting. And all elements contribute to transporting the reader.

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15 - Ending

She walked quickly into the house and stopped before the stove, her mind a blank. She looked around her as if she had suddenly waked up in a strange place.

She heard water being poured into the basin by the door, and heard him take Ed's razor. She had never moved the box. To have moved it would—

"Sight of work done here, ma'am."

She hesitated, then turned with determination and stepped into the doorway.

"Yes, Ed—"

"You're Angie Lowe."

Surprised, she turned toward him, and recognized his own startled awareness of her. As he shaved, he told her about Ed, and what had happened that day in the saloon.

"He—Ed was like that. He never considered consequences until it was too late."

"Lucky for me he didn't."

He was younger-looking with his beard gone. There was a certain quiet dignity in his face. She went back inside and began putting plates on the table. She was conscious that he had moved to the door and was watching her.

"You don’t have to stay," she said. "You owe me nothing. Whatever Ed did, he did because he was that kind of person. You aren't responsible."

He did not answer, and when she turned again to the stove, she glanced swiftly at him. He was looking across the valley.

There was a studied deference about him when he moved to a place at the table.

The children stared, wide-eyed and silent; it had been so long since a man sat at this table.

Angie could not remember when she had felt like this. She was awkwardly conscious of her hands, which never seemed to be in the right place or doing the right things. She scarcely tasted her food, nor did the children.

Ches Lane had no such inhibitions. For the first time, he realized how hungry he was. After the half-cooked meat of lonely, trailside fires, this was tender and flavored. Hot biscuits, desert honey… Suddenly he looked up, embarrassed at his appetite.

"You were really hungry," she said.

"Man can't fix much, out on the trail."

Later, after he'd got his bedroll from his saddle and unrolled it on the hay in the barn, he walked back to the house and sat on the lowest step. The sun was gone, and they watched the cliffs stretch their red shadows across the valley. A quail called plaintively, a mellow sound of twilight.

"You needn't worry about Cochise," she said. "He'll soon be crossing into Mexico."

"I wasn't thinking about Cochise."

That left her with nothing to say, and she listened again to the quail and watched a lone bright star.

"A man could get to like it here," he said quietly.

Discussion:

Here we will be noting plants and pointers. In short, plants are usually physical things that are placed to be available for later use by characters. They can also be facts, persons, motives, or conditions. Pointers are clues and tips about what actions should happen sometime in the future.

We’ll also look for tags — which describe the character’s appearance, and thought habits and attitudes. These are character traits: human, social, typical, and individual. (More about this is described in my Forgotten Bestseller Secrets book — in its Characterization mini-course, coming soon.)

Obviously, the character of Ches Lane will need to be established. We see here that he has morals and scruples, but has also lived a hard life of trails and travelling. We’ll have to have it explained about why he came later in the story.

Cochise (a probable villain) was just a mention here — so that conflict has been solved. Obviously, something to do with Ches. This triangle of characters is the core.

And Angie’s husband Ed is rounded up in a short paragraph. So that has to be dealt with by Ches.

And the story ends with the promise of a budding romance. You see the emotional nervousness in Angie via tags. So we’ll expect to see strife that keeps these two separate.

More interesting is the emotional change between how Angie is portrayed at the start, and then at the end. Two different types of emotional stress, with the resolution in between.

Getting Started

This is every bit a detective mystery by studying in this fashion. We know it begins and ends well. We know there are changes that happen to Angie. But how did Ches enter the picture? And how is Cochise dealt with?

We have thirteen scenes to review here and study how all this comes about. You and I will have our work cut out for us. After this dissection, then it’s refreshing to study the whole story forward and see how L’Amour ties everything together to keep the reader reading.

And I can see you are tempted to get that PDF above and read it through. I agree, you should.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take this story apart. And I’ll keep these dissective posts in some sort of table of contents so you can second-guess my brief notes and find more writing devices L’Amour used here.

Once “Cochise” is wrapped up, we’ll start in on Hondo proper — at least that’s the plan. But I don’t know how all this will turn out. Real life doesn’t allow you to skip to the ending…

Regardless, I hope to see you here next week to continue the process of finding out how L’Amour pulled all this off.

Missed What we Covered Earlier?

[Pro Writing] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 1

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For Paid Members

I’ve extracted the text and attached my epub file of Cochise below. (Use Calibre or similar to convert it to plain text.)

Also included is the full “Forgotten Bestseller Secrets”, which has the full mini-course, plus two additional mini-courses on characterization and plot building. All based on Campbell’s works and those of his instructors.

As well, I’ve included Campbell’s contemporaries, Foster Harris and Dwight V. Swain in “The Basic Formulas of Fiction”. This will explain more about the technical points we’ve covered above.

Needless to say, you ought to upgrade in order to speed your progress as a professional writer.