The Happy Family

By B. M. Bower

"The Happy Family" is a 1910 novel by B. M. Bower. A sequel to "Chip of the Flying U", this installment revolves around the continuing adventures of the folks at the Flying U ranch in Montana, and in particular Andy Green, storyteller extraordinaire. A classic Western romp, "The Happy Family" is not to be missed by fans and collectors of vintage Western literature. Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan (1871 - 1940), more commonly known as B. M. Bower, was an American author famous for her novels, short stories, and screenplays set in the American Old West. Other notable works by this author include: "Casey Ryan", (1921), "The Long Loop" (1931), and "Chip of the Flying U" (1906). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction and biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Classic Western Fiction Library
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473346208

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The Happy Family

BY

B.M. BOWER

Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from

the British Library

Contents

B. M. Bower

The History of Western Fiction

ANANIAS GREEN

BLINK

MISS MARTIN’S MISSION

HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN.

A TAMER OF WILD ONES.

II

ANDY, THE LIAR

WOLF! WOLF!

FOOL’S GOLD.

LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS

PART TWO

B. M. Bower

Bertha Muzzy Bower was born Bertha Muzzy on 15 November 1871 in Otter Tail Country, Minnesota. In 1889, she moved with her family to a dryland homestead near Great Falls, Montana. Shortly before her eighteenth birthday, she began working as a school teacher in Milligan Valley. She worked there for one term before returning home, but used her experiences when describing school teachers in her novels.

In December 1890, she surprised her family by eloping with Clayton J Bower. The marriage was an unhappy one. After living with her family and in Great Falls, they finally settled in Big Sandy, Montana in 1898. It was living in Big Sandy that gave Bower an intimate knowledge of cowboy life and the open range. They had three children: Bertha Grace (1891), Harold Clayton (1893) and Roy Noel (1896). The family moved to a hayfield cabin, which Bower unhappily nicknamed Bleak Cabin. To afford the rent, the family took in Bill Sinclair, with whom Bower began a relationship. She lent him books and helped him with his writing, and he taught her about cowboy life and critiqued her early work.

Her first marriage deteriorated after she published Chip of the Flying U (1906). Her husband began calling her his ‘little red-headed gold mine’. The marriage ended after he returned home in a drunken rage. Using money lent to her by Sinclair and money she had earned from her writing, she moved to Tacoma, Washington to stay with her brother. The divorce was finalised in 1905, Clayton took custody of the elder children, and Bower received custody of Roy, with whom she returned to Great Falls. During this time, her career continued to blossom and she signed her first short story writing contract for Popular Magazine in January 1905.

Bower married Sinclair in August 1905 and had a daughter, Della Frances Sinclair, during a blizzard in January 1907. This same winter destroyed their breeding horse herd in eastern Valley Country and ruined their plans to move there in the spring. Instead, they moved to Santa Cruz, California. By 1911, the relationship between them had waned and they separated, Bower moving to San Jose, California. She also changed publishers and signed with the prestigious company, Little, Brown & Company.

In 1920, Bower moved to Hollywood where she married Robert ‘Bud’ Cowan, a cowboy she had met in Big Sandy. In 1921, they reopened a silver mine in Nevada and ran it until the Great Depression compelled them to move to Depoe Bay, Oregon. Their marriage lasted until Cowan’s death in 1939.

Bower claimed she began writing to survive her first marriage and to gain financial independence. Her first novel, published locally, was Strike of the Deadpan Brigade (1901), and her first short story published nationally was Ghost in the Red Shirt (1904). Later that year her first Western novel, Chip of the Flying U, was published as a serial in Popular Magazine. It depicted life on Flying U Ranch and the relationship between the cowboy, Chip, and Dr Della Whitmore. The book was so successful that in 1906, it was republished in hardcover with three watercolour illustrations by Charlie Russell. The book made her famous and she went on to write a series set within the Flying U Ranch.

Bower wrote 57 Western novels. The titles included: Cow Country (1921), The Lonesome Trail (1909), and Pirates of the Ranch (1937). Her novels accurately portrayed cowboy life and she wrote factually, using her first-hand knowledge. Her novels were light-hearted, humorous and contained little violence. Due to their popularity, some of her novels were adapted in Hollywood. Chip of the Flying U was adapted four times and each adaptation changed her narrative. She also collaborated with director, Colin Campbell, writing short stories and screenplays under the name Bertha Muzzy Sinclair. She used her experiences working in studios as a source for several of her novels, including Jean of the Lonely A (1915) and The Phantom Herd (1915).

Bower died on 23 July 1940 in Los Angeles, California at age 68. By the time of her death, she had sold more than two million copies of her novels, not including her short stories or articles.

The History of Western Fiction

Western fiction is a genre which focuses on life in the American Old West. It was popularised through novels, films, magazines, radio, and television and included many staple characters, such as the cowboy, the gunslinger, the outlaw, the lawman and the damsel in distress. The genre’s popularity peaked in the early twentieth century due to dime novels and Hollywood adaptations of Western tales, such as The Virginian, The Great Moon Rider and The Great K.A. Train Robbery. Western novels remained popular through the 1960s, however readership began to dwindle during the 1970s.

The term the American Old West (the Wild West) usually refers to the land west of the Mississippi River and the Frontier between the settled and civilised and the open, lawless lands that resulted as the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean. This area was largely unknown and little populated until the period between the 1860s and the 1890s when, after the American Civil War, settlement and the frontier moved west.

The Western novel was a relatively new genre which developed from the adventure and exploration novels that had appeared before it. Two predecessors of popular Western fiction writers were Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clarke (1770-1838). Both men were explorers and were the first to make travel and the frontier a central theme of their work. Perhaps the most popular predecessor of Western fiction was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). His west was idealised and romantic and his popular Leatherstockings series depicted the fight between the citizens of the frontier and the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. His titles included: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). His tales were often set on the American frontier, then in the Appalachian Mountains and in the land to the west of that. His protagonists lived off the land, were loyal, free, skilled with weapons, and avoided civilised society as best they could. His most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans, also idealised the Native American.

During the 1860s and 1870s, a new generation of Western writers appeared, such as Mark Twain (1835-1910) Roughing It (1872) and Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868). Both writers had spent time living in the west and continued to promote its appeal through their literature. Harte is often credited with developing many of the cult Western’s stock characters, such as the honest and beautiful dance hall girl, the suave conman and the honourable outlaw. These characters went on to be firm favourites in popular, mass produced Western fiction. At the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of people were undergoing the treacherous journey to the west to make a new life for themselves and the fictional stories and legends of heroes and villains who had survived in this wild landscape captured the imagination of the public.

Western novels became popular in England and throughout America through ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ and Dime Novels. These appeared in the late 1800s and were texts that could be bought cheaply (for either a penny or a dime – ten cents) as they were often cheaply printed on a large scale by publishers such as Irwin P. Beadle. Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) by Ann S Stephens (1810-1886) is considered by many critics to be the first dime novel. These sensationalist dime and penny novels capitalised on stories of outlaws, lawmen, cowboys, and mountain men taming the western frontier. Many were fictional, but some were based on real heroes of the west such as Buffalo Bill (the scout, bison hunter and performer), Jesse James (the American outlaw, robber, gang leader and murderer) and Billy the Kid (the American gunfighter). By 1877, these Western characters were a recurring feature of the dime novel. The hero was often a man of action who saved damsels in distress and righted the wrongs of the villains that he faced. For this hero, honour was the most important thing and it was something that the dime heroes never relinquished.

In the 1900s, Pulp magazines helped relay these tales over to Europe where non-Americans also picked up the genre, such as the German writer, Karl May (1842-1912). Pulp magazines were a descendent of the dime novel and their content was largely aimed at a mass market. As their popularity grew, they were able to specialise and there were Pulp magazines devoted specifically to Westerns, such as Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, and Star Western. The popularity for these magazines and for Western films in the 1920s made the genre a popular phenomenon.

The status of the genre in the early twentieth century was also enhanced by particular novels by different writers. One of the most influential Western novels was The Virginians (1902) by Owen Wister (1860-1938) which was considered to be a ground breaking literary Western. Wister dismissed the traditional idea of the solitary pioneer conquering new lands and making a new life for himself, and replaced this traditional character with the cowboy. The cowboy was a mix of cultural ideals, such as southern chivalry, western primitivism and stout independence. These were characteristics that many Americans cherished. Wister contrasted the lawlessness of the West to the order and civilisation of the East. He introduced new characters, such as savages and bandits who attacked the more civilised Eastern characters. His cowboy heroes shared many features with the medieval knights – they rode horses, carried weapons, fought duals and valued their honour above all other attributes. Zane Grey’s (1872-1939) Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was also a popular Western novel. Grey was a prolific writer and wrote over ninety books which helped shape Western fiction. He changed Wister’s cowboy into a gunslinger who was feared by criminals and held in awe by other civilians. Other popular Western writers in this period include Andy Adams (1859-1935) whose titles include The Outlet (1905) and A Texas Matchmaker (1904), Edward S Ellis (1840-1916) who wrote Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier (1860) and The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), and Bertha Muzzy Bower (1871-1940) who wrote Chip of the Flying U (1906) and The Dry Ridge Gang (1935).

The Western hero lived in an environment where climate, natives and the terrain could be his enemies, and it was his job to tame the wilderness around him, but in doing so he determined his own extinction. In bringing forward civilisation and settlement, they brought about their own demise and their reason for existing. Western heroes could only exist on the frontier. Rebels were popular heroes in the Western novel and these heroes were often compassionate to those less fortunate than themselves and fought for the downtrodden. They were loyal, idealistic, independent, and knew the difference between right and wrong. They fought for the good and made personal sacrifices in order that good would triumph. The hostile setting of the Wild West transformed the characters into survivors as they were forced to alter themselves in order to live in this new setting. The Old Wild West captured the attention of many as it exemplified the spirit of freedom, individualism, adventure and unspoiled nature. It depicted a world that was separate from organised, urban society and showed the life of the wilderness, frontier and its inhabitants. The Western romanticised American history and the treacherous, mysterious and otherworldly Old West.

The Happy Family.

To B.W.V.

...met the Ananias of the cow camp. I have knocked about cow camps, mining camps, railroad and telegraph camps, and kicked up alkali dust for many a weary mile on the desert. Yet wherever I went I never failed to meet him. He is part and parcel of every outfit.... He is indispensable, irresistible, and incorrigible; and while in but few cases can he be held a thing of beauty, he is certainly a joy forever—at least to those who have known his type with some degree of understanding....

From a letter.

ANANIAS GREEN

Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep, rode alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R. General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.

It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a party of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were quite new to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested in all pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew, besides observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.

Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking R, watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was what he himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his riding gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration the bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was beautiful to behold.

Lord, but this is a big, wild country, he was saying enthusiastically, and the people in it are big and—

Wild, supplied Andy. Yes, you’ve just about got us sized up correct. He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it is sometimes a bit wearisome.

Oh, but I didn’t mean that, the young man protested. What I meant was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men don’t run in grooves.

No, nor horses, assented Andy. Leastways, not in oiled ones. He was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.

You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part of the country absolutely new and raw, and see things—

Oh, it ain’t so raw as you might think, Andy defended jealously, nor yet new.

Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can’t, he asserted triumphantly, point to anything man-made that existed a hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in the cradle—a lusty infant, and a—er—vociferous one, but still an infant in swaddling clothes. Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures before the Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoken of him as gifted, and he had come to hear of it, and to believe.

Andy Green squinted at the shank before he made reply. Andy, also, was gifted, in his modest Western way.

A country that can now and then show the papers for a civilization old as the Phenixes of Egypt, he said, in a drawling tone that was absolutely convincing, ain’t what I’d call raw. He decided that a little more hammering right next the rowel was necessary, and bent over the anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood Branciforte could not fail to note his utter indifference to the presence and opinions of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to disputation at times—even to enmity; but not to indifference. He blinked. My dear fellow, do you realize what it is that statement might seem to imply? he queried haughtily.

Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a real, objected strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at the other disapprovingly. I don’t as a general thing find myself guilty of talking in my sleep, he retorted, and I’m prepared to let anything I say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous, out here twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain’t no infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the Pilgrim Fathers’ rock wasn’t nothing but a pebble to let fly at the birds!

Indeed! fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much intangible insult to one’s intelligence.

Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.

Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain’t none to blame for what you don’t know, but you’re talking wild and scattering. When you stand up and tell me I can’t point to nothing man-made that’s fifty years old, or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to something—or I’ve seen something—that’s older than swearing; and I reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions.

Are you crazy, man? Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.

Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my horse went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set afoot. Uh course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you don’t half know all that might signify to imply. This last in open imitation of Branciforte. "It implies that I was in one hell of a fix, to put it elegant. I was sixty miles from anywhere, and them sixty half the time standing on end and lapping over on themselves. That there is down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid hankering after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it’s about as ungodly a mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can show up; and I’ve ambled around considerable and am in a position to pass judgment.

So there I was, and I wasn’t in no mood to view the beauties uh nature to speak of; for instance, I didn’t admire the clouds sailing around promiscous in the sky, nor anything like that. I was high and dry and the walking was about as poor as I ever seen; and my boots was high-heel and rubbed blisters before I’d covered a mile of that acrobatic territory. I wanted water, and I wanted it bad. Before I got it I wanted it a heap worse. He stopped, cupped his slim fingers around a match-blaze, and Branciforte sat closer. He did not know what was coming, but the manner of the indifferent narrator was compelling. He almost forgot the point at issue in the adventure.

Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a way that wasn’t any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on. His cigarette needed another match and he searched his pockets for one.

What about the—whatever it was you started to tell me? urged Branciforte, grown impatient.

Andy looked him over calmly. "You’ve lived in ignorance for about thirty years or so—giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can stand another five minutes. As I was saying, I wandered around like a dogy when it’s first turned loose on the range and is trying to find the old, familiar barn-yard and the