Big Hills
- ISBN-10
- 0615523951
- ISBN-13
- 9780615523958
- Category
- New Mexico
- Pages
- 142
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-08-01
- Author
- David Lloyd Sutton
Description
Big Hills A boy succeeds through hard work and imaginative violence. Young Anson Kerrigan begins his tale atop a tall red horse, leading an elderly mule, starving and alone in country both strange to him and full of hostiles. His possessions are minimal, and long worn. While the boy copes, sometimes at great effort and in tremendous danger, there is a reality to how he copes that makes this little western a gripping read. David Lloyd Sutton is moving into full novel work from a long history of short stories and fact articles, the articles largely in equestrian, martial arts, and firearms magazines. He says, "Every technique in this book is real, and I've either done it or seen it done." The author's experience set goes a long way toward explaining the immediacy and clarity of this read. Also some of its humor. The author adds, "I've come hard off a big chestnut just as often as my character." Anson meets remote dwellers in New Mexico's outlands, and both hostile and friendly folk along his trail. Eventually he decides that since he can't buy what he needs, he will simply have to make it. In the high reaches of the Sangre De Christos Mountains, he hunts for hides and meat, crafts an outfit, and at one point has a house guest. This proves to be trying and crowded. In Las Cruces, where he has gone to barter for necessities, ruffians insult the lad. His response is so fast it startles him ... too. After capturing the gang, which involves busting a cap and breaking some bones, Anson marches them out of town, and then discovers that they've been a local nuisance. His trading is more successful for having done the locals a service. Unfortunately for the newly equipped trader, one of the locals is a beautiful girl. That introduces a complication to his plans. After a trip to Deming Anson finds himself back in Las Cruces, where that lovely complication tells him the gang he kicked out has come back and exacted revenge for his good treatment. Those broken bones had belonged to the gang's leader. The townsfolk ask him to replace the sheriff that gang had chased off. Accepting, most eagerly, since he will be boarding in the same house as the complication, the boy embarks on town life, finding that being a sheriff is something he can do well. Then the vengeful bandits stage a night raid, and the battle is an explosive one. Anson is unhurt, through prior planning and a good deal of luck.He and the complication are planning a marriage by this time, and, the gang repulsed, the sheriff takes a vacation in his old hunting grounds to make wedding presents. That turns out to be where the defeated gang fled. A battle of maneuver and ambush stretches over long days of agony.The ending is obscured in gun smoke.
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