Customer Reviews

Six Bits a Day

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This was the last of the Hewey Calloway novels to be written but ,chronologically ,it comes first in the trilogy. and should be read before the other two books in the series , " The Good Old Boys " and " The Smiling Country".

A youthful Hewey and his younger ,more staid brother Walter venture into West Texas in the late 1880's in search of work ,having been orphnaed following the death of their father.the find nought but slim pickings ,work being hard to come by .Hewey enjoys the cowboy way of life but rairoads have signalled the death of the long traail drives and they are looking for ranch based work .Walter, a more pragmatic type , aspires to marry and settle into domesticity and has an altogeher tighter grip on a dollar than the gregarious and free spending -when he has any money-Hewey .
They make friends with a Ranger ,Len Tanner and this stands them in good stead when they are engaged by two men to run cattle ,which turn out to have been stolen .It is only Tanner's intervention that saves thenm from summary execution as cattle thieves and helps them secure work with C C Tarpley ,the legitimate owner of the cattle in question .The only bugbears for Hewey are now the enmity of the esacped rustler Smith who has sworn vengeance on him , his brothers' increasing affection for Eve , a waitress in a boarding house where they briefly resided and an escalating feud between his employer and Jessup a neighbouring rancher.He gets a taste of the trail drive life when sent on a trip to San Antonio to bring back some cows ,in the charge of the cantankerous but good hearted Padgett and on the drive they befriend a discharged black cavalryma,Gabe and become embroiled in erace tension and an a potential range war.

It is an episodic novel ,warm and open hearted in tone but unafraid of touching on some serious issues such as racism and the changing economic situation in the West in which cow punchers are more often than not pawns in the hands of unreasonable and parsimonious ranchers .Hewey is the dominanat figure in the book and an untypical Western hero-guns are not his forte and he is a fun loving ,hard working uncomplicated man who loves his life while knowing petrfectly well that his world is changing and will not long endure.The humour in the book is a key feature and helps make this a Western likely to appeal to people who have little or nothing in the genre previously

For some reason SIX BITS A DAY seemed just a bit lightweight in comparison to the other two Hewey Calloway books, THE GOOD OLD BOYS and THE SMILING COUNTRY. Maybe it's because this last "prequel" in the Calloway trilogy presents a younger, slightly more callow version of Hewey. Maybe because older is sometimes better. Nevertheless, this is still a darn fine piece of writing. No surprise there, of course, as I've come to think of Elmer Kelton as the Dickens or Twain of the American western genre. And Hewey Calloway could even be Twain's Huck, a little older, after he "lit out for the territory."

The book has all the elements of a pretty good western - cattle rustlers, scrapes with the law, a little bit of shooting - mostly "off-stage," good guys, bad guys and even a cattle drive. But Kelton's kind of western is usually a bit gentler, spoofing the kinda stuff you often got in the Saturday matinee westerns. Hewey is a bit cautious, if foolhardy, and doesn't fit the matinee model for white-hat hero. He himself admits to a Texas Ranger just before an imminent confrontation with a baddie: "I'd better tell you. I'm real consistent with a pistol. I miss every time."

But the truth is, Hewey has a good heart and a kind of down-home smarts that makes seem just heroic enough - a genuine "good old boy," if there ever was one. Having met Hewey as an older man, I'm glad I got this chance to have met him as young man, one who'd finally escaped the drudgery of his farming boyhood and traveling (farther) west to seek his fortune as a real cowboy. And his ambitions are pretty modest, as he comments one night by the campfire -

"This is the life we was born for ... Breathin' the clean outdoor air, eatin' from the fat of the land. We got good horses to ride and nobody around to boss us. Paradise couldn't be no better."

Indeed, Hewey. Who needs all the complications and responsibilities that come along with success and wealth? Ride 'em, cowboy.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

Elmer Kelton wrote about people, a story teller. He is unique and original. If you have not read one of his stories you should, "Six Bit's a Day" is good a place to start as any. He left Louis Lamour in the dust long ago! His characters are real and you come to care for them. No plastic super heroes here!

Reading Round-Up
For this month's book, I'm recommending Six Bits a Day, by Elmer Kelton. This is the prequel to the story I told you about last month, The Good Old Boys. The same two main characters Huey and Walter Calloway are portrayed in this story as hardworking, cattle driving cowboys set on the ranches and ranges of west Texas. As always, Huey is easy going, fun loving, and doesn't care about saving a dime. His brother Walter, however, has matrimonial aims to settle down with a good woman and claim his own piece of land. Huey does his best to distract Walter from his goals by signing the two of them on to drive six hundred head of cattle back to C.C. Tarpley's Pecos River ranch. Huey's aim is to pull Walter away from the distraction of the branding fire stoked by the sweet girl who lives in the boarding house. Range wars, murderers and conniving saboteurs are out to snatch the cattle away before Huey and Walter can deliver them to C.C.'s spread.--Robin Moore

An excellent read. Read it from front to back in two days time. Elmer Kelton should be considered a Texas treasure. Comparable reads for 2007: The Pumpkin Roller,by Elmer Kelton; The Longhorns, by J. Frank Dobie; and The Lonesome Gods, by Louis L'Amour.

Not much of a 'mystery' but a fun ride -- pun intended -- through the old West. I enjoyed the trip.