this thing about westerns

i was a fan of western novel's, by westerns i mean the shoot'em up cowboy stuff. i grew up on the sackett, sudden, dusty fog, "the KID" and waco lore, they were my friends.

admiring and yet hating the apache's and comache's tracking skills.these were the people i grew up with.

Sudden was a hero, he was fast on the draw. then i met Cap Dusty Fog. he was also fast, i mean real fast. wonder what would have happened if Sudden had met Dusty. mostly they would have gone after the bad guys together(after all they were the good guys)

the heroes on the frontier could do no wrong, they would help any lady in distress,irrespective of the said lady's primary source of income. they understood that the ladies did not choose to do what they did.

the heroes were always clean shaven and took care of their horse before they settled down for the day,never crapped,rarely had a bath,even though it was hot and dirty. this sure was an ideal world to live in, where right was might.

then i met this guy, they called him Herne the Hunter. this guy's life gets into a mess about 3 pages into the book. his wife gets raped by a rail crew, her life is derailed(no offence to anyone but pun intented), somewhere during the next few pages she kills herself.

then "the Hunter" gets after the guys who railroaded his wife. i think it takes another 6 books before he finishes the job.

"the Hunter" goes after the bad guys along with his neighbour, who drinks a lot and has wet dreams while on the sleeping on the range, and loves killing "redskin" as he "affectionately" calls the native indians. the neighbours other fancy was beating up ladies who work the nights.

you get a drift of the kind of stuff i am talking about? right?

it was somewhere during this time that i kind of lost the facination for the west.

it has never been the same since i met Herne the Hunter, a mighty fine man he was, if i may say so myself. quick on the draw, a man who used to get angry, used to feel dirty till he took a bath, a man who used to get hungry.

just a man like anyone of us.