Dark Valley Destiny

by Unknown

  Howard, who felt man's hate for man to be the normal state in human relationships, seemed relieved by this avowal.

  After lunch Price settled down in Bob's small room to talk about writing. Price, who had read some of the manuscripts of the humorous Westerns on which Bob had begun working, said with enthusiasm: "This is great stuff. You'll make the big slicks or the quality mags; this is real!"17

  In the course of the conversation, Howard explained that he did not outline a story in advance. As we have learned from other sources tnd from surviving synopses of his unfinished stories, this was not altogether true. Many of his stories were carefully planned. Some writers, whose subconscious minds do the necessary planning before the Writing begins, do seem to write "off the top of their heads." But a Writer using this technique often finds that his subconscious has gone on strike, leaving him stranded in mid-story. The fact that Howard did lometimes try to write in this plunging fashion may explain why he left lo many tales uncompleted. He may also have exaggerated the extent to which he wrote without planning, being swayed by the romantic picture of the writer who, afire with his own genius, whips out a masterpiece without the mundane tasks of plotting and outlining.

  Price later reminisced: "He composed instinctively, without any conscious attention to form. He told me, 'Of every three stories; I scrap two and offer the third; it's easier than trying for conscious technique which would give me perhaps only a third as many stories, all of which Would sell. What in hell's the difference; I like to write.' "18

  Howard was fascinated by Price's discussion of the martial arts, •uch as fencing. He later wrote Lovecraft regretting the fact that fencing masters were rare in Texas and that, when he and a friend tried to teach themselves using army swords as foils, he ran his sword through his friend's hand. After that, he never tried to fence again.19

  As the afternoon wore on and the two young men were closeted in Robert's small room, Wanda Price and Mrs. Howard were chatting in the parlor, a few steps from the closed door. The telephone rang. When Mrs. Howard answered, Wanda heard a woman's voice asking for Robert. Hester told the caller that her son was not at home, although his voice Could be heard through the closed door.20

  Who the caller was remains a mystery to this day; but this strange incident suggests that Robert, at twenty-eight, had sewn the seeds of friendship with at least one of the local girls, that she was attracted by the charm that Bob could display upon occasion, and that she, at least, did not dismiss him as the town eccentric.

  The incident, moreover, may shed light on Robert's lack of feminine companionship. We know that a year later, when her son did begin dating regularly, Hester Howard did all she could to discourage the friendship, including the interception of telephone calls. Had there been earlier tentative efforts by Bob to make friends with a local lass, they would have withered away in the heat of Hester Howard's implacable hostility.

  Of this, if he knew of it, Robert said nothing to his visitor. After all, to permit his mother to turn away his feminine acquaintances would not have cast him in a heroic mold—a mold Bob Howard fostered to mask his very vulnerable spirit.

  The next day, April the eleventh, Howard drove the Prices out to see the countryside. Price was less than ecstatic about the scenery: ". . . nothing to see except 'post oak', the scrubbiest of scrub oak, and vast stretches of space, relieved only by far off mountain ranges."21

  As Bob talked Texan lore along the road to Brownwood, the car neared a clump of mesquite. Price reports that Bob stopped the car, took his pistol out of the glove compartment, and stalked toward the mesquite in Western gunfighter style. Soon he returned to the car, saying: "I have a lot of enemies; everyone has around here. Wasn't that I figured we were running into anything, but I had to make sure . . . the way everyone is feuding even to this day . . . you're likely to run into an enemy almost everywhere you go."22

  Texans were notorious for the japes they played on tenderfeet. They liked to persuade their visitors that they were about to be scalped by Comanches or shot by badmen, so we asked Price whether Howard's bizarre behavior was a Texas "put-on." Price emphatically rejected this idea, saying that it would have been entirely out of character, considering Howard's high regard for Price and the earnest efforts he made to offer hospitality to his guests.

  At sunset the Prices bade farewell to Bob at a service station on the outskirts of Cross Plains. Ed Price preferred to drive at night in the hope that his 1933 license plates would pass unnoticed until he reached California, where the cost of new plates was low. Mindful of what Price had revealed about his meager earnings from writing during the early months of 1934, Bob said in parting: "Ed, I know you are going to make it. You God-damn well are going to. Good luck!"23

  As Bob Howard waved him off, Price was left with an impression that has not faded in the intervening years. He concluded that Howard was:

  A complex and baffling personality one can't—couldn't—get all at once. An overgrown boy—a brooding anachronism—a scholar—a gripping, compelling writer—a naive boy scout—a man of great emotional depth, yet strangely self-conscious of many emotional phases which he unjustly claimed he could never put into writing fiction—a burly, broad faced, not unduly shrewd-looking fellow at first glance—a courtly, gracious, kindly, hospitable person—a hearty, rollicking, gusty, spacious personality loving tales and deeds that reeked of sweat and dust and dung of horses and sheep and camels—a blustering, boyishly extravagantly-spoken boy who made up whopping stories about the country and people and himself, not to deceive or fool you, but because he loved the sweep of the words and knew you liked to hear him hold forth—a fanciful, sensitive, imaginative soul, hidden in that big bluff hulk.24

  Many years later, in a letter dated June 21, 1944, Dr. I. M. Howard Confirmed the accuracy of Price's character analysis. The letter begins thus:

  Dear Mr. E. Hoffmann Price:

  Just received the copy of Diablerie. You do not know how real your picture of Robert's personality was portrayed. So real it was that I could almost feel as if Robert stood before me again, alive, laughing, talking as when he was here with me; that I could feel again the warmth of his living person, could see him smile and hear his soft voice in all its penetrating clearness, even the tone of it wholly unimpaired. The wonder of it, how one with only two visits could gather so perfectly his personality. Having lived right with Robert in such close association with him from his babyhood to the end of his life, I could not have portrayed the man as you did with only a passing hand touch with him. Robert had many acquaintances, but only two boys in Cross Plains were close to him. Indeed, Robert was a lonely man because the people around him understood little of his life and the character of the man. His writing little appealed to those around. The newsstands carried the magazines which carried his stories for a time, but quit altogether handling WEIRD TALES and other magazines carrying Robert's stories. Robert is dead to the people of Cross Plains; he is, I dare say, a forgotten memory. . . .25

  E. Hoffmann Price was not the only visitor to the little house in Cross Plains in 1934. In May, Truett Vinson spent his one-week vacation with Bob. The first day the pair drove southwest in Vinson's car to Ballinger, looking for movies and beer. In the course of this drive, they conceived the idea of a longer trip; and the next morning they set out, Vinson again at the wheel. After a hard day, they reached the famous Carlsbad Cav erns. Howard was astounded by the giant cave system. He felt that nature had indulged herself in a riot of fantasy and suspended natural law in creating this twilight underworld. As he clambered along narrow ramp* and stairs that led upward from the depths that engulfed him, Howaril imagined that he was living a nightmare in his waking hours. Being » young man who had experienced silence and scenes no less eerie during a lifetime of night terrors and nightmares, the great, gray vaults struck an echo of horror in the depths of his heart.26

  The friends went on to El Paso, at the western tip of Texas, and crossed over to Ciudad Juarez to drink beer and tequila befor
e returning home by a southerly route via Fort Stockton and San Angelo. They had driven 1,137 miles in four days. On his return Howard sent his pen pal Lovecraft a large, hairy arachnid, either the evil-smelling, harmless vinegarroon or one of the mildly venomous burrowing mygalomorpli spiders commonly called "tarantulas," safely enclosed in a bottle ol alcohol.27 Then he settled back to his writing.

  Conan stories, previously discussed, poured out of his typewriter. But Howard also found time to spin other yarns of derring-do. He plunged into a series of tales about Francis X. Gordon, which he had started in the twenties, and sold five. Nine others were never finished, and three were finished but never sold. In these stories Howard's fictional Gordon, a former gunman from El Paso, Texas, is a soldier of fortune in the Middle East during the early years of this century. Gordon combines the traits of the real "Chinese" Gordon and Sir Richard Francis Burton, as described in Dreamers of Empire (1929) by Achmed Abdullah and T. Compton Pakenham, and of Thomas Edward Lawrence, as set forth in With Lawrence in Arabia (1924) by Lowell Thomas. Both books Howard had read.

  Gordon, of Scottish and Irish descent, is a reincarnation of Bran Mak Morn and Turlogh O'Brien, the heroes of earlier series. Like his literary forbears, he is dark, of medium size, with preternatural strength, speed, and agility. Most of the stories are laid in Afghanistan, where the natives dub him El Borak, "the Swift." With the typical pulp writer's carelessness, Howard assumed that the general language of Afghanistan was Arabic and gave his Afghans Arabic surnames, whereas in truth the people speak Farsi and would never have given the American among them the corruption of an Arabic name.

  Still, the stories are fun to read. In all, hooves thunder, rifles crack, pistols bark, scimitars swish through the air, and blood spurts with gusto. Many of the stories end with Gordon and a villain dueling with scimitars. If the invention of the repeating rifle and the revolver had made swords obsolete even in distant places, Howard would not admit the fact.

  As examples of these stories, "Hawk of the Hills" involves Gordon in intrigues among the British, Russians, and Afghan brigand-chiefs. "Son of the White Wolf' has Gordon in Arabia during the First World War, emulating T. E. Lawrence. "The Lost Valley of Iskander" brings Gordon to a valley occupied by descendants of the army of Alexander the Great. "The Daughter of Erlik Khan," one of the best tales of the series, finds Gordon penetrating the forbidden city of Yolgan in pursuit of a treacherous Englishman. In Yolgan, Gordon comes upon the beautiful Yasmeena (named after Mundy's heroine), whom Gordon finds hiding from her villainous princely husband and whom Gordon undertakes to spirit out of danger. Like Mundy's heroes, and those of most storytellers of the first quarter of this century, Gordon maintains a chaste relationship with the lady. Whatever the truth about the amorous encounters of real adventurers, this convention of the selfless rescuer remained largely in place until the end of the Second World War.

  Howard began a parallel series with a hero named Kirby O'Donnell, physically a doublet of Francis X. Gordon. O'Donnell wanders around Afghanistan disguised as a Kurdish soldier of fortune, shooting and sabering people who get in his way. Of the tales in this group, Howard wrote three and sold two, "The Treasures of Tartary" and "Swords of Shahrazar."

  Two historical novelettes by Robert Howard appeared in Oriental Stories during 1932, and two more were published in 1933-34 after the magazine changed its name to Magic Carpet. The inspiration for both was clearly Harold Lamb's tales in Adventure Magazine, for Howard greatly admired this leading pulp writer and self-made Orientalist.

  It was during the early months of 1934 that Robert Howard at last discovered the form of the Western story that afforded him the scope for his distinctive talents. He applied to the Western scene the techniques that had worked well with his humorous boxing stories. The result was a long series of excellent burlesques, a source of many hearty belly laughs.

  Howard had previously sold three straight Westerns: "The Vultures of Whapeton," "Vultures' Sanctuary," and "Boot-Hill PayofT," this last in collaboration. But although others, unsold in Howard's lifetime, have now been published, the straight Westerns have met with only moderate success.

  The humorous Westerns, on the other hand, are memorable works. The primary series is told in the first person by Breckenridge Elkins, a hillbilly from the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada. Breckenridge, who bears the name of a village forty-five miles north of Cross Plains, is built along the lines of Conan. He is also equipped with a broad, frontier sense of humor. In one story, he tells us: "A bullet smashed into the rock a few inches from my face and a sliver of stone taken a notch out of my ear. I don't know of nothing that makes me madder'n getting shot in the ear." Later in the same yarn he reports: "Meanwhile the other'n swung at me with his rifle, but missed my head and broke the stock off against my shoulder. Irritated at his persistency in trying to brain me with the barrel, I laid hands on him and throwed him head-on agen the bluff____"28

  In one of these carnivals of cheerful mayhem and murder, Breck gets a letter from his aunt:

  Dear Breckenridge:

  I believe time is softenin' yore Cousin Bearfield Buckner's feeling toward you. He was over here to supper the other night jest after he shot the three Evans boys, and he was in the best humor I seen him in since he got back from Colorado. So I jest kind of casually mentioned you and he didn't turn near as purple as he used to every time he heered yore name mentioned. He jest kind of got a little green around the years, and that might have been on account of him chokin' on the b'ar meat he was eatin'. And all he said was he was going to beat yore brains out with a post oak maul if he ever ketched up with you, which is the mildest remark he's made about you since he got back from Texas.29

  In another story Breckenridge comes upon a young woman who has been treed by a puma. Breck politely doffs his Stetson and explains to the girl the habits of the puma, cougar, panther, or mountain lion. At this point the cat reaches up to claw at the girl's foot. Breck says:

  I seen this had went far enough, so I told him sternly to come down, but all he done was to look down at me and spit in a very insulting manner. So I reached up and got him by the tail and yanked him down, and whapped him agen the ground three or four times, and when I let go of him he run off a few yards, and looked back at me in a most pecooliar manner. Then he shaken his head like he couldn't believe it hisself, and lit a shuck as hard as he could peel it in the general direction of the North Pole.

  "Whyn't you shoot him?" demanded the gal, leaning as far out as she could to watch him.

  "Aw, he won't come back," I assured her.30

  Here again we see Howard the nature lover. Breckenridge's actions contrast with the usual Western attitude toward wildlife, which may be summarized as: "If it moves, shoot it."

  It is interesting to note that the Breckenridge Elkins stories are placed a long way from Robert Howard's home territory—1,200 miles, in fact—in an area of which Howard had no more firsthand knowledge than he had of Afghanistan. Neither do these tales touch upon the farming and oil-boom life of Central Texas, with which Howard was familiar. So it is incorrect to say that Howard had at last begun to use his own background in his fiction.

  In the broad sense of the word fantasy, meaning a nonrealistic story in contradistinction to a tale of the supernatural, the Elkins yarns are fantasies. Like P. G. Wodehouse's tales of upper-class British life, they are humorous burlesques, exaggerations of real life; and that is part of their charm.

  Real life, despite its occasional humorous episodes, is never so consistently funny. This is not to say that narrowly realistic fiction is "better" than the more fanciful tale. Some readers prefer one, some the other type of story, and either can be done well or badly. Most fortunate is the reader who can detect quality and, with this limitation only, can enjoy a wide range of genres and types of fiction.

  Early in 1933 Howard determined to try selling through an agent. His correspondents referred him to Otis Adelbert Kline, a Chicago-based literary agent who had himself written a series
of successful sword-and-planet novels in the Edgar Rice Burroughs manner. Kline urged his new client to try writing detective stories, a field in which Howard was uncomfortable. Still, in time Howard completed several detective stories bordering on science fiction or fantasy.

  Two of the successful detective stories appeared in the February 1934 issue of Strange Detective Stories. One, published under Howard's own name, was retitled by the editor "Fangs of Gold." This tale introduced the hero Steve Harrison, a burly city detective who solves his problems by shooting the villain or flooring him with a medieval mace in a no-nonsense sort of way. The other story, renamed "The Tomb's Secret," bore the pseudonym of Patrick Ervin; but while the magazine advertised another tale for its next issue, the monthly folded before Howard's "Lord of the Dead" could see print.

  Howard did sell two more Steve Harrison stories. "Names in the Black Book" was, like "The Tomb's Secret," about a sinister Oriental cult, reminiscent of Sax Rohmer or Robert W. Chambers. The other, "The Graveyard Rats," appeared in Thrilling Mystery for February 1936. Four more Steve Harrison stories failed to sell. Robert Howard found no enjoyment in laboriously piecing together clues like a puzzle. He much preferred the rattle of swords and the shouts of adversaries in action stories. So, in 1935, he abandoned the detective field entirely.31

  Many and varied were the tales Robert Howard wrote in these years of furious literary effort. There were so many that his biographers could not possibly list them all without ranging far from the story of the author's life. Some involved Crusaders; some, strange goings-on in darkest Africa or Asia; some—unsuccessfully—tried to deal with modern times. But Howard would have none of the genre called science fiction. He wrote: "There is so little of the scientific about my nature that I feel no confidence in my ability to write convincingly on the subject."32