A few days later, he accompanies Patrick Henry and some others to a ball and there he encounters the woman and her daughter; both cut him dead.
The other girl does not.
VANDERDYKE: a legendary frontiersman, his exact role uncertain, a mysterious man who moves through the forest like a ghost, feared by the Indians, admired by others, loved by some. He has fed the hungry, treated the sick, helped the helpless. He is a dead shot and a fearless fighting man of great strength and skills. He seems to have never been anywhere but the forest, is as much a part of it as any wild creature. He appears, then disappears.
A patriot, he carries news to Henry and his comrades of impending trouble on the frontier. The Iroquois are being supplied with ammunition, there is trade with them going on with the seeming consent of the British government, and a shipment of powder, shot, and whiskey has been attacked by other Indians and now no one is sure of where it is.
PATRICK HENRY has told VANDERDYKE to either capture or destroy that powder and shot as well as the whiskey.
This is a mission, also, to discover what is happening on the frontier.
There are many stories of his youth, of his reasons for being where he is, none of which can be clearly substantiated.
AUGUSTA GOSLEN: A widow in her forties, an attractive, opinionated woman who has always had money, and is socially ambitious. From a lower-middle-class family she married into merchant money. Her husband had invested heavily in American business and property, so much against her will, she had come to America to see what she owned and if possible to sell it. She has no idea of conditions on the frontier and insists on going to the area where her land is. She has been assured by CHRISTOPHER SKITTLE that there is nothing to fear, that he will have adequate help, and excellent guides.
The plan is to get the widow and her daughter to a remote place in the woods and there hold them for ransom while taking all they possess.
The arrival of VANDERDYKE poses a problem until they learn that his head is wanted, and they plan to kill him also. He senses what is about to happen and slips away into the forest. His friend, WILLIAM FOX-FOUNTAIN, is left behind, which does not dismay him as he is interested in Augusta Goslin’s niece.
One of the aspects of frontier life that this story flirts with is the differences between the early, colonial-era relationship between Europeans and Native Americans, and what came later. Early on, there was much more of a balance of power and a sense of cooperation. Not only did Indians give some instruction to whites on how to survive in North America, but they were also important political allies to the Europeans. As long as European powers fought with one another over their American possessions, and as long as the Colonies were not free from their British, Dutch, French, and Spanish masters, the various tribes were valued for their ability to side with one group of whites or another. Though, as is mentioned in this fragment, both Indian and white did a good deal of looking down on one another, they could also cooperate in a way that benefited both parties. It was a situation that did not survive the creation of the United States without dramatic changes.
Material to be considered for use in “Vanderdyke.”
In some of the other notes that Louis left behind there is a slight indication he intended Vanderdyke to be a descendant of his character Barnabas Sackett. However, I am far from certain that he wrote any of these pages with that in mind….He may have later decided that would be his direction if he ever returned to finish this story.
* * *
MIKE KERLEVEN
* * *
Notes for a Crime Story
COMMENTS: This next set of notes shows you what it looked like when Louis was trying to “break” a story. “Breaking a story” is not a term that Dad would have used, but it is how screenwriters refer to the process when they are experimenting with ideas and trying to discover the fundamental building blocks that will allow a concept to become a fully fleshed-out script or movie, or whatever. I’ve never figured out if the term refers to breaking a story down into acts and scenes, or breaking it open to see what is inside, or even breaking it like it is an untamed horse….My personal experience is that all of these examples are accurate!
Anyway, to discover the pathway into the story Dad would usually use an interesting incident or twist to set it off, then he would try to follow the potential narrative from there. This is a good example because much of the time this sort of work was simply done in his mind.
* * *
Mike Kerleven arrives in town; he has lost all his luggage and it is Sunday. He succeeds in getting some help from the hotel manager, buying the bag of a man who ducked his bill.
Mike has bought clothes the evening before, but had forgotten the traveling bag. In the bag that he buys he finds singularly little. There are no clothes, except that is, for a couple of neckties, a pair of socks and a dirty shirt. There are a few other odds and ends, including a razor (unused) and a bundle of clippings, all concerned with fatal accidents and apparently having no connection. There are several other clippings and a couple of ticket stubs.
Mike is curious. The various articles in the bag represent a strange character, and he becomes obsessed with the idea, and very little evidence he has, that the man is in some way connected with these fatal accidents. Making an inquiry about the man, he finds there was a fatal accident in the hotel on the day he vanished.
Possessed of a little money, he begins the effort to trace down the owner of the bag.
Problems: How to bring the killer in and still keep him a mystery. How to introduce other characters.
Mike believes in telling about his belief, hoping in time to attract the killer to himself, also to make other people cautious. He finds, after a time, that the killings center about a certain area. There are occasional variations, but it seems the killer has returned again to certain spots where it is easy to find someone walking alone and to dispose of them.
Mike is making friends.
1. The murderer is not known as a “name” in the story, not until the very end.
2. The murderer must be tracked by his habits, feelings and desires.
3. His character must develop for the reader as it does for the investigator, bit by bit, slowly he pieces together a man.
4. In his room, behind a curtain, Mike has a jigsaw puzzle of the man. There are two charts. One is the figure of a man. His size is pieced together by various clues. The socks, the shirt. His tastes, feelings and reactions are placed upon the neighboring chart.
At times changes are made as new evidence comes in.
Clues: He stayed several days in the hotel and paid his bill each day.
He stayed several days, yet the razor is unused. Therefore, he had another razor or went to barber shops.//Investigate barber shops.
He likes music, good music.
Bit by bit he forms a physical picture of the man on one side, and a psychological picture on the other.
Mike follows down various leads, and steadily builds up the character of his man.
And he becomes obsessed with his figure and does not realize until too late that one of his new friends fits it to perfection.
Several friends must be introduced. The murderer has become aware that he has someone on his trail. That after several years of successful killings, he at last has an antagonist. He draws his follower near in order to watch him better. He begins a bloody game. He tries to trap him into accidents. He tries to trap him into arrest for a murder.
The puzzle is first interest. Then the building of suspense.
The feeling of horror must be brought in, the helplessness of the victims; the killer who is not even suspected; the accidents that no one believes to be murders; the complete lack of motives.
Mike must find a man who:
1. Is much alone.
2. Likes good music.
3. Has good taste.
4. Abhors the poor, crippled and unpleasant.
5. Who has private income (obviously doesn’t work because o
f times of accidents).
6. He draws nearer and nearer to the criminal. And his danger increases, bit by bit.
Mike goes, in the beginning, to the police. He meets there a detective lieutenant, who scoffs at his ideas. Yet Mike goes to him again, then meets him casually. And the detective begins to wonder, then to believe.
At one time Mike suspects this detective. At one time he even suspects himself. He proves to himself that he could have committed the first crime, and several of the others. His tastes are somewhat similar. He meets the detective at a concert. He begins to wonder. The detective suspects him also.
Then he and the detective work together. The detective gathers material, and they work toward a given end. The detective suggests to Mike that he himself may become a target of the killer. But, if so, the murderer must deviate from his rule. Thus far he has just roamed hither and yon in search of easy victims, off a bridge, under a train.
Decisive clue: a theater stub torn around the edges. In the bag he finds one curiously torn, then finds another. The victim has ripped the murderer’s pocket loose in the struggle. Then, in a theater, he sees the man he has become friendly with tearing just such a stub!
STAN BRODIE
* * *
The First Four Chapters of a Western Novel
CHAPTER 1
His eyes opened upon fear. He lay facedown on an ill-smelling bed in a small, bare room with the first edge of daylight showing around the drawn window-blind. Directly before his eyes was a boot…a boot with a leg in it.
He lay perfectly still, his eyes open but his mind empty. Slowly his thoughts gathered focus.
The leg belonged to a man, and the man was dead.
How did he know that? Or was he only surmising? No matter. He did know it. He was sure of it. Close to his face was a fist, his fist, and clutched in the fist was a knife-hilt, the knife gripped for stabbing. For striking down.
He had not moved and he did not move now, yet there was a sudden awareness in him, a realization of danger, a crawling horror of being trapped, of being caught up in something he did not understand.
The man whose leg he saw was dead, the upper part of his body out of sight at the foot of the bed. Without a doubt he had been killed by the knife that Stan Brodie now held, and he was alone in a room with the body.
He knew he had killed nobody, nor had he ever wished to kill anyone, but it was obvious that his good character and good intentions were not known to the people in this town and it would be taken for granted he was the killer.
Murder meant hanging, with or without a trial.
He sat up quickly, the bed creaking. His head ached abominably, his mouth tasted foul, and when he tried to stand his brain spun. He tiptoed to the window and lifted the edge of the blind.
An empty alley, gray in the first vague light of dawn. Western towns were early towns and in a matter of minutes this one would be awake and alive.
He looked quickly around: a small, square room with a bed, a chair, a bureau and washbasin, a white crockery basin, and a pitcher of cold water.
He put down the knife. It was bloody.
The hat on the floor was his. No gun-belt, no rifle. On the bed where he had been lying in a drunken sleep…nothing.
He looked at the dead man. Three narrow slits in the back of the vest where the knife had entered, very little blood.
One side of the man’s face was visible. It was Bud Aylmer.
Bud Aylmer, whom he had met three days ago at a desert water hole, seemingly an easygoing, drifting cowhand who rode in out of nowhere and was going nowhere that he mentioned. Now Bud Aylmer was dead, struck down from behind by the knife that killed him…but why?
He had been killed for the gold. They had robbed a stage and the stage had carried twenty thousand dollars. The robbery was supposed to be a lark, simply to scare the stage driver, after which they’d all ride into town and buy him a drink.
Neither Bud nor Stan had known about the gold. At least he had not known about it and did not believe Bud had either. What of the other man, he who proposed the idea? Stan Brodie thought that over and decided the other man had known and that he had planned to kill the stage driver from the first. He and Bud had been suckers, damned fools.
He had a fire going and Bud was making coffee when the stranger rode up to the water hole. He was a tall, high-shouldered man with a swarthy face and a large beak of a nose. His eyes were intensely black and cold.
He had a bottle of whiskey and Bud was ready enough for a drink. As for Stan Brodie, he was no drinker, but as Bud said, why not one to keep them company? He had that drink, and then another.
There was no time to think of that now. He had to get out and get out quickly. He put on his hat, stepped to the door, and looked around. An empty hall, an open door a dozen steps away, and the gray light of dawn on a dusty street.
Taking one last, quick look about the room, he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He had taken three steps when the door opposite his own opened and a girl was standing there, wide-eyed and frightened. He touched a hand to the edge of his hat to her, and went into the street.
No horses stood at the hitching-rail; the street was dusty and empty. Wind scurried a bit of paper into the corner of a building and somewhere a rooster crowed. Tugging his hat down he turned toward the livery stable.
Why had that girl stared at him like that? Had she heard something during the night? Who was she? What was she doing in that cheap rooming house for drifters?
He had killed nobody, but how could he prove that? How did he even know that? He had known Bud Aylmer but a few hours. He could not prove that, either.
He saddled his horse in the shadowed stable. As he reached the stable door there was a man standing there with his hand out. “Mister,” the man said, “that will be fifty cents.”
He thrust his hand into his pocket, and his hand stopped. The pocket was stuffed with coins. His fingers felt among them for a fifty-cent piece…found it. He handed the half-dollar to the hostler. “There,” he said, “and thanks.”
He started to mount and the hostler said, “Mister?”
Stan Brodie turned, his skin crawling with apprehension. “You dropped this,” the hostler said, and handed him a gold eagle.
He walked his horse outside, ducking his head at the door. Turning his mount he rode down the street at a walk, and his heart pounded when he realized he had turned the wrong way, a way that would take him right down the main street, with all the risk that implied.
Suppose that girl down the hall had opened the door of his room and seen what lay there?
He held the horse to a walk until he cleared the edge of town, then let it canter for a half-mile, then a dead run for a quarter. Seeing where the herd of thirty or forty head of cattle had crossed the road, he turned into their trail and followed it for some distance, heading down into a maze of ravines.
Of Bud Aylmer he knew nothing but his name. He had a fire going when Bud rode up. “Join you?” Bud had asked, and Stan had said, “Light an’ set.”
Bud picketed his horse after stripping its gear, then brought a loaf of bread to the fire. “Ain’t got much,” he said. “This an’ some coffee.”
“Coffee’s on,” Stan said. “I’ve got some bacon.”
The third man had come along a few minutes later, made as though to ride by, then swung his horse over to the fire and joined them. He added a can of beans and a fistful of prunes. Then he produced the bottle.
Stan Brodie was no drinker but he knew good whiskey when he saw and tasted it. This was good. Unaccustomed to drinking, Stan took only a sip, but the big stranger smiled at him. “Don’t worry, friend. Have at it.”
Stan grinned. “Good stuff,” he said, and took a hefty swallow. His stomach was empty and he felt the jolt of the whiskey at once.
The stranger got Bud’s name, the first time Stan had heard it. He turned to Stan. “Call me Tex,” he said.
“Well then, call me Montana,” Stan sa
id.
They ate, then they had another drink. Looking back Stan could see how Tex had guided the conversation.
It was not until they had still another drink that Tex suddenly chuckled. “Got a friend drives stage through here. Rides empty most of the time. I’ve got a notion to give him a scare.”
“How’s that?” Aylmer asked.
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe put a sheet over my head an’ play ghost…only I don’t have me a sheet. Be fun at that. Tom is sure a scary one. On’y thing he’s scared of is ha’nts and holdups, an’ I don’t reckon he’s seen nary one.”
“Knew a feller stuck up a stage one time,” Bud said. “They done it just for the fun of it. For the excitement. You know, they’d been out on the trail pushin’ a herd of steers up Kansas way and they was plumb bored, an’ they seen this stage…”
They ate, drank, and discussed the humor of scares and being scared, each one coming up with a story to tell. Under the influence of the liquor and amused by the idea of a practical joke, they accepted Tex’s suggestion.
“What the hell?” Tex said. “Let’s do it! Give him a good scare an’ then ride into town an’ buy him a drink. Be a real lark…like Hallowe’en.”
The trouble was the stage driver was not scared. He grabbed for his six-shooter.
Tex shot him, grabbed the express-box, and they fled. Half-drunk they raced away, sobering quickly in the chilling awareness of what they had done.
When they pulled up, Aylmer said, “Tex, you shot that driver. You killed him.”
“Hell, he was fixin’ to kill us! You seen his gun come up!”
“This was s’posed to be a lark, a game, sort of. We didn’t bargain for anything like this.”
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 31
