Travis
Page 23
From the doorway, Widow Strance eyed his grin in unbelief and said: “I believe you really would try, Mister Mara.” When Clay’s grin widened, she said: “I’ve heard enough!”
“Ma’am,” Clay said, “you haven’t started to hear.”
He put the mug on the table and started toward her. She looked wildly at Consuela Markham and found no help there. Something like panic caught her. “I knew you were dangerous, Mister Mara, but . . .” She watched Clay coming on and fled suddenly out into the night.
Clay paused in the doorway, giving a promise that satisfied even Consuela Markham’s fascinated gaze. “You’ll read all about it in her newspaper, ma’am.”
And then, knowing now beyond all doubt that a man without bold plans and high hopes had nothing, really, Clay followed Widow Strance out into the night.
THE END
About the Author
T. T. Flynn was born Thomas Theodore Flynn, Jr., in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the author of over one hundred Western stories for such leading pulp magazines as Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, Popular Publications’ Dime Western, and Dell’s Zane Grey’s Western Magazine. He lived much of his life in New Mexico and spent much of his time on the road, exploring the vast terrain of the American West. His descriptions of the land are always detailed, but he used them not only for local color but also to reflect the heightening of emotional distress among the characters within a story. Following the Second World War, Flynn turned his attention to the book-length Western novel and in this form also produced work that has proven imperishable. Five of these novels first appeared as original paperbacks, most notably The Man from Laramie (1954) which was also featured as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post and subsequently made into a memorable motion picture directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, and Two Faces West (1954) which deals with the problems of identity and reality and served as the basis for a television series. He was highly innovative and inventive and in later novels, such as Night of the Comanche Moon, concentrated on deeper psychological issues as the source for conflict, rather than more elemental motives like greed. Flynn is at his best in stories that combine mystery—not surprisingly, he also wrote detective fiction—with suspense and action in an artful balance. The psychological dimensions of Flynn’s Western fiction came increasingly to encompass a confrontation with ethical principles about how one must live, the values that one must hold dear above all else, and his belief that there must be a balance in all things. The cosmic meaning of the mortality of all living creatures had become for him a unifying metaphor for the fragility and dignity of life itself.