Copper Streak Trail

by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

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Genres: Westerns, Fiction

318 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1922

Reviews

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I'd been meaning to try Rhodes' Westerns for quite a while, and my interest was further piqued by the chapter on him in Agnes Morley Cleaveland's memoir No Life for a Lady. If all his books are as entertaining as Copper Streak Trail, I think I'm sure to enjoy more of them. The story concerns a shrewd, good-humored old-timer, Pete Johnson, and stalwart young Easterner Stanley Mitchell, who together have found a rich deposit of copper, and must get hold of the necessary capital to develop it into a mine. Certain other parties, though, are bound and determined to block their efforts and track them to the location of the mine so as to jump the claim. On the basis of recurring, odd misfortunes that have befallen Stan since he came West, Pete suspects that he has an enemy back east who is employing their local enemies in Arizona. After Stan is framed for a crime, Pete heads east himself to sniff out the truth and take steps to checkmate the unknown enemy.

It's a simple enough story, largely enjoyable because of the way it's written. Rhodes' dialogue in particular is a riot. "The speech of the educated man, in Mr. Zurich, was overlaid with colloquialism and strange idiom, made a second tongue by long familiarity," he observes of one character, and that goes for many of the people in this book. It makes even a plotting scene between three villains, usually a rather wearing kind of conversation, a real hoot to read. I'd almost draw a comparison to O. Henry's style, except that on occasion Rhodes seems to go a little over the top. (One suspects he had as much fun writing it as it is to read—later in the story he gets hold of a character who has a Scottish accent you could cut with a knife, and the gude auld mon gets to talk on for about three pages, for no particularly vital reason.) There are a few spots in the second (eastern) half where he goes off on a bit of a tangent, expounding his opinion on one matter or another, or lengthens out a bantering conversation that doesn't truly affect the plot (but is no less entertaining). The little twist in the final pages surprised me—it's something clearly involving the notion of a code of fair play that crops up in one form or another in many Westerns. In retrospect, I kind of sensed something of the sort would happen based off a bit of foreshadowing in the very first chapter, but it didn't take the form I expected.

[David Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rhodes swaps his favorite setting of Southern New Mexico for Southeastern Arizona: More of Rhodes’ usually satisfying fare, where an old-timer bests the establishment, eliciting his fare share of chuckles from the reader. As is typical with Rhodes, the dialogue and narrator’s humor is wry, yet he seamlessly couples it with more than a fair share of poetry and an obvious love in describing the land. Rhodes should be ranked alongside the other masters of American letters.

[David Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colorful characters and a desert adventure.

[Linda]

Some of what I know of Eugene Manlove Rhodes came from the Sat. Eve. Post. and the New Yorker in his early years of writing. He was an easterner who came to the state of NM. Rhodes Canyon on White Sands Range in the San Andreas is where he found a home. Before that he lived in an inn in Tularosa next door to my husbands grandmother and grandfather. She is believed to be the subject of his story called "Little Next Door". We would love to find a printing of the story, but have a personal copy, not knowing if it is in one of his books of several stories, which we have read in parts that we could find.