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The guns of Witchwater
A peddler named Winter Santrell comes to the aid of Vivian Kern, a young woman desperate for money to save her ranch. Meanwhile, the whole town of Witchwater is paralyzed with fear as Baird Stark and his pack of renegades ride rough-shod over them. Santrell decides to stand up against Stark but encounters an additional difficulty since some of the townspeople are mighty tempted to take up the thousand dollar bounty that Stark puts on him.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 1991
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October 17, 2024
This 1956 Western novel, written by Colby Wolford, a pseudonym of married writers Nelson and Shirley Wolford, and published as book number 1128 by Pocket Books Inc., is an action packed novel full of shootouts, marshalls, cattle ranchers, poker-playing, and beautiful but treacherous mountain passes. It manages to cram pretty much all the Western cliches into the 153 pages between its garish covers illustrated with a beautiful painting by Morton Engel of a sweating, anxious-looking cowboy on his knees in a puddle reaching for his gun as another cowboy with a Stetson and two six guns at his hips looks down on him from a small dirt rise.
The novel begins with a scene of tension and suspense that sets the tone which never really lets up until the final page. Winter Santell is a travelling peddlar on his way to Santa Fe when he comes across a man dying of a gunshot wound. That man briefly explains where Santell can find $4,000 buried nearby that he was taking back to his ranch in Witchwater to pay off a note - a debt he owes to a vile rancher named Baird Stark who runs the town of Witchwater. He asks Santell to take the money to his daughter Vivian so she can get the family ranch out of debt to Stark.
Santell was orphaned at the age of 4 in a wagon train massacre and raised by a peddler till the age of 12 who gave him his last name, and this advice 'Keep the wagon shut. Keep your gun handy and know how to use it. Cheat the cheaters and be hard as hell with the few honest ones you'll ever see. And above all else, mind your own damned business. When I die you'll be just like I've always been. Nobody to depend on but yourself.'
Despite his credo to mind his own business, he changes course for Witchwater to help out Vivian with the money he dug up. When he gets there he finds a small town with a blacksmith, a restaurant, a saloon, a hotel, and a gun shop. “The town of Witchwater, if it could be called a town, lay below him like a dumping of trash on the landscape.” He finds that the whole town is weirdly in thrall to Stark and his 30 hands, with nobody able to stand up to Stark, and nobody able to pack up and leave. This seems to include Vivian so Santell decides to leave after talking to Vivian.
Santell gets ambushed in a tense shootout between vertical canyon walls and he finds out about Vivian’s debt, which sends him back into Witchwater out of guilt. There, Vivian is playing a high stakes poker game with Stark, betting her ranch and her land on several hands, hoping to win back the cattle that her father borrowed against and that Stark will come into possession of the next day.
Santell’s return to Witchwater gets him involved in a quick draw contest outside the town jail where he kills a man whose brother is a mean, nasty cowboy with about the fastest draw of anyone around. Santell gets away, arranges to have the money pay off Vivian’s debt, and tries to rally the town around the cause of fighting off Stark. When he tries this, however, the townspeople are so in fear of Stark that they actually start plotting against Santell.
Santell gets fed up with Witchwater and goes to retrieve his wagon from Vivian’s ranch, planning to leave town for good. But when he sees that it’s been demolished by that mean and nasty cowboy (the wagon seems throughout the novel to be an extension of Santell, having been his constant companion and shelter for 25 years) Santell decides to confront Stark and his men once and for all. This leads to a climactic scene where much of the town gathers in the saloon, tries to take a vote on whether or not to confront Stark, and then fights an existential battle for the soul of Witchwater, led by a peddler whose just passing through town with a philosophy of minding his own business.
The climactic town-wide gun battle really delivers an exciting, action-packed finale to what is a pretty generic genre story. This novel shows the kind of groupthink and cowardice that can grow out of being subjected to violent bullying over years. It could be seen as a political allegory about fascism or an illustration of the effects of a kind of domestic violence or terror exercised on the innocent and law-abiding by the psychopathic and greedy for power. The book suffers from having a few characters with unclear and even contradictory motives, some plot twists that are hard to grasp, and even an unclear presentation of the town’s situation. The power of Stark is shown to be absolute but it isn’t really clear why people can’t just pack up and leave. No one in Witchwater seems to have achieved much in terms of prosperity so it isn’t obvious what they would be leaving behind other than the daily terror of Stark. That said, there are a number of exciting shootouts, ambushes, escapes, and confrontations that make this novel an almost non-stop thrill ride of great Western set pieces. If it does not probe its characters' psychology deeply, or present a totally cohesive and well-motivated plot, that is all right because it’s got the six guns and the mountains and the ranches that fans of Westerns know and love.
The novel begins with a scene of tension and suspense that sets the tone which never really lets up until the final page. Winter Santell is a travelling peddlar on his way to Santa Fe when he comes across a man dying of a gunshot wound. That man briefly explains where Santell can find $4,000 buried nearby that he was taking back to his ranch in Witchwater to pay off a note - a debt he owes to a vile rancher named Baird Stark who runs the town of Witchwater. He asks Santell to take the money to his daughter Vivian so she can get the family ranch out of debt to Stark.
Santell was orphaned at the age of 4 in a wagon train massacre and raised by a peddler till the age of 12 who gave him his last name, and this advice 'Keep the wagon shut. Keep your gun handy and know how to use it. Cheat the cheaters and be hard as hell with the few honest ones you'll ever see. And above all else, mind your own damned business. When I die you'll be just like I've always been. Nobody to depend on but yourself.'
Despite his credo to mind his own business, he changes course for Witchwater to help out Vivian with the money he dug up. When he gets there he finds a small town with a blacksmith, a restaurant, a saloon, a hotel, and a gun shop. “The town of Witchwater, if it could be called a town, lay below him like a dumping of trash on the landscape.” He finds that the whole town is weirdly in thrall to Stark and his 30 hands, with nobody able to stand up to Stark, and nobody able to pack up and leave. This seems to include Vivian so Santell decides to leave after talking to Vivian.
Santell gets ambushed in a tense shootout between vertical canyon walls and he finds out about Vivian’s debt, which sends him back into Witchwater out of guilt. There, Vivian is playing a high stakes poker game with Stark, betting her ranch and her land on several hands, hoping to win back the cattle that her father borrowed against and that Stark will come into possession of the next day.
Santell’s return to Witchwater gets him involved in a quick draw contest outside the town jail where he kills a man whose brother is a mean, nasty cowboy with about the fastest draw of anyone around. Santell gets away, arranges to have the money pay off Vivian’s debt, and tries to rally the town around the cause of fighting off Stark. When he tries this, however, the townspeople are so in fear of Stark that they actually start plotting against Santell.
Santell gets fed up with Witchwater and goes to retrieve his wagon from Vivian’s ranch, planning to leave town for good. But when he sees that it’s been demolished by that mean and nasty cowboy (the wagon seems throughout the novel to be an extension of Santell, having been his constant companion and shelter for 25 years) Santell decides to confront Stark and his men once and for all. This leads to a climactic scene where much of the town gathers in the saloon, tries to take a vote on whether or not to confront Stark, and then fights an existential battle for the soul of Witchwater, led by a peddler whose just passing through town with a philosophy of minding his own business.
The climactic town-wide gun battle really delivers an exciting, action-packed finale to what is a pretty generic genre story. This novel shows the kind of groupthink and cowardice that can grow out of being subjected to violent bullying over years. It could be seen as a political allegory about fascism or an illustration of the effects of a kind of domestic violence or terror exercised on the innocent and law-abiding by the psychopathic and greedy for power. The book suffers from having a few characters with unclear and even contradictory motives, some plot twists that are hard to grasp, and even an unclear presentation of the town’s situation. The power of Stark is shown to be absolute but it isn’t really clear why people can’t just pack up and leave. No one in Witchwater seems to have achieved much in terms of prosperity so it isn’t obvious what they would be leaving behind other than the daily terror of Stark. That said, there are a number of exciting shootouts, ambushes, escapes, and confrontations that make this novel an almost non-stop thrill ride of great Western set pieces. If it does not probe its characters' psychology deeply, or present a totally cohesive and well-motivated plot, that is all right because it’s got the six guns and the mountains and the ranches that fans of Westerns know and love.
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