I like my western novels without telephones and cars so this purchase was an accident. The cover of SHOTGUN BOTTOM just didn’t give it away. Had I known more about the author BILL BURCHARDT, I shouldn’t have been surprised, as he commented in TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN WRITERS 2nd Edition that he “was fascinated by the untold stories of the Oil Rush Wild West”, the time period in which this novel is set.
At any rate, SHOTGUN BOTTOM is a darn good read. It’s set in the early oil boom days and autos are new enough that they are rare but not so new that folks have never seen one. The telephone is only mentioned once, but the autos (there are two) play key roles in the story. Despite the “modern” elements, it reads pretty much like your standard western story.
The oil boom town is called WILD HORSE and next to it is an unincorporated area called Shotgun Bottom which is filled with “dancehall girls, card shark gamblers, hop peddlers, bootleggers, and hijackers” who prey on the oil roustabouts who work the oil rigs; the “swivel-necks” and “jarheads”. And Shotgun Bottom, naturally, is out of the Marshal’s jurisdiction, “but from this street his troubles came.” And troubles there were aplenty.
The Marshal is FRANK LEDBETTER who comes to Shotgun Bottom at the request of his friend BUCK LOFLIN, a local merchant. Ledbetter has been in the army but was tired of it and didn’t see any future there so he decided to take his friend’s offer. He was appointed Marshal in a special election to complete the former marshal’s term. BURT TOLLER, the former marshal, not wanting to end up dead, decides it’s safer to be the jailer. That doesn’t turn out to be “safer” at all.
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| Cover of Shotgun Bottom by Bill Burchardt |
Ledbetter and Loflin continually push the town council to incorporate Shotgun Bottom to allow Ledbetter to clean it up. Half the town council wants to incorporate it, the other half refuses to go along. The two friends are puzzled as to why the mayor and his father, who pretty much “owns” the town, are so set on keeping Shotgun Bottom out of the city limits. Toller gives Ledbetter a clue and he works on it until he discovers the truth.
The mayor’s father “OLD JUDGE” ED GUTHRIE owns the land and all of the property in Shotgun Bottom and charges untaxed rent. In addition to that, his son RICHARD "RICHIE" GUTHRIE, tired of his tightwad father not sharing the wealth, charges higher rents when he collects and, unknown to his father, he pockets the difference.
When Ledbetter figures it out, he tips the Shotgun Bottom businessowners off which causes a row between Richie and his father. This, however, doesn’t get him any closer to persuading the town council to vote Shotgun Bottom inside the city limits. He needs to persuade one of the council members to change his vote.
While he and Loflin are pondering how to change the vote, his troubles with the wilder elements in Shotgun Bottom continue to plague him. Things heat up when his jailer, Burt Toller is killed by a man whose bail is set by the local money-grubbing lawyer (who is making money off the crooks he springs from the jail). In running down the killer, Ledbetter gets into a fistfight with him and the killer falls under an approaching train. Now the killer’s brother wants Ledbetter killed!
As mentioned, there are two autos in the story. One is owned by Ledbetter, although he seems reluctant to drive it much. It’s never clear whether it’s his own personal auto or the county purchased it for him. The other auto is owned by TAYLOR BEACHEM, the same local money-grubbing lawyer, who also has political aspirations. Beachem’s wife, BEAUTY desperately wants to learn how to drive the car despite being both frightened of the car and of her abusive husband. She is so humiliated by his treatment of her in public while he tries to ‘teach’ her how to driver, that she eventually gives up and decides to take the car out in secret to learn on her own.
She continually has car problems (choked engine, out of gas) that find her directly in front of Loflin’s business. Naturally, she turns to Loflin for help in getting her car started. This leads to Beachem suspecting she’s having an affair with Loflin and he ends up beating her mercilessly. Although she has not been having an affair with Loflin, because of his kindness, she does go to his warehouse for help to get away from her husband. By the novel’s end, a romance has developed between Loflin and Beauty.
The Marshal’s auto plays a role in a little romantical interlude too. Mayor Richard Guthrie met a woman while he was away at college and has brought her back as his fiancee to meet his parents. Her name is CATHERINE PARKER. Her initial impression of Ledbetter is negative and she has a number of unpleasant encounters with him that don’t improve her opinion of him. She considers him a “great ruthless brute” compared to her “gentler” Richard.
However, her “Richie” has changed from the witty, light-hearted fellow she met back East and she is unimpressed with her future in-laws. MRS GUTHRIE’s bad grammar and “eternal whining” and Judge Guthrie’s bombastic pontificating and uncouth manners repulse her. In the meantime, she takes a trip to the county seat looking for sewing material and instead of taking the train back to Wild Horse, she accepts an invitation to ride back in the Marshal’s auto. She accepts the ride out of curiosity about Ledbetter and hopes to “interrogate” him.
In his attempts to find a way to incorporate Shotgun Bottom, Ledbetter made a trip to the county seat to file to run for mayor in Wild Horse. And by chance, found the key to persuading one of the council members to change his vote. He runs into Catherine (literally) and, partly to make up for knocking her package out of her arms and partly because he’s attracted to her, he offers to give her a lift back to Wild Horse. He deftly turns her interrogation around on her and gets information out of her regarding her relationship with Richie and his parents. She doesn’t find out the answers to the questions she was posing but finds herself seemingly “interrogated” by him! It’s an amusing scene. She’s so rattled that when they arrive in Wild Horse, she forgets her package.
Back in Wild Horse, the town council meets and, as Ledbetter had hoped, Shotgun Bottom is voted into the city limits. And so he and his friend Loflin set out to shut down the saloons and hop house in Shotgun Bottom.
This makes Mayor Richie Guthrie mighty angry. He hires an outlaw to kill Ledbetter. As the killer and his gang descend on Ledbetter, Richie barrels into town in a buggy so he can watch, and close on his heels is Catherine who is dead set on sneaking out of town on the midnight train (after a scene with Richie which frightened her).
Beauty, in the meantime, has decided to divorce her husband and needs to get away to protect herself from him. After the fighting in Shotgun Bottom, Ledbetter and Loflin get both Catherine and Beauty on the train with plans to join them at Catherine’s family home back East.
There’s a lot to like about this book. The story is great and moves along nicely. It’s definitely a page turner with lots going on. There’s two good men, friends Ledbetter and Loflin, doing what they can to help people, but frustrated by their inability to do anything to make the town safe for families and in Loflin’s case, to stop Beachem from abusing his wife. Then there’s one woman escaping an abusive marriage while another is about to enter into an unhappy marriage, only narrowly escaping it by fleeing under the cover of night.
The writing is top-notch with great character descriptions. The one of Frank Ledbetter, as viewed by Catherine, reveals why she saw him as a “great ruthless brute”, initially:
“Frank Ledbetter was a big man, 6 feet three or four at least, she guessed, a rugged man whose movements suggested physical power as strongly as the long strides of the huge horse he rode, a bold faced man who’s rockhard features spoke of no fear, as did the flat calm syllables of his laconic voice.”
Burchardt enriches the novel with Ledbetter’s private musings about life and the town dynamics as well as his self-introspections.
“Was it that life found longer use for those who held strong, never retreating except perhaps to lie and bleed awhile, then to rise and fight again, facing hard up to that which had to be done? Was it that somehow life simply and callously cast aside those who sought refuge, those who tried to hide from the storm, those who retired from the fray, whether from lack of courage or from just plain weariness?”
“He was concerned about the girl, but he was concerned, and properly so, about himself. For, and Frank Ledbetter forced himself to form the words, definitely and clearly in his own mind, I want that girl myself. All right, he thought, now that’s decided. Now what am I going to do about it? I can’t let her marry Rich Guthrie. But how in the hell am I going to keep her from it? There was another consideration, these vague yearnings that kept plaguing him about the town. Frank tried, but he could find no voice for them, no way to organize them into any solid meaning or purpose. But something you sure as hell is eating on me, he thought, and I can’t keep on just riding around this town we week after week, sitting high and dry on this horse or sporting around in my shiny new automobile, and doing nothing about it.”
The place names are awesome too: Palace Billiards, The Joyland Rooms and Hog Shooters Place.
I own one other novel by Burchardt and plan to look for others. He wrote at least nine novels and over three dozen short stories. His favorite subjects were the oil rush boom towns, stories set around the heritage of the Oklahoma Indian tribes and the Spanish-Americans.
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| Back Cover of Shotgun Bottom by Bill Burchardt |
Favorite lines:
“Boy, you hit the hornets nest with a stick tonight.”
“Go set your can back behind them mules’ tails!”
Fistfights 4
Gunplay: 3
Cigars lit up: 3
Knifings: 1
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