peacock deserved it. Now Tylerâs sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad. But heâs not dying until he gets the money heâs owed from a two-timing American sugar baron. And thereâs one smart, pistol-hot lady at the rich manâs side who could help Ben get everything heâs got rightfully coming . . . even when the whole damn islandâs going straight to hell.
Miami Herald: âA wild ride through Cuba during the Spanish-American War. . . . A good old-fashioned Western served with a sly grin and a side dish of scams.â
From the novel:
Tyler arrived with the horse February eighteenth, three days after the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. He saw buzzards floating in the sky the way they do but couldnât make out what they were after. This was off Morro Castle, the cattle boat streaming black smoke as it comes through the narrows.
But then pretty soon he saw a shipâs mast and a tangle of metal sticking out of the water, gulls resting on it. One of the Mexican deckhands called to the pilot tug bringing them in, wanting to know what the wreckage was. The pilot yelled back that it was the Maine .
Yeah? The main what? Tylerâs border Spanish failed to serve, trying to make out voices raised against the wind. The deckhand told him it was a buque de guerra , a warship.
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories (1998)
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories is a raw, hard-bitten collection that gathers together the best of Leonardâs Western fiction. In âThe Tonto Woman,â a young wife, her face tattooed by Indian kidnappers, becomes societyâs outcast â until an outlaw vows to set her free. . . In âOnly Good Ones,â we meet a fine man turned killer in one impossible moment. . . âSaint with a Six-Gunâ pits a doomed prisoner against his young guard â in a drama of deception and compassion that leads to a shocking act of courage. . . In âThe Colonelâs Lady,â a brutal ambush puts a woman into the hands of a vicious renegade - while a tracker attempts a rescue that cannot come in time. . . Andin âBlood Money,â five bank robbers are being picked off one by one, but one man believes he can make it out alive.
Contains: âThe Tonto Womanâ; âThe Captivesâ; âOnly Good Onesâ; âYou Never See Apachesâ; âThe Colonelâs Ladyâ; âThe Kidâ; âThe Big Huntâ; âApache Medicineâ; âNo Manâs Gunsâ; âJuggedâ; âThe Hard Wayâ; âBlood Moneyâ; â3:10 to Yumaâ; âThe Boy Who Smiledâ; âHurrah for Capt. Earlyâ; âMoment of Vengeanceâ; âSaint with a Six-Gunâ; âThe Nagualâ; Trouble at Rindoâs Stationâ
From the collection:
âThe Captivesâ
He could hear the stagecoach, the faraway creaking and the muffled rumble of it, and he was thinking: Itâs almost an hour early. Why should it be if it left Contention on schedule?
His name was Pat Brennan. He was lean and almost tall, with a deeply tanned, pleasant face beneath the straight hat-brim low over his eyes, and he stood next to the saddle, which was on the ground, with the easy hip-shot slouch of a rider. A entry rifle was in his righthand and he was squinting into the sun glare, looking up the grade to the rutted road that came curving down through the spidery Joshua trees.
He lowered the Henry rifle, stock down, and let it fall across the saddle, and kept his hand away from the Colt holstered on his right leg. A man could get shot standing next to a stage road out in the middle of nowhere with a rifle in his hand.
All excerpts from works by Elmore Leonard are copyright © by Elmore Leonard, Inc., in the year of publication. Reprinted here with permission.
Selected Filmography
The Big Bounce (2003).