Knott keeps Parker’s Cole and Hitch entertaining

The late Robert B. Parker was one of my favorite authors. I liked the way he used minute details and sparse dialogue to tell his stories. When I was skimming the public library e-book selections, I noticed that thanks to Robert Knott, new Cole and Hitch westerns were available.

“Buckskin” was one of the later books but stood alone very well. We follow two very distinct storylines as they move toward an inevitable collision.

Thanks to the discovery of gold, the city of Appaloosa, New Mexico, has grown by leaps and bounds. It boasts many thriving businesses as well as a theater, yet still has its share of wild west crimes.

U.S. Marshall Virgil Cole and his best friend, Deputy Marshall Everett Hitch, are stationed in Appaloosa. They assist local law enforcement as needed. Virgil has settled down with shop owner Allie French. Everett has just met the lovely actress/singer Martha Katheryn and romance has begun to bloom.

Several years ago, mine owner Henri Baptiste sold a chunk of land to James and Daniel McCormack and they struck gold, too. Both camps have hired gunmen to protect their interests. So, when one of the McCormack’s miners disappears, Virgil and Hitch investigate. The two camps of hired guns are eager to fight, but Virgil and Hitch do their best to prevent any bloodshed.

The parallel story features a young man call Kid. The Kid’s only childhood memories include harsh conditions and frequent beating from ‘the Old Man.’ As soon as he is able, the Kid takes off on his own and wanders the lands near the Mexican border. His early life left him with no qualms about killing to get what he needs or wants.

Little by little he works his way to a lonely shack where the ‘Old Man’ is slowly dying. He shows the Kid an old tintype and in a raspy voice tells him that it is a picture of his two sons and the Kid’s mother. Then he drops the bomb. The sons died fighting over who fathered the boy, the woman ran off and the Old Man admits that he is really the boy’s father.

Enraged, the Kid kills the man and burns the shack to the ground. He then heads for Appaloosa to find his mother. Along the way he meets a burly teamster and his gypsy wife. She immediately sees things in the Kid that suit her plans. Using special ‘teas’ and potions she molds Kid to her needs. Soon they are on the road together.

They reach Appaloosa just before the Appaloosa Days Celebration. While they were traveling James McCormack dies from poison. Days later his brother Daniel dies the same way. Virgil and Hitch learned long ago to follow the money and soon deduce that office manager/nephew Lawrence stood to inherit the mine if both men should die.

With Lawrence under arrest, they step into the street to enjoy the fireworks but are stopped by a woman holding a gun. She accuses Virgil of killing her father but before anyone can react, the Kid pulls a gun behind them. While Virgil shoots the boy, Hitch fires his eight-gauge, killing the woman.

Their attention is then focused on gunfire near Henri Baptiste’s office. By the time they get there the fight is over. The McCormack and Baptiste gun hands shot it out leaving no survivors.

At the same time the badly-wounded Kid manages to crawl into Allie’s dress shop, where Allie, Martha Katheryn and James’ widow, Bernice McCormack, have huddled. He tries to show them the tintype, but the bullet went through the woman’s face. In his dying breath he tells them that one of them is his mother and reminds her that when he was a baby, she called him Buckskin.

Some cliffhanger endings are maddening – some just seem to fit. YOUR public library has books with every kind of ending. Make plans to check it out soon.