Apache Kill

by William Hopson

Throughout this seething, savage land ran tales of a solitary white man, lonely and wild as a lobo wolf, who stalked through Indian country on a mission of vengeance - leaving Apache bodies where he rode. That man was inside Fort Vernon now, pacing like a caged beast as the flames of Apache violence burned higher. Why was he there? Why did the Indians fear and hate him? What was the good that drove him? No man knew. But before many days had passed, every man would wish the...

140 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

William Lee Hopson (1907 - 1975) was primarily a Western author. He was sometimes published under the name William L. Hopson and used a pseudonym, John Sims, for at least four Western novels.

After joining the U.S. Marines, Hopson served as a weapons instructor during World War II. Afterwards, he had various jobs as a coyote hunter and trick flyer. At the same time, he wrote crime novels and Western stories for pulp magazines between 1938 and 1958, as well as several novels, some of which were reworkings of previous short stories.

At a presentation in a newspaper in 1954, Hopson said he began by determining the background and reading in on time and place, and then sketching out his main character to give him a problem to solve. When this was done, he believed that the book was basically writing itself. Hopson's publishers wanted nine books a year, but Hopson got it down to six and was happy if it was four or five annually.

After living family life in Arizona for eight years in the 1950s, Hopson moved to California, where he lived until his death in 1975.

Reviews

[Robert Jr. · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I picked this book up, I was expecting frantic riding through canyons, horse chases, fisticuffs, and shootouts. Hell, at least it could’ve served up some grim stoicism like Invitation to a Hanging, but it doesn’t. The first third of the book is a slog where there is a lot of talking, and I do mean A LOT. The book did not start with properly setting the scene or anything, it just went into a discussion on the very first page. In addition, the author is terrible at transitions, he just moves from one thing and/or character to another which lost me more than once and forced me to backtrack and slow down. I HATE that! Evidently, either he knew that as well or his editor talked to him because a character clarifies the whole first two chapters in a single line of dialogue. He should’ve at least started with that if not setting the scene with descriptive text. I hated the first third of this book, but then it got gruesome, so I kept reading.

In the first third, the “hero” of the story is caught cutting off the ears of a dead warrior and this ear cutting goes through the rest of the book. But the middle section is where the brutality gets going with a full description of the Adkins massacre, the incident that fuels Bud Adkin’s (our hero) thirst for vengeance. After that, there’s a scene where a pair of hounds are found alive post-massacre with their hind legs tied and their bellies slit, so they’re put out of their misery. There is a description of “the dead lying scattered with buttons straining over swollen bodies”, a brief but graphic description of the amputation of an arm at the shoulder, and a disturbing episode with diseased horses and burning corrals. I was not expecting this level of gore and it’s a shame that the book was not better written.

The last third was easier to read leading up to the big battle, it was frankly just better written/edited. The hero does take a pretty nasty vengeance on the main villain, Black Rope, by not only defeating him in a fight but humiliating him by putting him in a squaw’s dress, not the last of his indignities before his end. This would have been much more satisfying if the villain was built up more as a character, his and his warrior’s brutal and effective tactics were just not enough as they were fighting for their ancestral land. However, the Adkin’s Massacre did paint him as a personally savage man but that served more to motivate the hero than anything else. The main problem with the inciting incident is that we’re told about it, it is gruesome, but experiencing it as a scene would have been so much more effective. Hell, if that opened the book, it would’ve hooked me immediately.

I don’t know if I’d ever recommend this book even to the most avid western-genre fan due to the garbled nature of the text in the first third and the overreliance on telling through the mouths of characters rather than showing. I don’t often harp on the “show rather than tell” mantra as in books you can tell rather than show for many reasons but here, there was a better way to go. The only redeeming quality here is the sheer brutality on show. Even the big finale battle is lackluster in its actual execution. Frankly, I think I let the title seduce me.