Gunnar's Mine

by Roland Cheek

Heading north, over 10,200-foot Lizard Head Pass, past the struggling Colorado mining camps of Ophir and Telluride, following the rushing tumble of mountainside freshets down from alpine tundra to the quiet murmuring of the San Miguel River, almost to a decaying Uncompahgre gold camp called Placerville, a traveler encountered a mud-and-wattle waystop where a pilgrim could find plain, but filling vittles for his own belly, as well as hay and oats for his horse. Just upriver a stone’s throw from Walter’s waystop, and across the murmuring San Miguel, there was a little Swede who filed a mineral claim based on a modicum of yellow flakes that winked back at him from the bottom of his gold pan. That winking yellow took the little Swede’s breath away. But it was because of that same winking yellow that a ruthless eastern mining company also wished to take Gunnar Einarssen’s breath away.
That was more-or-less the same time Jethro Spring rode across Lizard Head Pass, looking to escape the murderous feud known throughout history as New Mexico’s Lincoln County War. After years of constant vigilance, murderous gunfights, and friends cut down before his very eyes, the man sought only peace and contentment; two damned good reasons why he passed the boisterous mining camps for a place of quiet; like that found at Walter’s waystop, and in the little Swede who owned
Gunnar’s Mine

Compared to the previous three books in the “Valediction For Revenge” western series, the cast peopling Gunnar’s Mine is more limited in number, but at least as evocative in characterization. For instance, it’d be difficult ever to find a more innocent, lovable, determined protagonist than the little Swede who thinks only to hold onto his mine, no matter the danger. And it might be equally difficult to locate a greater personification of evil than former claimholder Andrew Whittle, who sells his soul to the corporate devil.
On the other hand, Abigail Whittle, Andrew’s mother, deplores the evil her son embraces, sees Gunnar as a hapless puppy, and determines to protect him. Then there’s Billy Benbrooke, the genial Australian with a weakness so gigantic that he sells his friends for another drink of whiskey. And there’s the short-tempered—and deadly—Jose Antonio Gutierrez de Valdes y Mendoza—once the hero of Chapultepec, and later a respected mining engineer with hardrock experience over much of South and Central America—who briefly gives pause to ruthless power.
But instead, let’s consider “Chalkie” (owner of the San Miguell Emporium) for a second characterization opinion. From Gunnar’s Mine:

Jethro wondered at first if he’d blundered into some sort of stage performance and the bartender was a vaudeville actor: coal black hair parted in the middle, black shaggy moustache, chewing on a dead cigar, sleeve garters, a grimy white cloth tied around a beer-barrel belly. The man waddled slowly from the far end of the bar, wiping at imaginary wet spots along the way.

These were some of the people, places, and circumstances that Jethro Spring innocently bumped into when he stopped at Walter’s waystop for a cup of coffee and bowl of soup. He may actually have ridden on were he not still hungry, without so much as a coin to buy feed for his horses. Thus, sometimes ones who seeks peace and contentment can be forced into circumstances where they must reap the whirlwind.

Perhaps, though, the stop was not a total loss. For when at last Jethro Spring rides from the San Miguel to again search for that place of peace and quiet, he at least had a couple of coins to buy grain for his horses and a steak for himself. Incidentally, that subsequent search continues in the next book (no.

284 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

There are, I suppose, febrile savants who reject any notion that a person can acquire the writing art outside those hallowed halls of academia. Yet storytellers captured audiences for millenniums before Oxford or Harvard were more than forest enclaves where wild turnips sprout.
There's dissent, of course, holding the cloistered academic life to be poor training grounds for the kinds of riveting stories audiences wish to hear or read. My particular PhD came from God's own university of wild places and wilder things. My Culture might best be described as the Campfire kind, backed up against the inky black of star-filled nights, regaling saucer-eyed guests with tales of wilderness adventure, while horses stomped at picket lines and coyotes howled at a rising moon.
My doctoral thesis came during three decades of narratives about those wild places and wilder things; wonders saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt; crafted for Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, and Sports Afield. My column was syndicated over two decades to 17 newspapers, and I hosted a coast-to-coast radio show with 210,000 listeners airing on 75 stations across America. Then I turned my attention to books: a baker's dozen novels and wildlife and adventure nonfiction titles, all self-published to great success, all flavored with real-life experiences.
What's my point? That one can have adventure AND learn to write very well indeed (despite academic disdain for anyone outside their comfortable inner circle); well enough indeed to tell the conventional publishing world to go to hell--that I'll publish my own stuff.
More successfully.
And at greater profit