Cheyenne Saturday (1957)

Spine #647

“The railhead began to stir itself awake. Voices of lean and hungry mean broke the air. There were men wearing faded uniform trousers of both Confederate and Union Armies, with accents from a dozen regions and broken English from as many countries. And in the fullness of the chill morning, buckos, gang bosses, ex-sergeants and officers moved among the sea of tents whipping their work gangs into haste. And the men who labored on the Union Pacific Railroad for seventy dollars a month whipped back at their buckos, often good-naturedly, often, too, with temper. They were not all ex-soldiers, obeying commands with the dispatch of army discipline. There were malingerers too, surly men who gambled and rank in the grog tents by night and sloughed their jobs during the day, whisky sweat drenching them under the Nebraska sun. But good-tempered or foul, they were wary, all of them, and alive to danger.”

Richard Jessup, Cheyenne Saturday

The transcontinental railroad is under construction and Union Pacific’s motley crew of workers have reached the Nebraska prairie. They are tasked with knitting together the nation using iron rails for thread and locomotives as needles.

Liam Kelly, a big Irishman who would have been played by Victor McLaglen if this story had a film version, is the go-to mid-level boss who oversees the surveyors, graders, and rail layers. He’s been working in the railroad industry his whole life and has a nationalistic pride in his job on the transcontinental line. There are all sorts who work for the rail company and travel with its engine. Civil War vets, immigrants, criminals, swindlers, and gunfighters make up a community of sorts, “Hell on Wheels” style. Kelly is the one who keeps the peace even though he’s not an official lawman.

His job complications grow when his head scout goes missing and two strangers show up to the working camp. One is a Texan with a gun strapped to his hip. This newcomer is looking to settle a score and it’s up to Kelly to keep the peace. The other is the sister of the missing scout. She’s a badass who survived traveling along some of the most dangerous trails in the West just to connect with her brother. Kelly has to wrangle with her spirit when they start worrying and organize a riding party to locate the missing man.

As if all that weren’t enough, the Cheyenne have become more and more hostile to the railroad’s westward progress. In particular, one young, dangerous warrior is readying an attack on Kelly’s company. Goose Face, a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre with a band of over a hundred braves, plans on stampeding a herd of buffalo into Kelly’s camp. Amidst the chaos they’ll try to kill as many whites as they possibly can.

These events are all happening on a Saturday. But not just any Saturday. This is weekend when the train carrying the monthly payroll arrives. The workers are sure to get drunk, stay distracted, lose some money, and get into fights. For Goose Face, this is the perfect time to avenge the massacre of his people. This will be Cheyenne Saturday.

There are parts of Cheyenne Saturday that I thoroughly enjoyed. Other parts…well, they fall flat.

I live in Nebraska and it’s always a treat to read a book set in the “The Good Life” state, especially a Gold Medal paperback. This one was a treat as Jessup got his geography mostly right and incorporated events rooted in Nebraska’s history of the railroad industry and Indian Wars.

The Union Pacific built their early lines through Nebraska which eventually ran through Wyoming before connecting with the Central Pacific in Utah. As a reader of history, I bought into the circumstances and settings of the story. For instance, Jessup’s descriptions of the men who built this rail line (please see the first quote of this blog post) rang true.

“Behind the surveyors came the graders. There were a few hundred of them, mainly recruited in New York or other Eastern cities, some immigrants born in Ireland or elsewhere in Europe, some second-generation Americans. They were lured to the West by the promises of steady work and high wages – as much as $2 or even $3 a day, sometimes more. They were mostly young veterans of the Civil War, with little or nothing to go home to. In Nebraska they were organized into teams.”

Stephen Ambrose, Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869

The context of which the Union Pacific workers find themselves leading up to the battle with Goose Face is also fairly historical accurate. As the rail lines penetrated deeper into Cheyenne and Lakota hunting grounds, the workers were on a collision course with Native Americans. They needed food and the most convenient source of protein was buffalo. As the railroaders, and soon professional hunters, killed more and more bison, the Union Pacific crews became a target.

Goose Face is described by Jessup as being a belligerent Cheyenne who plans an attack on the camp. Part of the reason he’s so fearsome is that he survived the Sand Creek Massacre when he was a young teenager. He hates the whites as a result and vows revenge. If a Cheyenne warrior ever needed an excuse to hunt whites, surviving that event would be plenty. This was a raid on Chief Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village on November 29th, 1864 by the Third Colorado Cavalry lead by Colonel Chivington.

“At daybreak on November 29, Chivington swept down on Black Kettle’s unsuspecting village at Sand Creek. As Chivington deployed for the attack, Black kettle raised first the American flag and then a white flag over his tipi. But Chivington wasn’t interested in displays of patriotism or truces. He wanted no prisoners taken, and none were. Two hundred Cheyenne, two-thirds of them women and children, were massacred in a manner reminiscent of the Minnesota uprising. They “were scalped, their brains knocked out,” an army interpreter later testified. “The [Coloradans] used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their guns, beat their brain out, and mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word.” Black Kettle, however, escaped along with his wife, who somehow survived nine wounds. Wanting only to avoid the inevitable cycle of war and retribution, he took the survivors well south of the Arkansas River. Meanwhile, Colonel Chivington and the “Bloody Third” rode into Denver to a hero’s welcome.”

Peter Cozzens, The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

Now, to be fair, Gold Medal westerns were not intended to be social realist commentaries on American history. However, it’s unfortunate that Jessup didn’t include a little more historical information about Sand Creek as it would have made the “villain” a little more human. A reader who isn’t aware of the history might fall into the trap of thinking that the Cheyenne characters are just crazed Indians out for white blood.

Goose Face is smart and cunning and we are allowed a few glimpses into his psyche through the miracle of third person narrative. I suspect that his raid is loosely based on Chief Turkey Leg’s 1867 attack on the Union Pacific line at Plum Creek in central Nebraska.

A team of repair workers, including a Briton, William Thompson, was sen tot Plum Creek in Nebraska on a handcar to investigate a break in the line. There had not been any Indian activity in the area, so they were taken by surprise when they were ambushed by a group of Cheyenne who had cut the telegraph wires as well as ripped up a section of a track. Thompson’s four colleagues were killed instantly, and he was shot, knocked to the ground, and scalped. He survived by playing dead and watched helplessly as the following train was derailed and plunged down the embankment, killing the two-man crew.

Christian Wolmar, The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America

Goose Face’s fictional raid is exciting and entertaining. After that the story takes a dive as things get a little forced and lame.

Let’s consider the Calamity Jane type character named Liza Reeves. She’s rough-cuss woman who knows how to shoot, how to fight, and how to survive. Plus, she’s got skills to nurse wounded rail workers. She was one of my favorite characters until the inevitable love story came up. I doubt this is Jessup’s fault as it was likely pressures from Fawcett to include this element in the story as most of their westerns have romantic elements. But, like the others, it waters down the story. My personal issue is that the noir crime stories can have fucked up characters with flawed relationships, but the westerns seem to avoid those rough edges. This undermines character qualities that would otherwise be compelling. Sappy dialogue about getting married just makes things a little too wholesome and milquetoasty for my tastes.

There’s also a gunfight shoehorned into the end of the book. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing a gunslinger right a few wrongs. But this trope is used too much in paperback westerns. To be honest, I thought about skipping it.

In spite of all that, Cheyenne Saturday is one of my favorite Gold Medal westerns. It’s a decent story flavored with some thoughtful historical research. There’s the usual narrative tricks that you’ll recognize from other mid-century shootemups. If you enjoy them then this book will be comforting like a warm blanket. If you’re sick of the tropes, get ready to swallow a few cliches. But it’s worth it.

C.D. Baxter’s Quick Review of Cheyenne Saturday

Story – Above Average

Cover Eye Candy – Pretty Good. The story’s action lives up to the cover’s promise.

Reprints Available from Wildside Press and Empty-Grave Publishing