Because this is the year of "first time authors" and because I had enjoyed both Zane Grey and Owen Wister, I decided to go back to Westerns - a genre in which previously I had absolutely no interest - typically for me, I have to do things in some kind of order so I continued with reading Westerns by chronology and since both "Betty Zane" and "The Virginian" were published at the beginning of the century, I selected first novel about a extremely popular fictional character called Hopalong Cassidy : "Bar-20" was where he was first introduced to a wide audience and apparently this was a beginning of a phenomenon that later grew out into films and TV.
Here I must admit that this time I doubted my own decision, since 1906 novel was a bit of challenge, mostly because of the language: Mulford uses a lot of Western vernacular speech that gets tiresome and off-putting after a while. This is a perfect example:
"“Yu wants to keep yore busted-down cows on yore own side. They was all over us day afore yisterday. I'm goin' to salt any more what comes over, and don't yu fergit it, neither.”
It goes like this the whole time and it really depends on a reader, do you continue or leave the book completely. I persisted and eventually started to enjoy myself despite initial reservations (somehow I turned my brain inside out to understand what is going on) but I can understand this is not for everybody. That is why it took me three extremely long weeks to finish what is actually not a big volume - I had to be in the right mood to approach wrestling with strange words.
Not really a novel, more a short story collection, "Bar-20" is about cowboys working around ranch of the same name and their adventures - one of the characters is Hopalong Cassidy who eventually becomes the main character, but here is not just yet so. Guys ride their horses, drink, curse, sing dirty songs and alltogether behave like what now we expect cowboys to have been - as contrary to later, sanitised version created by Hollywood. The fact that there is almost no women at all in the book actually explains the lonely lives and camaraderie of the guys who are always ready to protect each other. Mind you, they are all very young guys and each time Hopalong Cassidy actually meets any woman, he behaves like a lovestruck teenager.
"Bar-20" was the beginning of saga that produced more than 20 books, 66 movies and 6 seasons of TV show - Hopalong Cassidy became a hugely beloved character but it all started here, in this eccentric little book from 1906. It was not the best Western I read this year and to be honest, it deserves a solid 3 out of 5 stars - however, I did find myself enjoying the cowboys adventures, once I got over the strange language. The best of all was the description of cowboy's lives that totally lack any glamour - author lived with real life cowboys for a while and he knew what he was writing about.
