You can’t pigeon-hole Wayne
D. Dundee! He writes westerns (winning a Peacemaker award),
mysteries (nominated for numerous awards), crime novels, a novel about vampires,
a boxing-meets-the-underworld novel…
Of his westerns he tells me he likes RECKONING AT RAINROCK because ‘I
included themes in there (a lady lawyer, fratricide, childhood sexual
abuse) …seldom been touched on in Western novels.’
Former Indian scout and tracker
‘Lone’ McGantry takes a break from being a wrangler on the ranch he co-owns to
bring a woman unjustly accused of murder to trial. But violence dogs Lone’s
trail, all the way to Nebraska’s fabled Toadstool Badlands.
The TOADSTOOL BADLANDS are
in the extreme northwest of Nebraska. They are now part of Toadstool Geologic
Park.
Volcanic ash fell 30 million years
ago and erosion shaped the deposits. Layers of sandstone rock lay on layers of
a much softer element – clay. The clay eroded leaving weird toadstool-like
formations of massive sandstone rocks perched on clay pillars.
The Badlands are littered
with fossils, the removal of which is prohibited.
Many fossils of large prehistoric animals such as ENTELODONTS and HYAENODON have been found here.
ENTELODONTS - sometimes facetiously
termed ‘hell pigs’ - were
pig-like animals that walked the earth between 37 and 15 million years ago. They
had bulky bodies, slender legs, and long muzzles. The largest stood up to
2.1 m (6.9 ft) tall at the shoulder, with brains the size of an
orange.
A single specimen was estimated to have a
weight of 421 kg (930 lb.)
HYAENODON (‘hyena –tooth’) was
a jackal-like animal existing from 40-20 million years ago. Its size and weight varied by species, about one to five feet
long and five to 100 pounds in weight. The largest species of Hyaenodon was
about the size of a wolf, and probably led a predatory wolf-like lifestyle
(supplemented with hyena-like scavenging of dead carcasses), while the smallest
species was only about the size of a house cat.
You might assume that Hyaenodon was directly ancestral to modern wolves
and hyenas, but you'd be wrong: the 'hyena tooth' was a prime example
of a creodont, a family of carnivorous mammals that arose about 10 million
years after the dinosaurs went extinct and went extinct themselves about 20
million years ago, leaving no direct descendants.
The giant fossils that littered the
Old West entered Native American superstition. Comanches believed the monstrous
mammoth bones dotting the plains were the remains of the Cannibal Owl, which descended
in the dark to devour people.
The premise of RAINROCK reminded me of bounty hunter Steve McQueen bringing in wanted
felon Lisa Gaye in the WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE episode ‘Journey for Josh.’
Wayne’s westerns have been compared
to the work of GORDON D. SHIRREFFS and LEWIS B. PATTEN.
Reviews of RECKONING AT RAINROCK:
‘Complicated characters, a mystery to
solve, and plenty of action make this another very good western read.’
‘A great western in the tradition of
Louis L'Amour…. This book, and its predecessor, DISMAL RIVER, are a joy to read
because they remind us what is so universally appealing about westerns, and
Dundee describes the country with the eye of a poet.’
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