"I want to be a tart with a heart"
OF MOUNTAINS AND MANHUNTERS

Gillian Taylor

"Ooh, can I be in one of your books ?" she pleaded.

I said sure, and asked her what sort of character she’d like me to use her name for. Jenny thought for a moment.

"I wanna be a prostitute," she said brightly. "I want to be a tart with a heart."

How could I refuse ?

One of the characters previously inspired by a friend was the handsome, vain, gallant manhunter, Jonah Durrell, who appeared in Navajo Rock. I was very fond of Jonah, who was fun to write, and had decided to bring him back in a book of his own. Jonah and Jenny seemed like an interesting combination, what with Jonah being fond of the ladies, so I started working on that idea.

Maybe it’s because the real Jenny is exceptionally tall, but I felt she should be more than an ordinary prostitute. I decided to make her a madam, and expanded the friends idea by asking various women I knew if I could use their names and descriptions for prostitutes in Jenny’s brothel. The six I asked all said yes, which says something about my friends. Their trust in me perhaps…or something….

When thinking of a setting for this story, I was inspired by a photograph of a mining town nestled between the sheer walls of a canyon. The town was Creede, in Colorado. I created my own version, called Motherlode, and started the story there.

Motherlode, as its name suggested, was a prosperous mining town in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. By 1884, it was doing well enough to have plentiful brick buildings, including, two theatres, a courthouse, two schools, a fire-house, a sturdy jail and even the novelty of a roller-skating rink. It also sported a fine selection of saloons, pool halls and brothels, as well as a canvas, shanty-town off-shoot, that a local wag had christened, ‘Daughterlode’. I started with Jonah arriving in town, visiting Miss Jenny’s brothel, and his fun being interrupted by the murder of one of her girls. And there the story stopped. I started roughing out an story about who had killed the girl but the crazed-killer idea wasn’t satisfactory and didn’t seemed right for a western. Jonah and Jenny got put aside and I wrote Darrow’s Badge instead.

A couple of years later, I was lucky enough to be able to see some of the West for myself. I travelled to America and spent a week enjoying the generous hospitality of fellow Black Horse writer, Ron McDonald (who writes as Lee Pierce), and his wife. My first real taste of the west came during the drive from the airport to Ron’s home in north-west New Mexico. It was dark by this time, and Ron pulled over to the side of the highway, in the middle of nowhere. With no light pollution to interfere, the sky was ablaze with stars, far more than I’d ever seen from England. It was the sky as my characters in the Old West would have known it.

The first couple of days were spent exploring the desert country. I saw tumbleweed tumbling, cacti growing wild, ate Navajo chicken stew and dumplings and marvelled at Monument Valley. I also discovered that some western restaurants have a remarkably casual attitude to locks, and indeed doors, on their toilet facilities. After the desert, came the mountains. I love railways and engines, especially steam engines, so I was keen to travel on the Durango-Silverton Railroad. Ron and Cathy were happy to accommodate my wishes, and so we set out on a two-day trip.

Cathy and I took the train, while Ron drove to meet us at Silverton in the pickup. The railroad gradually rose higher into the Rockies, starting from grassy meadows and finally reaching a snowy Silverton, some 10,000 feet above sea level and barely seven miles from the Continental Divide. Most of the route was through forest: dark green pines and the purple-reddish clouds of leafless aspens, with the bright green of new leaves here and there at lower altitudes. Sometimes we were close beside the River Animas, green and fresh, topped with foam in many places where it tumbled over rocks. In other places, the track wound high against the walls of the canyon, almost hanging in the air.

It had been sunny in Durango, but was snowing when we arrived up in Silverton. My first priority was to find somewhere selling warm coats ! After that was lunch at Handlebars, in a room so large that even a full-sized stuffed elk fitted in just fine with all the other stuffed animals and colourful clutter. I took the opportunity to try a buffalo burger, and enjoyed it. From Silverton, we drove along the spectacular Million Dollar Highway to the lovely town of Ouray, nestling in a bowl between soaring peaks. For the evening meal, we drove to the little town of Ridgeway, where some scenes of the John Wayne movie, ‘True Grit’ were filmed. The painting that had been on the outer wall of a store in the movie, was now on the inside wall of our restaurant.

The next day, we spent some time in Ouray, in shops and admiring the lovingly restored Beaumont Hotel, a splendid Victorian brick creation. The book store there was invaluable, as I picked up some useful local titles to add to my rapidly-growing collection. I also got a wonderful relief map of the Silverton, Ouray and Telluride area, very much in the style of a British Ordnance Survey map. That went along with the books on Colorado cowboys, local towns, mining histories, prostitutes and rocky Mountain wildlife I had got for my library. I was busy with my camera too, capturing the wonderful scenery. The air was wonderfully clear and fresh; even distant peaks were vividly sharp, not lost in haze. From Ouray, it was further along into the high country and round on ourselves to reach another former mining town, Telluride, for lunch. From there, we drove past high meadows and forests, back down from the Rockies into New Mexico. All told, it was a fabulous experience, made all the better for having good company to share it with.

From America, it was back home to Sheffield: hilly, but not quite the same, even if some of the streets are almost as sheer as the Rockies. I picked up the story of Jonah and Jenny again, keen to use the wonderful settings I’d experienced firsthand. I spent a while studying my new map, looking for a town with canyon walls rising close either side. When I found my setting, it was a real Eureka moment; the town I found was actually called Eureka. It’s pretty much a ghost town now (according to one of the books I bought), but it’s the right kind of setting for my fictional Motherlode.

The other places referred to in the story are all to be found on the map: Animas Forks, Cement Creek, Slagle Basin. I like to be able to visualize an area where a story is set, and this map is a particular treasure to me. I just wish I could find similar ones for the other areas where I want to set stories.

One of the great things about watching a western movie is that even if the story isn’t up to much, you can always enjoy the scenery. Out west, the land itself is an important element of the story. When writing, I try to make the reader really aware of where the story is taking place. I want them to be down in the Big Bend of Texas, or on a Wyoming plain, or up in the crisp air of the San Juans. Some westerns I’ve read just seem to happen in a generic South-West, which could be anywhere from California to Texas. With my own photos and memories to draw upon, I had the most wonderful setting for Two-Gun Trouble:

Another flurry of late snow blew across the San Juan mountains of south-west Colorado. A mist of white flakes danced along Cement Creek, 11,000 feet up under the grey, clouded sky. The dark forests of white-frosted pine were thinner up here, the trees huddling together in clumps, or growing a mad angles from the bare, red rocks.

This time around, I knew more not only about the overall location of the story, I also had more information on Miss Jenny’s line of business. A couple of the books I got in America were particularly useful sources on prostitution in the Old West (writers have some strange books in their libraries). I’d always visualized Miss Jenny’s place as being up-market, but now I could specify it as a parlour-house, with a dining-parlour, music and imported wines available.

I wanted to keep much the same opening as before, but had to re-think who killed the prostitute and why. I developed the idea of someone trying to scare Jenny away from Motherlode, with the intention of buying her business cheaply. Once I had this in place, the rest of the story came together. Jonah got to play the gallant hero, protecting the damsel in distress, although in the big fight at the end, Jenny and her girls do a pretty fine job of looking after themselves.

The story ends with Jonah riding away from Motherlode:

The last farewell was for Jenny. Jonah stopped in front of her and smiled.

"The handsomest manhunter in Colorado at your service, ma’am."

"Only in Colorado?" Jenny teased. She gently touched a scab on his cheekbone where a shard of window glass had been embedded. "I hope this won’t damage your beauty too much."

"I’m going to tell women that it’s a duelling scar," Jonah announced shamelessly.

He’s not going very far though, and I’m sure he’s got more adventures waiting to happen. I’ll be able to travel back to Colorado in my writing, and hopefully in reality too someday. And next time, I’ll take a warm coat.