Review by Ed Quillen
Western novel – May 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Way Through the Mountains
by Steve Frazee
Originally published in 1972
Published in 1996 by Leisure Books
ISBN 0-8439-3945-1
The saying that “You can’t judge a book by its cover” has never been more true than for this recent reprint of a 1972 Western by Salida’s Steve Frazee, who died in 1992 after a long and productive career.
The book is about a railroad war high in the Rocky Mountains. But the cover shows a stagecoach careening through some generic southwestern landscape.
Though there’s something more than an embrace between the hero, Christian MacWhirter, and Nipsey Wright, one of the women in the book, their relationship falls far short of the back-cover claim that “At his side was spirited, courageous Nipsey Wright … she wasn’t about to give up her claim without a fight to the death.”
So, don’t expect this book to be anything like what the cover offers. You won’t find stagecoaches enough to matter, and at the end, Christian and Nipsey are not embracing each other at the door of their new homestead, ready to settle down, raise children and wait for World War I.
The Way Through the Mountains is based on the construction of the Alpine Tunnel — west of St. Elmo up Chalk Creek from the east side, or northeast of Parlin up Chalk Creek from the west side — in 1881.
At the time, two narrow-gauge railroads were in a desperate race for the Gunnison Country. The Denver & Rio Grande built over Marshall Pass from Salida, and the Denver, South Park and Pacific pushed west from Nathrop to the Alpine Tunnel — the first railroad tunnel through the Rocky Mountains. Both lines were under the control of outside capitalists, and were minor pieces in major financial and geographic wars being fought on Wall Street.
Perhaps to protect the guilty, Frazee renames just about everything between South Park and Gunnison. The Alpine Tunnel is Bear Rock Tunnel. The DSP&P becomes the Rocky Mountain & Pacific Railroad. The D&RG is the Kansas, Grand River & Zion, KZ for short. St. Elmo is Sheridan City, Sargents is Ortons, and Nathrop is River Junction.
Christian MacWhirter, the protagonist, is a fairly standard western hero. He’s a gun for hire, engaged to investigate possible sabotage from the KZ on the RM&P’s tunnel, and he draws fast and shoots straight. He’s also big and good with his fists, although women find him somewhat less than irresistible.
The plot isn’t romance, though MacWhirter spends some time around various women, nor is it any normal western theme of vengeance, justice, or triumph over adversity.
Instead, it’s a maturation of MacWhirter, who comes to realize that even though he’s risking his life daily for the cause of Jay Gould and the RM&P, he’s just a pawn in the game, and when this round ends, his former deadly enemies might well be his allies and vice-versa.
So why is he in such a dangerous and demanding line of work? Because, in his moment of self-realization before the novel ends, he likes the adventure — the cause doesn’t matter.
Along the way, we get to enjoy a world that teems with speculators, con-men, hustlers, bunco artists, and associated get-rich-quick-in-the-mountains schemes. Big-time capitalists are redrawing the map of the West, and nobody on the ground can quite figure out what’s going on.
In other words, this isn’t escapist literature. It’s more a reminder that some things don’t really change all that much, and like Frazee’s other books, it’s a lot of fun to read — interesting characters, good humor, solid detail, and a twisting plot.
Let’s hope this one sells well enough that some of Frazee’s many other works come back into print. Some good places to start: Rendezvous, More Damn Tourists, and A Gun for Bragg’s Woman.
Let’s also hope that those new editions aren’t full of typographical errors like this one, and that their covers bear some relationship to their contents.
— Ed Quillen
