Dog Stories of Max Brand: White Wolf, Chinook, Mighty Lobo
THE DOG STORIES OF MAX BRAND
Today, we think more of dog stories by James Herriot than by a popular pulp fiction writer. But listen…
Frederick Faust has been called “The Shakespeare of the Western Range.” (Kirkus Reviews).
Faust published over 300 Western novels in his lifetime, using nineteen pseudonyms, of which he’s most remembered today as Max Brand. He lived an active, adventurous, rich life — if short. In 1944 at age 52, he was accredited as a war correspondent and went to the Italian front. He served with the soldiers in the muddy battlefields, killed in action by shrapnel.
Among his best Westerns are UNTAMED, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, SILVERTIP, THE SONG OF THE WHIP, THE MUSTANG HERDER, THE NIGHT HORSEMAN, SMILING CHARLIE, RONICKY DOONE and THE WINGED HORSE.
And Max Brand wrote four classic Dog Stories in the Jack London tradition.
In the 1920’s, Brand moved his family to Katonah, New York State, where he raised white bull terriers. He let them run free over his new estate, training them and intensely studying their actions. He quickly learned the power of a dog.
The result was one of his best ever novels, THE WHITE WOLF. This novel’s central character was a white bull terrier. Brand stepped out of his usual Western form by giving the wolves their own language.
THE WHITE WOLF
}} “Hark!” said Lop-ear, dragging himself forward on his belly. “There is a stir in those bushes. What is that?”
A deer stepped into the vale and Lop-ear darted off with a whine of frantic eagerness.
“Come back!” cried Mother Wolf. “You may as well chase a hawk, as that creature at this season of the year.”
But Lop-ear merely wavered, and then went on again.
They waited for a long time, and then they heard his far-off cry. Mother Wolf rose instantly to her feet.
“That is the voice of a wolf who kills for himself only,” said she. “He will never come back. And it is time. How long, my son, before you go also?”
“Why should I leave you?” asked White Wolf faintly, and he would have crowded close to her, with head abased, but she snarled and sprang aside.
“Because you need the world, and the world needs you, to teach you such things as even La Sombra does not know and chiefly this, White Wolf — to kill alone, or to be killed! Walk far from me! There is a tingle in my blood to-night!” {{
CARCAJOU’S TRAIL
The second Northwestern by Max Brand is CARCAJOU’S TRAIL. “Carcajou” is the French-Canadian name for the wolverine — a beast with the fierce power of a wolf, the tenacity of a bulldog and, they said, “the soul of Satan.”
John Banner arrives in the Yukon Territory with a $10,000 price on his head and a plan to lose himself in the Arctic wilderness.
But his plans change when he acquires the great dog called Slaughter, meets Anne Kendal, a woman who’s the match of any man, and joins a deadly search for lost gold — a quest that will lead him to a baptism of blood that alters the course of his life and earns him the nickname “Carcajou.”
CHINOOK
Another Northwestern by Max Brand was CHINOOK. The title character is a savage husky, more wolf than dog, whose master’s life is saved by American Joe Harney.
Reluctantly, Steen, the taciturn dog-master allows Harney and a mysterious woman, Kate Winslow, to accompany them to the Canadian Yukon Territory and the rich Klondike gold fields.
}} Chinook came straight to Harney, and, sitting down with his back against Harney’s knees, he turned his formidable front to the rest of the world.
“Your dog, son?” asked one old sourdough.
Before Harney could answer, the door crashed open and Steen plunged in. His gun glinted in his hand as he saw Chinook.
In the rather dim light of the saloon the flash of the gun was perceptible. Its explosion dinted heavily in the ears of Harney. Chinook had flashed around him at once, as the bullet, narrowly missing both dog and man, spatted with a thud into the logs of the wall behind.
“Stand away from him!” thundered Steen to Harney. “You sneakin’ dog thief, stand away from that dog!”
Harney, hand on gun butt, waited. “If he was ten times your dog, I wouldn’t budge to see you murder him.” {{
MIGHTY LOBO
Brand followed that title with MIGHTY LOBO, a novel about American Ned Windham, who has single-handedly built a homestead in the savage Northland. When a pack of wolves stalks down from the mountains to slaughter his sheep, he discovers that the wolves are led by a mixed-blood dog.
A neighbour tells Windham: “He’s the devil, done up in wolf’s fur. You go down the line a ways and get to the ranches. They’ll tell you plenty of stories about him. He comes out of the mountains like the wind, raises the devil, and goes back again. That’s why they call him Chinook!”
}} In that moment, when the nerve of most other men have been broken, he made a vow he would not give up this contest until he had beaten the wolf senseless, or until his throat was mangled by Chinook.
He was not thinking now. He was fighting as blindly, as furiously as any beast. He simply threw the club away and, hurling his body forward, gripped the throat of the wolf with his right hand… {{
Max Brand deserves to be remembered as a great writer of Animal Stories, especially of dogs and horses.
At least this gave me chance to list my favorite Max Brand titles, eh?
To See My Own Original Animal Stories, You Can Go To CIVILIZED BEARS – ANIMAL STORIES By BRIAN ALAN BURHOE
See more at https://brianalanburhoe.com.
Dog Stories of Max Brand: White Wolf, Chinook, Mighty Lobo