Lobo Riler, one of the last of the mountain men, comes down from the Medicine Bow range to the town of Wild Horses on the Overland Trail, hoping to sell furs for supplies from his old friend Seth Topper.
What he finds is a recipe for trouble -- a dozen rough and ruthless hide hunters led by a man named Kelleren and a pretty blonde prostitute named Rose working at the brothel called The Regret. Rose is the kind of woman that men want so badly they will fight and even die for her.
And men do die, in a battle that spreads from the brothel into the street. Topper is one of those killed while Riler is gravely wounded. Kelleren and his crew ride out of Wild Horses with Rose as their captive. But they make one big mistake.
If you shoot a mountain man you better make sure he’s dead. Because if he isn’t he will come for you -- all of you. Nothing -- not hell or high water or the United States army will keep Lobo Riler from a reckoning.
2018 by Jason Manning 168 pages ASIN:B07ND5TMFX
The previous novel, Willow's Mountain, was well-received. It was an experiment -- the protagonist being a woman -- that paid off, not just financially but because of the largely positive response from readers. This time I wanted to try something else I had not done before in terms of a mountain man book.
Instead of a sweeping saga I wanted to focus the events into a handful of days, and adopted a tried-and-true western theme: the lone hero riding into a small town to face the challenge of a lifetime. In this case, the hero was a mountain man, getting on in years, who lived in splendid isolation in the high country and showed up in the small town of Wild Horses twice a year for supplies. But on this occasion he gets much more than he bargained for: a confrontation with a gang of really bad men.
I did take a few risks. For one, most of the action was near the end of the story, and I tried to craft a truly epic fight. I also went to great lengths to flesh out the antagonists, not just the leader but each and every one of them. And then there was a love triangle, though in this case it was one man (Riler) and two women.
As with Willow's Mountain the focus was on the story, without a lot of history or background. I think in a way Lobo Riler is the culmination of all the mountain men I had created before. And this story had a very clear life lesson regarding what we think we want when it's something else we really need.
This novel was a joy to write, not least because all the characters became real to me and I knew exactly how I wanted to craft the finale. I don't recall struggling through any part of it. With previous novels I often didn't really know at first how they would end, and once in a while took a wrong turn and had to backtrack. That's an adventurous and often fun way to write. But knowing exactly where your story will take you allows you to endow every chapter, every paragraph, every line and every word with authenticity.