Quote of the Day (Elmore Leonard, on ‘Contention’ in the Old West)

“He had picked up his prisoner at Fort Huachuca shortly after midnight and now, in a silent early morning mist, they approached Contention.

“Entering Stockman Street, Paul Scallen glanced back at the open country with the wet haze blanketing its flatness, thinking of the long night ride from Huachuca, relieved that this much was over. When his body turned again, his hand moved over the sawed-off shotgun that was across his lap and he kept his eyes on the man ahead of him until they were near the end of the second block, opposite the side entrance of the Republic Hotel.

“He said just above a whisper, though it was clear in the silence, ‘End of the line.’”—American fiction writer and screenwriter Elmore Leonard (1925-2013), “Three-Ten to Yuma,” originally published in Dime Western Magazine (1953), reprinted in The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard (2004)

In popular culture, even place names can be enough to foreshadow peril, and more: Starkville, the depressed Berkshire village of Edith Wharton’s wintry novella, Ethan Frome; Perdition, the Illinois town that might represent sanctuary or damnation in the Tom Hanks film The Road to Perdition; and Contention, the Old West train stop where thieves and killers stalk a cash-strapped lawman and his smug prisoner in this fine Elmore Leonard short story.

I haven’t seen the 2007 remake starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. But the sense of atmosphere of Leonard’s story is also present in the acclaimed 1957 movie adaptation with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin (left to right in the accompanying image) in the principal roles.

Even where the action breaks off in the quote above that begins this story, the reader senses that the overnight ride was fraught with danger for Paul Scallen, as he transports outlaw Jim Kidd to the train station that will take them to Yuba, where the criminal will be tried. The silence mentioned here is merely the calm before the storm. We wonder if this will be the “end of the line” for the taciturn Scallen, too.

Leonard’s editor at Dime Western certainly made him work for the $90 received for this submission, pressing for more details: “You can do it better. You’re not using all your senses. It’s not just a walk by the locomotive. What’s the train doing? How does it smell? Is there steam?”

It all pays off on the printed page, and Leonard retained the lessons he learned here for the remaining six decades of his writing career. Maybe that’s part of the reason why, though he turned towards crime fiction in later years, he retained an abiding affection for the western.