Breckinridge Elkins
Imagine a backwoodsman who combines L’il Abner, Davy Crockett, and John Wayne in one six-foot-six, coonskin-capped, stubbornly independent package, and you have an image of Breck Elkins, the Gent from Bear Creek, Nevada. The first-person protagonist of Howard’s most popular humorous Westerns, Breck doesn’t need to hunt for trouble; it finds him on its own, usually prompted by an innocent errand. A mission to retrieve an uncle’s stolen gold, to restore a jilted cousin’s honor, or to impress Breck’s tempestuous sweetheart Glory McGraw typically results in a dust-up that makes the O.K. Corral shoot-out look like a church social. “Howard’s material came from the land and the people of his childhood and his manhood,” said fellow pulp writer E. Hoffman Price. “His characters ... were real. They spoke the speech and moved in accord with the spirit of the country.” Two of Howard’s other Western heroes – Buckner J. Grimes of Knife River, Texas, and Pike Bearfield of Wolf Mountain, Texas – share Breck’s tangy Lone Star vernacular and knack for mayhem. Hilarious, original and brilliant.