Derelicts of the Hills
In the rough frontier town of Piperock, two prospectors eke out a living in the hills, and one of them has gone and made a fool of himself. Magpie Simpkins, a dreamer prone to fads from psychology to spiritualism, has fallen hard for Minnie, a waitress with eyes like 'a couple of blue sunsets.' He buys her a flashy ring, sets a wedding date, and rides into town ready to become a respectable married man. His partner Ike Harper watches with weary affection as Magpie stumbles toward catastrophe, knowing something the poor sap doesn't: Minnie's already got a husband, and that husband is riding in with a shotgun and a grievance. What follows is a quietly devastating little tragedy dressed up in camp-life comedy, where a man's dreams collide with reality and he must decide what kind of man he'll be when the joke's on him. W. C. Tuttle writes with warm, wry humor about the poetry of failure, the dignity of disappointment, and the enduring bond between two men who know they're fools but do it anyway. This is frontier humor at its best: sharp-eyed about human nature, kind to its losers, and endlessly funny about the distance between what we plan and what we get.
