The Caddy came to rest halfway over the
cliff. The front passenger door had swung open and I was hanging from it over
the creek bed. As I dropped to the ground, Maynard and Nick flew through the
right doors and landed next to me. We took cover against the bank. Whoever was
shooting at us was in some high rocks above the other side of the road.
"Don't put your head up," I
said as Maynard peeked over the ledge and got a face full of dirt when a bullet
ripped into the soil near him. "You'll get your head blown off."
Oddly enough, like a true movie cowboy,
his white hat stayed on the whole time.
We surveyed our situation. The shooter
was well concealed in the rocks. We were currently out of his field of fire
thanks to the depressed creek bed, which was about a mile long leading toward
the ranch. We either could have stayed where we were and hoped the sniper didn't
move in on us and finish us off or try to run for it using the creek bank for
cover.
"Stay close to the cliff and start
running," I said as I did just that. Nick and Maynard followed suit. As we
ran, we heard a couple more shots break Cadillac windows.
A few minutes later we came to an area
where some brush was hanging over the cliff. I grabbed some branches and
climbed to the edge to look back at where the car and, possibly, where the
shooter had been. All was quiet.
"Did you check for snakes before you
pulled yourself into that brush?" Nick asked.
"Thanks, Nick. Next time."
Then my throat tightened as I heard more
shooting coming from in front of us. These shots seemed muffled.
"Look yonder, boys," Maynard
said. "It's a posse."
Four riders in full western gear were
headed our way in a cloud of dust, firing pistols into the air.
"Howdy, Ken," the lead rider
said as the group reined their horses to stop in the creek bed. "We were
shooting some chase footage when we saw your car and heard the shots. Think we
chased them off?"
"Looks to be," Maynard said. "Howdy
Kermit, Mo, Blackie, Red Eye. Thanks."
Nick and I looked at each other realizing
at the same time that these four silver-screen clodhoppers had just ridden in
like Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders to save the day, only with
smoke-puffing, blank-shooting, movie pistols.
"Hey Nick. Who's your pard?"
Maynard's tall, sandy-haired brother, Kermit, said as he dismounted his pinto
cayuse.
"Hey, Kermit," I said. "I'm
Sean Woods, the new Mascot flack. I recognize you from your films."
"We call him Curly," Nick said.
"Why?" asked Kermit.
I bristled.
"What in the ding-danged flimbaloozy
is goin' on?" said a strange-looking bearded man with baggy pants, a torn
vest and mangled western hat.
"Curly, meet Jack Brown,"
Maynard said. "We call him Red Eye, for obvious reasons."
He really didn't have much of a white
part to his eyes. I thought he might have kidney problems until I got close
enough to smell the odor of reefer. I assumed he was the token, in more ways
than one, western comic.
"And this is our set wrangler Mojave
Burns, Mo to his friends, and the wildest stuntman in the business, Arlis 'Blackie'
Knight," Maynard said. "Mo. Is Tarzan onsite?"
"Polished and ready, Boss."
We rode double to the ranch house. Nick
seemed scared to death as he climbed on with Blackie. I believe the stuntman
relished Nick's displeasure as he brought his quarter horse to a brisk sprint.
The Maynard boys rode together. And I hung close to Red Eye while doing my best
not to inhale too much.
The ranch house was your typical turn-of-the-century,
shiplap home with shade trees in the front yard and a white picket fence. There
were two large barns – one for the horses and one for wagons and vehicles –
with a corral between them. Behind the horse barn was the bunkhouse.
There was a wind-powered well pump that
filled a tall, wooden water tower. This was a working movie ranch that housed
stars, stuntmen, equipment, a camera crew, bit players and other staff. All the
buildings also served as sets for Mascot's action-oriented features and
serials. The ranch was a full section – 640 acres of wild west rocks, cliffs,
trails, a lake, a couple of line-shack sets and at least two mine entrances.
Cowboy heroes had battled villains here since Bronco Billy Anderson first
saddled up.
We dismounted in front of the house and
Mo and Blackie led the horses to the barn for a drink and a snack. We all
slapped the dust off our clothes except for Red Eye, who probably considered it
part of his character.
Max Gorn was seated, smoking, in a wooden
chair on the front porch. A big-eyed, bottle blonde with It-girl, bee-sting
lips rocked in the porch swing. She wore a loose-fitting white blouse and tan
riding pants. She wasn't my type. Too cute.
"You made it," Gorn said. "What
was the trouble?"
"A sniper almost finished us off a
few miles back," I said. "It seems that not everyone in this neck of
the woods is a fan of Mascot westerns."
"The flap-dippin' varmint plum near
wasted Ken," Red Eye said. "Twarn't fur us, the buzzards'd be feastin'."
The fuzz-faced raconteur punctuated his
story by spitting in the dust.
"The boys with the smoke pistols did
show up at an opportune moment," I said. "Then again, we had been
running up that dry creek bed for quite some time. I believe we were probably
out of the sniper's rifle range by the time we met up with our heroes."
Red Eye snorted and turned away to leave,
with one unhealthy eye giving the blonde quite the once over.
"I'd like to take a car back and
check the area out where I think the shooter waited for us," I said. "We
also need to get Nick's chariot off the rocks."
"We'll send a tow truck out to bring
the car in and you can go along," Gorn said. "Sounds like quite an
adventure. I'll be interested in what you find at the site. This is just not
good news with all that has been happening. Why would anyone want to shoot Ken,
or you, for that matter? Doesn't make sense."
Perhaps it was the Trocadero waiter or
one of the Nancy boys from the night before.
I went to the bunkhouse where Maynard was
cleaning himself up and getting ready for a shoot. The inside looked like the typical cowboy
barracks except there were several large mirrors and makeup tables at one end
of the room. That way, the other end could be used as an inside set for bunkhouse
scenes as long as the cameraman kept the beautification area out of the frame.
"Any idea who might have wanted to
ventilate you, Mr. Maynard?" I asked.
"Nope. And call me Ken," he
said. "Ever since we started Mystery Mountain, there have been some odd
occurrences. First, an unexplained fire destroyed three days worth of film.
Then Tarzan (Maynard's horse) got sick and we had to adjust schedules. And
finally, Toosie, twisted her ankle. That was Toosie in the porch swing. She
stunt doubles all the women and kids in the Mascot serials."
"She looks more like a vamp than a
tough and tumble stuntwoman," I said.
"Yea, she's got a notion she wants
to be the next Thelma Todd," Maynard said. "About the only thing she
has in common with Thelma is they both like to snuggle up to gangsters."
"So you're saying there's been a run
of bad luck on this shoot," I said.
"Yep, we're way behind schedule. I
took advantage of the last delay to go raise a little hell in town. Guess I
went a little too far last night at the Trocadero. That's when you and Nick came
in."
"What's Red Eye's story? Is he the
comic sidekick in Mystery Mountain?"
"Naw. He's working with Blackie on
some stock chase scenes for another Oater Mascot is getting ready to shoot. I
worked with him a few times in the silent pictures. But, like a lot of
character actors of the silents, he just didn't transition well to the talkies.
His funny dialogue just doesn't lead to laughs in the theaters. Of course, some
top silent film stars found their newly recorded voices led to a lot of laughs,
destroying their careers. Also, Red Eye is just not that dependable these days.
He can still fall off a horse without getting hurt. In fact, he falls down a
lot. But his timing stinks and he's just not that funny anymore."
Mo opened the door and waved.
"Ken. I got Tarzan all set and the
boys are ready for your first scene," he said.
Mascot serials were filmed on a tight
budget. Several scenes were shot each day and sometimes at night. Usually only
one take was shot per scene unless something really drastic happened in front
of the camera, such as a horse taking a crap or a stallion waving his
Louisville Slugger and making everyone feel insignificant.
"Bud and Shuffles are about to head
over and pick up the car you guys drove into the ditch," Mo said. "You
can tag along if you like, Curly."
Three of us squeezed into the Ford tow
truck cab for the trip back to the scene of the shooting.
The driver, Bud, was a short, stocky,
redheaded handyman with coveralls, a newsboy cap, a short nasty cigar and a
disposition to match. According to him, he painted the buildings, cleaned the
barns, hauled what needed to be hauled and repaired whatever was broken.
Shuffles, on the other hand, was quite a
character. His real name was Arthur Washington.
"So why do they call you Shuffles?"
I asked.
"Because I'm a negro," he said.
"And that's the name the studio gave me so every time a director wants to
throw in a negro character to say something really stupid and make the white
actors look smart, I shuffle in, roll my eyes and sputter my lines. And they
hand me a check."
His grammar was far superior to that of
my former city editor at the Examiner.
I was starting to think he might be a little bitter about his theatrical
options, but my perception was quickly corrected.
"I'm no Douglas Fairbanks, but I
make a good living. It sure beats restroom attending. And in between the
speaking parts, I work with Bud on projects here at the ranch."
Bud actually smiled at that.
"Shuffles and me – we're a pretty
good team," Bud said. "A lot of the actors, stuntmen and crewmembers
look down on us. They think they're better because of what they do. But they
couldn't do it without us. This ranch and all the equipment have been falling
apart for the last couple of years and Shuffles and I have kept putting it back
together. And as stupid as the lines are that Shuffles has to speak, he never
screws them up, unlike the pretty boys and bimbos who get their names on the
marquees."
Bud wasn't a bad guy after all. He was
just a little gruff and looked like he should be threatening Billy goats from
under a bridge. But he was proud of his work and loyal to his friend. And that
pretty well sums up what people should care about.
When we arrived at the crash site, Bud
and Shuffles hopped out and got to work hooking the Cadillac up to drag it off
the ledge. I started for the rocks from where I thought the shots were fired.
"Take your time, Curly," Bud
said. "Once we get the Caddy on flatland, I want to give it the once over.
I also have a cigar I want to finish."
Taking Nick's earlier advice to watch for
snakes, I crossed the road and started up the rocky hill. Once I got to some
boulders that seemed ideal for an ambush, I started looking for disturbed
ground. I found an area behind a large V-shaped pile of rocks where a couple of
shrubs had been broken. Someone had obviously set up within the cover to await
our arrival. Whoever the sniper was cleaned up his brass pretty well. But as I
kicked a little dust around, I found a shiny, single .30-06 shell, just like
the ones we used in our Army M1903 Springfield rifles in France.
Something about that casing sent a chill
through me that I hadn't felt since my time in the trenches. During the war, I
knew we were up against a well-armed, uniformed, enemy military and, at any
time, a German bullet was just waiting for me to be in the wrong spot.
The war had been over for almost 16 years
and I didn't like to think about those days. But for those of us who served,
some feelings are involuntary. I chalked mine up to the aging process and a slight
case of the willies.
I returned to the tow truck with my find
and we headed back toward the ranch.
"You guys have any idea why someone
would want to kill Ken Maynard?" I asked.
"There might be quite a few reasons,"
Bud said as, thankfully, he tossed his stinky cigar butt out the window. "Ken
is a complex man. You never know how he is going to react from one moment to
another."
I had seen the drunken dummy side of
Maynard as well as the grumpy hung-over guy, but he hadn't seemed any different
from anybody else on the tail end of a bender.
"One moment Mr. Maynard can be happy
and cracking jokes and the next minute he can just go berserk and start
screaming at you," Shuffles said. "It's like he's two people."
"Now, his brother, Kermit, is a
genuine nice guy," Bud added. "I talked to him about Ken and he said
this has been a lifelong condition. They were country boys, part of a large
family, and Ken, the older of the two, was the wildest. Kermit said his brother
would behave just fine and then he would get this look in his eye and start
thinking everyone was out to get him. His wildness helped hone his skills with
trick riding and rodeo events. But competing in that world also increased his
feelings that people wanted to get him out of the way. Becoming a western movie
star didn't make it any easier, either; especially recently since he has taken
a couple of steps downward from Universal and other studios to land at Mascot.
"And his drinking has increased to
the point that he may not be with Mascot much longer."
There are a lot of temperamental movie
stars in Hollywood, and a lot of drunks, but that usually doesn't lead to
someone wanting to murder them. I thought of all the silent movie stars who
didn't make it into the talkies because they sounded like Disney mice. Many of
them became drunks. But they were only abandoned by their hypocritical peers;
not murdered.
"There has to be more to this
incident than just an angry coworker who got his feelings hurt by a prima-donna
cowboy star," I said.
Perhaps someone really was trying to kill
Nick or myself and didn't even care a whit about Ken Maynard. I didn't know how
Nick could have ticked off anyone that much, as he was just a working, family
man who drove folks to and from typical Hollywood functions and workplaces. And
I certainly had made a few enemies in my newspaper career covering crime and
politics, which are pretty much the same thing. But, I don't think my former
city editor would lean toward murder just because I told him where he could
deposit (insert) his future assignments. I'm sure he has been told worse things
he could do to himself. And the venomous Congressional candidate got what he
really wanted, which was a pandering press and my departure from the
newspaper.
When we got back to the ranch house,
things were not getting any better.
I walked from the vehicle barn toward the
ranch house when I heard the breaking of glass and saw the front door swing
open. A large man in western clothing came out not facing the direction he was
traveling. He landed in the dust sounding like a bag of cement. I looked down
and recognized the Oater King of the bad guys, Charlie King, as he puffed dust
through his famous mustache.
"Now that's how you throw a
realistic punch," Maynard slurred as he tossed King's black hat toward the
horizontal victim.
"I'm goin' to tear you apart, pretty
boy," King sputtered as he jumped to his feet. "You've never been
able to throw a realistic punch on screen and now I'm going to repay that
sucker punch with interest."
Gorn stepped between them.
"That's it!" he said. "This
is your last mistake, Maynard. You cause one more problem to me and you're out
of here and no longer with Mascot. Nat Levine is sick of your behavior and so
am I. We're not so far into this picture that I can't put that fairy suit of
yours on just about anybody and complete it."
His last statement didn't make much
sense, but we all understood what he meant.
"And as for you, Charlie, I
apologize for this drunk. I know you drink a bit too, but you are a
professional and we will work together again, many times; just not on this
picture. We'll talk in town next week."
"Thanks, Max," King said. "But
you better get your boy some loony pills. Because if he continues like he is
goin', he will receive a bundle of bruises from any stuntman or black hat he
has to fight a scene with. I guarantee that."
Things quieted down a bit as King dusted
himself off, just like in the movies, and walked over to a little Model A Ford
near the horse barn. Without a word he drove away.
Gorn turned to me.
"Inside, Curly! Time for you to earn
your keep," Gorn said. "This picture has had too many delays; too
many unexplained and possibly deadly problems. And, you just saw what could be
described as the demise of a once-stellar, now-struggling career. The Mighty
Maynard has almost completely struck out."
Gorn had, with reservations, reported the
shooting incident to the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.
"You need to write a report for law
enforcement that keeps our star out of the picture," he said. "That
means it will keep Mascot out of the picture as well. This kind of press we do
not need. The deputies are spread mighty thin these days, so if you write the
report judiciously, it will be filed and no follow up will take place. And the
press will not have any reason to get involved. You do get what I mean?"
"Loud and clear, boss."
"And then I want you to try and find
out what is behind all these problems, other than the fact that Charlie is
right about Ken," Gorn said as he paced the room. "Maynard's mood
swings and alcoholism are beyond our abilities to cure. But you still have to
wet nurse the SOB, and keep him out of jail and away from reporters, until this
picture is complete. Then, you can drop him off at the Trocadero for good, for
all I care."
I asked Gorn about the delays and what he
thought might be motive for someone to hamper, if not shut down, production. He
was obviously frustrated with the problems and the fact that costs continued to
increase with no possibility of the low-budget serial completing on budget. But
he couldn't think why anyone would want to sabotage the film.
Gorn lit another cigarette and sat down
on a wooden chair in front of a roll-top desk.
"I'm sending some of the crew over
to Griffith Park to get some chase and stunt shots this afternoon," he
said. "Kermit will double for Ken. Verna (Hillie), our leading lady, likes
Kermit better, anyway. You and Nick need to get Ken, sober and pleasant, into
town for a meeting with a new property we have coming along. Nick has the lowdown.
Once the meeting is over, get Ken to the studio house and you can write your
report for the sheriff there.
I remember debating that question with other children on the
playgrounds, backyards and pastures during my youth in the 1950s. Depending on
the year, the answers were Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, Lash LaRue, Johnny Mack Brown, Tim McCoy, Tom
Tyler, Tex Ritter, Hoppy and other great B-western heroes whose movies of the
1930s and ’40s were saturating early television. We often watched the films
with our parents who had enjoyed them during their first runs in theaters. In
the late ’50s and early ’60s, television series stars such as Steve McQueen,
James Garner, Richard Boone, Will Hutchins, and James Drury were added to the
discussion.
the West. They taught the beliefs of self-reliance,
honesty and fair play. Every leading B-western star was a straight shooter who
always told the truth, paid his debts, was kind to animals and courteous to the
ladies. Only bad guys lied, stole, cursed, back-shot, and mistreated horses,
women and children.
That’s why today I still love the old B-westerns. When I’ve read
or heard too much bad news about war, crime and politics, I simply pop in a DVD
and watch Ken Maynard round up the rustlers, Hoot Gibson take down the crooked
banker or John Wayne and the Three Mesquiteers save the settlers from the
clutches of an attorney’s evil land scheme. You can call it therapy; I think of
it as pleasure. 
Internet sites, today’s children quite often debate
their favorite video games or “reality” shows. I would love to see youths
rediscover B-westerns like so many have with the classic films of Bogart and
Chaplin. I think they would be amazed at the trick riding found in the 1930s
Gibson and Maynard films, which contain no Computer Generated Imagery (CGI)
special effects. When we watch these films, the stars of that bygone era live
again, as does the message that justice always wins. 
