Ernest Haycox

"These men are good friends & good haters. They like peace & quiet but they are willing to fight for what they believe in. There are good years in Haycox Country, when grass is sweet & the cattle are left tom fatten in peace. There are bad years, too, when the smell of powder is over the land & men die with surprising quickness. Where is Haycox Country? It is the Old West. Fifteen hundred miles one way, two thousand the other -- from the Nebraska sand hills to the Cascades, from Yuma to Great Falls. Ernest Haycox has taken all this as his provence. No living writer has given its brave daysa such vivid life."

Ernest was born in Portland, Oregon on October 1, 1899 & educated in his native state. After military service in France followed by a National Guard stint on the Mexican border, he worked as a Portland court reporter & freelance writer. He wedded Jill Marie Chord in 1925, having two children, a daughter & son. His first western was Free Grass (1929) set in the Dakota grasslands. His short story "Stage to Lordsburg" was the basis of John Ford's 1936 classic Stagecoach starring John Wayne; & his novel Trail Town (1941) became the Alan Ladd vehicle Abilene Town (the photoplay dustwrapper is included on this page). He died too early, at midlife, on October 13, 1950. Yet first editions of unpublished or uncollected works were still appearing twenty years later. He took formulaic adventure plots as required by the times adding a layer of realism that has won him lasting credit for advancing western genre fiction toward greater sophistication.

Return to the
WESTERNS DUSTWRAPPER GALLERY GUIDE