About the Book
Title: North To Alaska
Author: Preston Lewis
Genre: Historical, Western, Fiction, Humor
Synopsis:
WEALTH AND FAME IN THE WILD WEST ARE WHAT LOMAX SEEKS . . . HIS OWN BAD LUCK IS WHAT STANDS IN HIS WAY.
Character Interview with H. H. Lomax, star of North to Alaska by Preston Lewis
You roamed the Old West for decades and ran into many legends. Who among them did you dislike?
I never particularly cared for Jesse James, but he was okay compared to his mother or George Armstrong Custer and Soapy Smith. There weren’t enough mirrors in the world to adequately reflect Custer’s opinion of himself. Fact was, if you had ordered a thousand sons of bitches from a Chicago mail-order house and only received him, you’d mark your bill paid in full. His vanity and unbridled ambition got hundreds of his men killed at the Little Bighorn.
As for Soapy, he could’ve swindled the devil out of his tail and horns and taught him lessons in devilishness. And then there were the Earp Brothers. There needed to be a few more nooses hanging from their family tree. And Wild Bill Hickok annoyed me by spreading a lot of unfounded rumors about me. Then there was Miss Susan B. Anthony, as mean a creature as ever trod across these United States. Miss Anthony probably damaged my good name more than any other person I ever encountered.
Among all those you encountered, who were your favorites?
Even though he was trying to kill me the night he died, I always had a special fondness for Billy the Kid. He had those big buck teeth and loved to laugh, dance, and flirt with the señoritas, and he was just a lot of fun to be around. If we hadn’t fallen for the same Mexican gal, we might have remained friends forever, but it was not to be. Buffalo Bill gave me a job when I needed it, even though, at first, he put me in a wig and dress to ride in his Wild West show. Then there were two telegraphers out of Waco—Doug Wolfe and Brian Dreban—who were fun to prospect with. Several cowhands—Sainty Spencer, Martin Michaels, Tom Errun, Jose Muñoz, and Mark Jurdon—were good men to cross a river with.
You saw a lot of violence on the frontier, from battles with Indians to gunfights with desperadoes. When were you the most scared?
Without a doubt, it was when Doc Holliday pulled one of my teeth in Tombstone. Guns weren’t always loaded, but Doc generally was, which is what made him so dangerous. I had spit in his drink, and he wasn’t very happy with me. He took his time extracting the tooth, as painfully as possible. Besides that, he had breath so bad that I almost passed out. I made so many enemies in Tombstone that citizens started betting where I would get shot, my butt being the favorite location. Next to that, riding with Jesse James to rob his first bank was another scary adventure, but that was nothing compared to staying with him and his mother, who was meaner than a sack full of rattlesnakes and cold-cocked me with a frying pan.
You held a lot of occupations over the years, from cowboying to prospecting. Did you have a favorite?
Bartending was an easy job. Running a saloon is as respectable an occupation as, say, running for political office, and you get to meet a higher class of people. Then, rustling cats was a profitable occupation in mining towns. There were laws against rustling cattle and stealing horses, but I never heard of one against taking cats and selling them in another town, so I did that for a while. I did whatever I could to make a buck and get by.
Why did you start writing your recollections down on Big Chief Tablets?
That was all the writing paper I had. On top of that, I wanted to annoy my sister. I wound up on hard times and had to live with her when I got too stoved up to work. She resented my presence and accused me of never amounting to anything, since I never settled down and had a family. Maybe I didn’t amount to much in her books, but I had an exciting—some might say unbelievable—life in my decades roaming the West. Bad luck and a few bad choices kept me from holding onto my money, a fact my sister resented since she thought I was mooching off of her.
Any regrets?
[Long pause] For some reason, I never could hold onto my money. It seems like every run of good luck was followed by a longer run of bad luck. Maybe my sister was right. [Longer pause] Losing LouAnne Burke in Arkansas and Ruth in Texas. Had either of those courtships worked out, I might not have wound up living with my sister in my declining years.
Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of thirty novels. In addition to his two Western Writers of America Spurs, he received the 2018 Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Western Humor for Bluster’s Last Stand, the fourth volume in his comic western series, The Memoirs of H. H. Lomax. Two other books in that series were Spur finalists. His comic western The Fleecing of Fort Griffin received the Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association for best creative work on the region.
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10/20/20 |
Excerpt |
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10/20/20 |
BONUS Post |
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10/21/20 |
Review |
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10/22/20 |
Character Interview |
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10/23/20 |
Review |
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10/24/20 |
Series Spotlight |
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10/25/20 |
Author Interview |
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10/26/20 |
Review |
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10/27/20 |
Review |
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10/28/20 |
Scrapbook Page |
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10/29/20 |
Review |
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