COYOTE SISTERS
THE ADVENTURES OF LARKSPUR AND CALICO
By: Guy C. Brownlee
PART THREE: HANG 'EM HIGH!
Taken from the journals of Professor Ebenezer Henway, AKA "Doc Rooster"; M.D.; D.D.S.; P.H.D.; historian; profound intellect; gadgeteer.
OK, I'll fess up. I myself have seen more than my share of those old pulp video horse operas; heck, I even owned a few, booted off the public library system. And no, I couldn't tell you how accurate they were in portraying that wild and woolly era, knowing Hollywood's penchant for sanitation, glamorization, and general exaggeration.
I'm not quite that old. But the resemblance between those testosterone-drenched shoot 'em ups and the actual everyday popular culture and social structure of the planet Railhead at large was, at the very least, compelling.
It isn't so much a question of whether life was imitating art, but whether life was consciously, and with forethought, imitating art.
As I just said, the images were certainly available to the public at anytime, through any number of sources, including the Thomas Faulkner Memorial Library, located downtown San Laredo.
A lot of it I believe to be nothing more than a dumb but happy accident, the natural process of any young society, still in the throes of its colonization period. Still and still, one has to wonder where coincidence ends and artifice begins; you only have to look back to the mid-to-late 20th century and that damned twitch-vixen device we still carry around called television to see how mass media can influence everyday life: Coonskin caps. Prince Valiant haircuts. Bell bottoms. Free love. Disco. Keeping up with the Jones', the Clever's, the Brady's. Well, you get the picture.
But this all sounds like there's some absolute definitive answer to this "was history repeating itself?" mystery -- and partners, there just ain't. Railhead was the way it was because it was the way it was -- do you think we would have dressed like that otherwise?
Oy!
And that's all I got to say about that.
* * *
Larkspur had to admit, if nothing else, Poison Ashley certainly had a flair for the dramatic: chained and manacled by both their wrists and ankles, the wily vigilante and her long-suffering compadre, Calico, were currently spread-eagled and suspended over the airship's open hangar bay doors, each getting an eyeful of the wrong end of Angelside.
Some distance below, one of those ill-tempered tundra thunderstorms was starting to throw fits, and through the occasional break in the clouds, the girls could see lightning strike the desert floor, illuminating the ground for miles in radius.
Larkspur began to hiccup uncontrollably: high altitude, thin air, and all that. Calico rolled her eyes.
"I *hic* saw that!!"
Meanwhile, the captain of The Merry Widowmaker had sauntered onto the deck, her hands poised seductively on the hilts of her holstered twin 45s, her hips swaying to the rhythm of her stiletto heels clicking on the metal plate, elevating the meaning of the word "haughty" to damn near performance art.
Her name was Ashley Angelique, known to all from folklore and the popular media as "Poison Ashley", and she could have been Larkspur's own very shadow, matching our heroine in nearly every physical showcase, save for Ashley's milk-chocolate skin, musky caramel-colored eyes, and straight, hip-length, cobalt-blue hair.
Sartorially, Ashley played the pirate queen to excess, what with her signature spider-shaped earrings, zebra-striped headscarf, liquid gold swashshirt, and second skin black lycra tights; all ending with a pair of highly attention-getting, multi-strap-and-gold buckle covered, thigh-high (did I mention stiletto-heeled?) shiny shiny shiny black leather boots...
... The last of which Larkspur coveted rather badly, and had to forcibly mentally check herself from asking the pirate where she got them, and for how much. Poor girl.
Meanwhile, the closest members of Ashley's crew reluctantly followed her on deck, each with their heads swung low. Among them was the sweet and shy, mountain-sized bookworm, Edison, ship's coxswain; the crotchety, pint-sized wiseman, "Shakes" Pierre, ship's cook; and the elegant, dark, and boot-to-the-head dangerous Hong Fei, Ashley's sometimes mentor, sometimes lover, undisputed master of martial arts, and ship's second-in-command.
Larkspur looked to each of them with open affection, knowing that, whilst fiercely loyal to the pirate queen, many of the Widowmakers considered the vigilantes as comrades and allies, almost family.
With a strut and a swagger, Ashley paced back and forth at the edge of the open hangar bay, casually tracing one delicate finger along the safety rail. "Ah, mes amis. It would appear I have you by ze small rabbits, non?"
Larkspur's eyes narrowed, catlike, as she mentally growled, I bet your ancestors came from Pittsburgh...
Served up with equal portions of pure corn and relish, Ashley then tossed her hair back, crossed her arms, and regarded our heroines... if she had a mustache, she probably would have twirled it: "Let me see, now... should I dangle you in front of ze turbines and give your girlish locks a nice little buzzcut? Those coiffs are just so Daisey-Mae...
"Should I dip you into the clouds below and let ze sub-zero chill and ze lightning lick at your extremities like a crazed ferret? No, you would probably enjoy it...
"I know! Why don't I just toss a couple of parachutes out, then you after, and see who wins, hmm?"
Well, sir, this last little bon mot just about turned everybody within earshot whiter than a polar bear's ghost.
Everybody, that is, except Larkspur and Calico.
Calico feigned a rather exaggerated yawn and commented, "Oh, dear, somebody call Oscar Wilde, tell him to give up his day job!"
Larkspur dually concurred, adding, "That line's so old *hic* it's got *hic hic* dinosaur sperm on its *hic* lips!"
OK, so you had to have been there; point is, no one was paying any attention to Larkspur's hands and, more importantly, what she was doing with them.
"By the way, Larkspur, stalwart companion, isn't this the part where you plead for my life, saying, 'It's me you've got it in for! Leave my faithful sidekick out of this!'?"
"Oh, yeah. 'It's me *hic hic* you've got it in for *hic*! Leave Chuckles here *hic* out of this!' *Hic* By the way *hic*, why do I always have to be the *hic hic* martyr, huh?"
"I'm just a lowly sidekick. Tradition."
"Thank *hic* Gods there ain't a union!"
Needless to mention, Poison Ashley's reaction to all this contrived flippancy was, well, more of the same. "So, you think to mock me, non? You seek to rattle, to unnerve, to discombobulate? You wish for me to slip up, to err, to make ze crucial mistake, by acting foolishly, by dropping my guard, playing ze ass! Eez that not so?!"
It was one of those opportunities that only come along once or twice in a lifetime, one that, no matter what the consequences, had to be taken, a clarion call to arms, a veritable gift from the gods: the perfect straight line.
"Ash *hic*, the only difference between you *hic* and a horse's patoote *hic* is that your hairlip needs trimming! *Hic*"
It is hard to say, exactly, how or why no one else thought to check Larkspur's riding gloves for clandestine items or secret compartments, why the gloves weren't out and out removed. Theories abound, of course, the popular one being that they were purposefully overlooked by certain "comrades and allies -- almost family." Whatever the reason, the fact remains that, among other things, Larkspur was an expert lockpick, a holdover from her brief but lively outlaw days.
Without a warning, Poison Ashley launched herself at Larkspur, spitting fire and hissing, with Larkspur herself just a'grinning like a goofball, giddy of her accomplishment to the point of foolishness.
Ashley wasn't laughing, however, because just as she got all set to sink her claws into Larkspur and do some fancy irrigation, did she find herself hanging upside down, halfway out the hangar bay doors, clutching onto our heroine for dear life and bladder control.
Larkspur's grin grew wide and pearly as Ashley's eyes finally met hers. "Why, if it ain't Mr. Ed! Can I have your autograph...?"
It seems that Larkspur had worked loose both of her wrist manacles with her micro-picks and had happily waited until Ashley vaulted right smack into her before letting go. Mind you, it racked Larkspur's legs something fierce when she flipped over and the chains snapped taut; but, as she would later say, it was all worth it just to see the "birch eyeing the chainsaw" look on the pirate queen's face. Ashley was so beside herself she could've formed her own conga line.
"You. Are. MAD!!"
"Hey, I'm not the one who catapulted herself over a two-mile drop just to get pissy!" Larkspur replied offhandedly.
Her hiccups had by now mysteriously vanished, gone the way of Amelia Earhart and the dodo. Gone, too, was her goofball smile, replaced suddenly by something entirely more feral. It was a look that said unless something higher up the food chain happened along, Ashley was likely to be today's blue plate special.
"Y'know, you really should have these more secured," Larkspur admonished, mock-sweetly. "They would've fallen right out of your holsters if'n I didn't catch them! Tsk!"
Ashley's eyes popped open, wide and white as dinner plates, as the pirate queen realized instantly what the vigilante had done. "Non! My babies!"
Sure enough, Larkspur was cackling like a hyena and brandishing Ashley's own twin 45 automatics, "appropriated" during the vigilante's little stunt. Poison Ashley squirmed violently in a vain attempt to wrestle her signature weapons back from our heroine, while still latched on to her like ugly on a Democrat.
Larkspur just ignored the pirate queen, holding the guns out before her (and well out of Ashley's reach) in honest admiration. "Wow... radiating pearl spiderweb design on the handle (verry striking!), with raised -- what, onyx? -- black widow icon, and, I believe, an honest-to-goddess ruby chip for the hourglass mark."
Larkspur let out a low, appreciative whistle, then placed the two 45s snug against each of Ashley's by-now glistening temples. "Now be a sweetie and tell the boys to haul us up. My ankles are startin' to chafe..."
Now, in speaking of The Dodo, that comical, affectionately remembered fowl of yore, let us once again pause to make the following observation: people is stupid. Even those that make the least mistakes tend to make the biggest ones when they do. It's called karmic balance.
Case in point: what nobody at that moment yet noticed was, as the girls were being dutifully pulled up, did one of the many Dragonfly autogyros, supposedly secured in the hangar bay, start to slowly roll forward.
It seems that, instead of attaching Larkspur's leg chains to the anchor posts that held the fighter's wheel chocks in place, some brain-cell donor mistakenly attached them to the wheel chocks themselves. This in itself would not be so bad, if not for the fact that the chains that usually connected said wheel chocks to said anchors were the ones currently attached to Larkspur's leg irons.
Can you say "bag of hammers"?
Meanwhile, using her own personalized slight of hand, Calico simply slipped from her own bonds and effortlessly swung over to the deck. The overhead chains were run from remote controlled gurneys, and clattered loudly against each other as she let them go. A little smile ghosted across her lips: OK, she thought, maybe I am a showoff.
Down below, the pirate queen was the first to notice that something wasn't quite right. "Um, gentlemen, please to pardon your Queen's somewhat bold turn of phrase, but what the hell are you doing up there?!"
And still the chains grew more slack.
"Uh, fellas, this isn't funny..." added Larkspur, who was by now pretty tired of playing cloud bait herself.
Unfortunately, at this point, things just got all ten kinds of out of hand.
Suddenly, the autogyro rolled free and slammed smack into the guardrail, and for one, terrifying moment, looked as if it were about to flip right over, its tail raised straight up.
Needless to say, that got people's attention.
"Larkspur! Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Calico-sweetie, though I'm gonna have to do some tall explaining to the dry cleaners tomorrow!"
Ashley, somehow still hanging on, looked as if she swallowed a pickled ostrich egg whole, chased down with buttermilk.
Happily, the mighty Edison was the first on the case, and had muscled the fighter's tail-end back down, while Calico and the rest continued pulling Larkspur and the pirate queen up.
Sadly, that's about when the guardrail snapped.
* * *
Much to their own surprise, Redd Rover and the Sierra Padre were not dead.
However, considering their present circumstances, they were also understandably ambivalent about that.
Imprisoned somewhere beneath Cathedral Station, in the bleak, grey-walled, fluorescent lit catacombs that were the forgotten train depot's even more forgotten maintenance tunnels, people -- the crews to at least six D-Class iron horses, along with their onboard families, no less -- were penned up tight along the corridors, each and every one sweating chihuahuas over their imminent fate.
Among them, two were helping a third bring a fourth into the world -- and you don't have to guess too hard who those first two were, do you?
"Gads, from one womb to another! What's your hurry?!" The Padre grouched, his massive hands navigating the pretty little mother-to-be's south forty (a conductor's visiting granddaughter, unfortunately in the wrong place and definitely at the wrong time). Copper tressed, her head was nestled squarely in Redd's lap. Nothing new there, thought Otis, irresistibly barking a quick laugh. Redd, meanwhile, was looking a mite peaked.
-- As were the posted sentries, our heroes' captors, hired hands to the loathsome Yellowjack and Belladonna Dupree.
Only slightly the more worse for wear, the given reason for Redd and Otis' continued existence was their collected value as possible "getaway insurance." Hostages. Nothing less. Nothing more.
Meanwhile, there was the little matter at hand: "I said 'push,' not kick!"
"Ew, what is that stuff?"
"I said 'breathe,' not bay like a common jackal!"
"I mean, there's gallons of it!"
"Madame, kindly let go of my hair!"
"It looks kinda like -- Oh, Gawd!"
"I have little follicle left, and would like to hold on to it as a nostalgic keepsake!"
"I think I'm gonna --
"I think I'm gonna --"
Well, you get the picture. Probably too well. Heh.
* * *
Maggie Roosevelt didn't know which she liked the least: dirty politics; bureaucratic red tape; being shot at by a madman; or being thrown out of a 78-story window.
Upon (admittedly brief) reflection, she decided the first three were the unfortunate but standard occupational hazards of being Planetary Governor. Lawyers, on the other hand, got thrown out of windows. Either way, she didn't like it. It set a bad precedent.
Gads! I hate heights! agreed San Laredo Mayor Edd Many Pages, who was also, by the way, thrown from that very same 78th floor window.
"Why, hidee Governor, Mayor; thankee fer dropin' by! Issus a social call?" quipped Merc, in his best crotchety old trailhand manner.
Of which he was neither, not really officially a "he" at that -- M.E.R.C. -- standing for Multitask Exoskeleton Reconnaissance and Combat: an artificially intelligent, heavy armored battlesuit, one of the more elaborate, symbiotic attachments of the legendary shootist, the Clockwork Assassin.
With only a minimum of drag to his afterburners, Merc happily snatched the pair from their rapid descent, holding them tight to his broad, teflon-bonded chestplate, himself cackling gleefully, prideful of his daring rescue.
Despite herself, the Governor squirmed fitfully. You see, Merc was also a known "accomplice" of the Clockwork Assassin, and this left poor Maggie downright confused, as it was the bionic sharpshooter that rudely tossed her and Mayor Many Pages out the window in the first place!
Merc was quick to put her at ease. "Now, now, Missy, don't get yourself all coiled up like that. The bosslady jes' wanted to get you two out of harm's way pronto like, and cuz she was lookin' fer trouble, I happened to be handy!"
"But, but how did you know?"
"We share a direct link, whatchacall... a tight-band transmission. When she wants it, I can see what she sees, I can hear what she hears: why, I can receive orders without her having to breathe a dag-burned word!"
For a moment, the Governor seemed to forget that she was holding a conversation with, for all intents and purposes, a Giant Robot. Indeed, she no longer seemed to notice that they were still about fifty floors up (the Mayor, however...).
"Is she really Brett Donahue's daughter?"
"It saddens me mightily to say so. That sidewinder!"
Maggie thought about this. "There is no love lost between me and that fascist pig Donahue. But tell me: why would she want to kill her own father?"
"You mean you don't know...?! Well, you wouldn't, now would you..."
The wide, salmon-colored marble tiles of the MacMurtry Plaza gently rose up to greet them as Merc executed a passable tenderfoot landing.
Mayor Many Pages politely excused himself to the nearest perfectly manicured row of bushes, as Merc and the Governor quietly regarded each other.
The battlesuit was certainly impressive enough, vaguely humanoid in shape, as porcelain-white as its mistress, and standing a goodly twenty feet tall.
"Governor, Cactus Brett's the one that made Doll more like me than you! I'm tellin' you, it was him all along!"
Maggie's very being balked at the idea. "What?!" It was all too unthinkable, even for Brett Donahue!
"It's true! Why, she was perfectly pink and whole when he needed a guinea pig to show off his nanotech upgrades to the company investors, may the Good Lord show mercy on them all!" For one, surreal moment, it sounded as if the battlesuit was near... tears? "She was only fifteen. Fifteen! She ain't never even kissed a boy yet! Or gone dancin'! Or, or --"
Suddenly, it seemed as though the blue sky itself was rent asunder as a series of explosions ripped throughout the entirety of the top half of the MacMurtry Building, blooming forth like phoenix roses one after another.
"Aw, hell!" was all Edd and Maggie could hear Merc say, his thrusters working overtime, speeding to his mistress' aid. And just like that, he was gone.
The Mayor shielded his eyes, looking up; most of his composure had returned, if little of his coloring.
A chorus of sirens -- police, fire and ambulance, swelled in the distance.
"I believe him, Edward."
"For what it's worth, so do I. But it's not admissible in court. She could have been lying to him, or he could have been programmed to believe her, or simply act like he believed. Automatons are just not reliable character witnesses, I'm afraid. And there is the little fact that she is a paid assassin, a common mercenary, a glorified murderess, operating outside the law!"
Maggie was a lost little girl just then. She knew Edd was right.
"Then what should we do, Edward? What should I do?"
After a long, awkward moment, Edd walked over to Maggie, put his arm around her shoulder and said quietly, "Nothing. Ignore it. It is beneath your station. A local matter..." But the Mayor thought, Just pray the right 'bad guy' gets away..."
And that's just what they did.
* * *
Cactus Brett Donahue's once showplace office was now nothing more than a charred-out husk. All the walls were burned away, all the windows completely blasted out, everything within literally turned to ash, its steel and concrete skeleton exposed and bleached as white as human bones.
All that remained was Doll.
And Brett, but not really.
It didn't take long for Doll to realize that her Papa was naught but a "heavylight" hologram -- a manmade illusion that could actually manipulate lightweight solids for short amounts of time. It was the same basic cutting-edge technology that had made Doll's "disappearing act" possible.
Brett had to laugh at the irony: he had pretended to be here while all the while she had pretended not to be. It was all probably symbolic of something, but just what escaped him for the moment.
Doll fell to her knees, trembling. "Where are you, Daddy?" she whimpered, child-like. Her ammo spent, her strength gone, steam vented from her pores in the aftermath. "Where are you, you bastard?!"
She was near hysterics, and she knew it; she hated it, she didn't want to give her father the satisfaction, but ultimately, she didn't care, just didn't give a damn. She was grieving, she was anguished, and it felt human. She felt real.
"Tsk. Is that any way to talk to your loving father? I swear!"
She knew he was goading her. She still didn't care.
"You never loved me! You never thought of me twice! All you ever treated me was like I was your wife's little trained pet! A little yapping lapdog!
"'Honey, can't you shut her up? She's giving me a migraine!'
"'Dearest, can't we put her into a boarding school? I've got clients to entertain and holiday season is coming up!'
"I was nothing but an inconvenience to you! An inconvenience, that is, until you ran out of willing guinea pigs! Then I was real handy, wasn't I? A sweet, trusting test subject for your twisted corporate schemes! Your own daughter! How could you?!"
A look of genuine bewilderment seemed to cross Brett's features just then. It was as if he honestly could not comprehend Doll's resentment.
Loser.
"I don't understand. You will never again fall ill; you will never age; never die; you can access whole information systems in a thought; you are more powerful than a tank; you will never have to cow to any man..."
"I will never be able to make love to him either!!"
"Tsk. It always has to come back to sex, doesn't it? Youth and its priorities!"
If Doll could, she would have joyfully destroyed reality itself, all form, all thought, just to be good and rid of Cactus Brett Donahue.
Instead, she got real calm. Dead calm.
This surprised no one more than her. She didn't have to find the strength to rise; it was there.
And even with her link to her symbiont severed, she didn't have to turn to see him hovering just outside behind her. In an almost monotone voice she commanded, "Merc, sir, track and pinpoint holograph downlink. Cut feed."
"Yes'm. On it."
Typically, Brett tried to have the last word: "You'll never get away now. The area has got to be simply swarming with police choppers. I tell you what... if you come back with me, I'll hide you where they'll never find you. All will be forgiven, and we'll all live happily ever --"
Suddenly, there was a brief high-pitched whine, a small shower of sparks from the center of the ceiling, and then Cactus Brett Donahue was simply no longer there.
Doll let out a soul-throttling sigh. If only it were that simple, she thought.
Doll then walked over to approximately where Brett's polished yacht-sized darkwood desk had been. When she came to a certain spot, she paused and gave the floor a swift boot. Sure enough, a small trapdoor gave way into brittle pieces, like the pages of an ancient diary.
She looked down intensely into that dark abyss, but said, "Merc, open up. We're getting out of here."
Immediately, Merc's codbrace disengaged with a hiss, followed by a series of hull latches popping, ending with the chest plate swinging up and out. Inside was revealed a cocoon of padded celfoam, a pilot's harness, a neural link cord and jack, and a bank of gauges and L.E.D.S. set into the inside chest plate.
The closest thing Doll had to a home.
Doll did not so much throw herself into the cockpit as she seemed to collapse into it, as if resigning herself to fate. Gently, Merc sealed himself around her and plotted a course to their current desert hideout.
-- Or would have, had the sky not been filled with the city's finest; police-issue Dragonflies and military surplus attack choppers.
Tomahawk MRs and Airwolfs surrounded Merc and Doll like bees to honey. "This is the police. Stand down your vehicle, repeat, stand down your vehicle! Slowly descend and land your battlesuit on the plaza below, and come out with your hands up! You have thirty seconds to comply!"
Doll weighed in her options at lightning-fast speed: fight or flee? Right then she was sick of battle, absolutely sick of it; she had been in combat mode all day and it got her less than nowhere.
That left only one course of action: "Merc, emergency orbital escape velocity, now!"
The exosuit did not have to be told twice. "Gotcha!"
There was a brief, deafening roar as Merc's engines instantly kicked in full tilt overdrive; a maneuver that was truly used only in emergencies, as it tended to burn out the exosuit's navigation motherboard like so much kindling.
Fortunately or not, however, it was rendered a moot point...
Suddenly, there was a loud "phwoomf!", like the sound of a tinderbox being lit, and Merc's thrusters inexplicably powered down. Next, a brilliant light, the color of robin's egg blue, surrounded the exosuit, as one by one, its weapons systems went off-line. Finally, a mysterious, rather pronounced, floral scent engulfed the cockpit. An irritatingly familiar floral scent.
Doll groaned inwardly and massaged the bridge of her nose. Not again, she thought wearily. Not now.
She did not even need to look as the holographic heads-up display snapped on, to know who's visage would be dancing there.
More doggedly persistent than the local constabulary, more annoying than a root canal, it was...her.
"Hold it right there, diesel-breath! You and little Miss Pinocchio are going nowhere!"
She was a mere wisp of a girl, fourteen if she was a day, and full-blooded Svaha; dark-skinned, raven tressed, and, to Doll's mind, too obscenely physically attractive for anyone that young. She was just... so... nubile. Doll disliked her with an envy bordering on the passionate.
Clad only in a tan colored soft leather halter, a matching skirt that was basically a cross between a g-string and a loincloth, and a pair of knee-high lace-up moccasins, she damn near made pedophiles of every single male that came within whiffing range. Adorned with blue flowers, her hair was drawn back in two, impossibly long pigtails, and she wore a tan leather headband, with the Svaha symbols for "courage" and "beauty" worked in.
All of which was bad enough, but when Doll considered the fact that the young'un was probably the most powerful psionic this side of the Dupree twins, it was downright intolerable.
Hovering some 65 stories above street level, she was in one of those "noble savage" battle poses she was known for. Eyes like black flames raging, she clutched her totem staff before her, the focus point for all her incredible power.
Determined. Ernest. Sincere. And blissfully unaware that she was giving a considerable number of San Laredo's finest an impressive nose bleed.
Doll sighed. Next would come "The Speech"; there was always "The Speech." Doll found herself silently reciting it by memory:
"You desecrate the Heavens. You dishonor the Earth. You bring shame upon your very tribe. I embody the wisdom of the Fathers, and the love of the One True Mother. I am the lovely shaman warrior, PRINCESS BLUEBONNET! And in the name of all the Svaha nations, I will vanquish you!!"
'Vanquish', Doll mused drolly. Now there's a word that comes up in everyday conversation.
... And a long day just got longer...
TO BE CONTINUED...
AUTHOR'S NOTES
I have a confession to make. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a "Wild West" aficionado, at least in terms of actual historical reality. While it can be debated that we are no less a violent or repressed a society than back then, it is without a doubt that the overall quality of life has since improved over a tenfold. Indeed, I simply cannot find it within myself to feel nostalgic for any period in American history that did not include indoor plumbing or air conditioning. Especially air conditioning. I live in Texas.
However, as an exotic backdrop for high adventure and other flights of fancy, the "Wild West" (roughly anytime, 19th century, roughly anywhere, the U.S.) will do just fine.
It is also acceptable as a framework for character drama, as long as the proceedings don't get too terribly grim. Mind you, I believe "Lonesome Dove" is the closest to a "straight" literary Western I have read, as most of my exposure to the genre has been through the big screen and the small. And even then, my idea of a "straight" Western may stretch the common definition of such. The screwball comedy, the crime caper, the social satire, the superhero adventure, the martial arts adventure, even the sex farce and the musical, all have been the key ingredients to many of the cinema Westerns I have enjoyed.
My highest recommendations:
Support Your Local Sheriff
Support Your Local Gunfighter
My Name is Nobody
Silverado
The Quick and the Dead
Zorro
Maverick (the movie and both the 50's and 80's TV shows!)
Cat Ballou
Sunset
Paint Your Wagon
Shanghai Noon
Just about any John Wayne Western.
Just about any Spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Leone.
If you are like me, and have never felt like the "straight" Western was your thing, I believe you will find these titles diverting enough (please note that while some of the above are comedies, or use humor to a great degree, none are out-and-out parodies as in the "Blazing Saddles school. Hopefully not to sound too snobbish, I have just never cared for the "Police Squad!/South Park type of comedy. I "get it", I just don't like it.).
My name is Guy C. Brownlee and I eagerly await your critiques. By all means be honest, but please also be considerate in your responses.
Yadda yadda, everything copyrighted @2000, Guy Clayton Brownlee, yadda yadda.
You've hurt my donkey's feelings. I suggest you apologize.