DARK ENTRIES

Robert E. Howard index

A two page fragment where someone who is probably but not identifiably Lal Singh talks about Hindu magic and science and well it's kind of interesting in developing Singh's character, or would be, I guess. I don't know.

In this single page fragment, someone who is probably El Borak is going to save the village leader's 15 year old daughter from being r---ed by a Bedouin chieftain. We don't get there, but the collision is imminent.

This is a sort of proverb where the titular Turk gambles his sword for the Cossack's scabbard and loses, with the Cossack then taking everything that the Turk owns. Thanks, Howard.

We don't know which American gunman this could be but my gut says that it's most likely an Allison story. Whoever it is provokes a fight with an Afghan chieftain, murders him, and then vaults out the window. We never see what the business he had in Kabul was unless it was just being a dick.

This single page fragment is from Buckner's POV. It references the "Khyber" story's eventual outcome. Whether Howard finished the narrative or not, it seems to be a full thing in the lore of the Sonora Kid. We have zero idea about what was going to happen in this except it drew together Steve, Buckner, El Borak, and Lal Singh.

This story also has a story within it that we haven't seen before: Allison working as a private detective, winding up at a house party where his sister Marion was at, and finding a man murdered in his own room, with Steve finding out that it was a snake! This is probably a setup to whatever the final twist in this story is, where it seems like the German host is keeping some sort of primate in the west tower.

This fragment has Steve rescuing his older sister Helen from what she thinks is eloping with an Arabian gentleman. This story has ugly racial overtones. Helen, being a southern girl, feels that the match is racially okay because she doesn't feel any racial ickiness, and Steve will be damned if he will let his sister marry an Arab (let alone the scoundrel he knows him to be).

Steve is out gambling and watching over his sister, Mildred, who starts getting loose with her bets. Steve is fine until she goes to bet a kiss with a known scoundrel and he ends the night, starting a sibling row. Allison's hardest advice here: "You don't know anything about the men you make these bets with and the best men are not to be trusted with an innocent young girl."

A four-page fragment where Steve is again really familiar with his sister Mildred, who relates a chance encounter with one of Steve's adventurous acquaintances. She (the acquaintance) is a beautiful, exotic, but hard woman who we presume Steve did not part with on great terms as someone attempts to assassinate him only minutes after he shoos his sister out of the room.

In this three-page fragment, Steve is taking his sister Helen out to see a view of the countryside. The description that Howard writes of the landscape is pretty good. This story only goes so far as to throw out some romantic intrigue where Helen stares at a handsome stranger--to her, at least--before Steve needles her over it.

Billy tells a ridiculous story fragment about what he is doing with Steve in Tibet with a bumbling botanist. They're looking for a Yeti, I guess, "the missing link", but their botanist friend stumbles upon some gold and the fragment ends on a cliffhanger with Steve and Billy being held up by Tibetans with rifles. I wish these ridiculous stories had played out to their ends!

This Arizona frontier story has Steve and Billy going to check out a mysterious, abandoned pueblo. If I know my genre then I would guess that the ruins turn out to be older than the Native Americans. The two don't get far, but there's an amusing ambush by a Mexican rogue. More pointedly, Howard reuses the language to describe Allison and Billy in "North of Khyber".

Steve and Billy are drinking and gambling and some dudes come in to collect a bounty on them. Allison guns him down quick and then the two of them shoot up the entire bar. We get a brief snippet of the adventurous Helen Channon making her way to the West to, uh, do something, before this fragment mercifully ends. Like, I think that you have to be in a tall tale mind to enjoy what little is here.

A single page story fragment. Madge is Steve's cousin from the "Khyber" story, apparently come to visit the Allison ranch. This story apparently takes place between El Borak and "Khyber" as Madge is meeting Billy Buckner here for the first time.

That and a lot of spanking. if this was the only way to sell a benign story like this to the pulps then it didn't need to be sold!! I mean, Steve doesn't spank her, but boy does her family talk a lot about spanking her. That and her not wearing any clothes under her nightie.

What I get out of this story in terms of Howard's loose character associations is that Howard had Allison in a bad spot, fell in with El Borak who cultivated his raw talent, and then came back to the American frontier for some less risky leisure time, where he met up with Billy prior to "North of Khyber".