Written by Fantasma el Rey
Louis L’Amour, possibly America’s best and beloved writer of western fiction has three of his stories in the spotlight on Warner Bros.' Louis L’Amour Western Collection. The Sacketts, Conagher, and Catlow are three different tales held together by L’Amour’s simple charm. He was a writer who knew the land he wrote about and came into contact with many people who would build a base for the yarns he wove. Wandering the west in his youth, he rode the rails and took jobs working mines, cattle, and the land, which gives his stories an authenticity often missing with writers of the genre. So with three titles to cover, let’s get this thing going, both guns blazing.
Conagher is the story of Con Conagher, a simple man with all the traits of the typical western good guy, hard-working, honest, loner. Played by Sam Elliott, who makes a great screen cowboy, Con’s life is interrupted by cattle rustlers and a widow with two kids trying to make it in a hard land. Con meets the widow (Katherine Ross) while working for a stagecoach line that stops by her place, which acts as a temporary station until the new station is built. Con and the widow make an instant connection, but being the loner he is, Con rides off and continues his drifting while always keeping her in mind.
While taking a winter job on a not-too-far-off ranch, Con discovers that some of the hands are slowly stealing cattle from the old rancher and selling them to the neighbor. Con, being an honest man hired to do a job, must act accordingly. So he gets the cattle back, runs off the outlaws, and finds his way back to the widow’s cabin. There are a few storylines blending together here and it’s a western light on the gunplay and action, but that’s all right as the basic story is easy to follow, and Elliott carries the day in this made-for-cable oater.
Article comments