Western

A renegade group of Apaches are on the warpath, killing as they go. Meanwhile strangers converge at the only water hole for miles, hoping their numbers will hold off the attacks until help arrives...but will it?

A bit slow starting, but a solid middle and ending to this tale. ( )

This was a pretty good historical fiction genre novel, telling a story of a group of civilians and soldiers trapped at a water source in the desert, with a group of Apache warriors penning them in and picking them off one by one. Much of this story is about the way the trapped people interact, rather than about gunfighting. The characters are pretty realistic, and while I dislike how they treat Jennifer, one of the trapped women, as if she is a parcel to be grabbed, rather than a person who has a say as to what man she marries and what sort of life she wants. She gets a lot of grief for wanting to move East and live in a town, abandoning ranching as something not for her, and the hero announces to her dad at the end that he is marrying her without her having ever actually accepted him, and without his having actually talked with her about it before. Still, the women in this book are pretty strong characters, and the men are not as annoyingly sexist as they could be, without really resulting in anachronistic gender-relations. ( )

The first Western I've read. I enjoyed it well enough that I expect to read more L'Amour. It's nothing to knock my socks off, but the writing's solid and the characters are strong (if cliched). The ending seems like a bit of a cop out, although you'll certainly never see it coming. ( )

An interesting L'Amour western - first published, at least my copy, in 1957, so it's written somewhere between "Hondo" and the Duke walking into the very boots L'Amour wrote about, and then strangely, L'Amour writing into the boots the Duke wore on the screen.
In this novel, a mess of soldiers, gamblers, miners, outlaws and one lone gunman (he's a lone gunman with a strong preachin' streak, this is L'Amour people!) all meet up at Papago Wells, the biggest waterhole in the Arizona desert, some thirty miles south of Yuma one night. Indians, specifically Apaches, follow the Outcasts of Papago Wells to the tank, and because they are Apaches or it's Sunday, or a L'Amour, the Apaches try to kill everyone of course.
Yet Last Stand, as I said is no ordinary L'Amour - complications about. L'Amour spends ample time (alright, ample time for a man that uses cardboard cutouts for characters) to flesh out the men stuck a Papago. Each character - the gambler and his fiancee, the runaway girl, the gunman, the four soldiers, the lawman and the outlaws - faces a psychological break during the siege. Logan Cates, the lone gunman and L'Amour hero, has to worry more about the men covering his back than the Apaches in the desert, and there is the value of this L'Amour western. Does Logan survive to win the girl? Of course he survives and gets the girl, it's L'Amour! How? I won't reveal that.

I'll just say, it's called calvary, and they show up. And the Apaches? Never actually seen, they are just brown desert ghosts - though L'Amour spends a page describing the war party and leader, not once does he build up to a major fight - it's like he got sidetracked...actually, it works here, and works well.