Gold Rush Huck Finn

THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MCPHEETERS (544 pp.)--Robert Lewis Taylor--Doubleday ($4.50).

For 2,000 miles and half a thousand pages, the Redskins keep coming. "We'll stand them off," says one embattled paleface. "If we don't, save a ball for the women and children." The reader can have himself a different kind of ball with this book--if he will only persevere. Versatile Author Taylor (Center Ring, W. C. Fields) follows in the footsteps of a master of the picaresque. Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) was a superbly comical novel, in letter form, about a family traveling around England in the days of highwaymen and top-heavy coaches. Author Taylor's book is not only a parody of Smollett's parody of 18th century travelogues, but of every Western ever written.

Sardius McPheeters, a poker-broke

Louisville physician, joins the Gold Rush hoping that some day he will return "laden with the treasures of Golconda, respected, envied by all, denied credit by none." His son Jaimie goes along mainly to escape high school, feeling himself "already educated to the point of absurdity." As they pick up companions along the way, the McPheeters party grows into as fine a concourse of nitwitted adventurers as ever washed a pan in greed. Among those present:

P: Mr. Kissel, "a giant for strength and size" but such a mute dumbbell that when he manages to say "pass the bacon," he gives an impression of pithy wisdom. First-rate with rifle or ax; has been known to throw a bully 30 ft. without having him bounce.

P: Jennie, "fresh and sparkling as a rosebud," her "lovely petals protected by a thorn." With a slight tightening of the lips (and Kissel's shotgun), she can down eight brace of prairie plover in seven shots (five doubles and two triples). Has a "neat, graceful competence" in scalping Indians. Fond of husbands, but is apt to have them shot out from under her.

P: Buck Coulter, the "trail boss." Brings out the worst in Jennie by showing too much chest hair ("It's indecent"), eventually becomes her third mate.

P: The Honorable Henry T. Coe, a Briton traveling to California with 26 cases of ginger beer. Wears striped pants and kid gloves; constantly jots down notes for a book called An Amble Over the Rockies. Part of the amble is described by McPheeters Sr. in letters to his wife. Son Jaimie, a growing lad who can never fathom what grown men see in women, tells the rest of the story; his insights and outlook are highly reminiscent of Huck Finn. He contributes many a stomach-turning episode, notably his pouring a brew of poisonous Indian medicine down ailing father McPheeters' throat through an oil funnel: "He spit the first dose straight up ... like a geyser, but the medicine soon took the fight out of him." The trouble is that much of Author Taylor's carefully researched Western history is too grim to blend with comedy. But much of the book is engaging and bouncy, particularly when, at journey's end, Jaimie is a boy no longer, having discovered what it is men see in women: they "look somehow larger undressed than dressed, both forward and rear."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.