TWENTY-FOUR

Twenty-Four THE WILD GOOSE CHASE

The only story in this collection not signed “N. Vernon-Wood,” this is also the only piece not set in the Rockies or adjacent ranges (Selkirks, Cariboos, etc). One reason for using a fictitious name is that another story of his, “It’s a Woman’s World,” appeared in the same issue of the magazine. Tex seems to have been trying his hand at a genre piece outside of his own immediate experience—or perhaps he hunted in New Jersey when visiting one of his Wall Street or other New York clients [his daughter Dorothy, herself also a mountain guide, on and off, until her seventies, visited some of them in the 1950s, with my father Harry in tow—AC]. The style is clearly the same as in the other “straight stories,” and the gentle irony alone would mark this as one of Tex’s. It is worth noting that mountain masculinity is transposed here into the register of winter masculinity; a man’s ability to withstand the cold functioning as a gauge of his hunting prowess on cold marches and sea-shores in early winter. Success comes only at the expense of considerable discomfort and risk, though these are clearly secondary to the successful hunt and occasion some grumbling on the part of the narrator.

—AG