Twenty TEX TANGLES WITH HORRIBILIS
Tex uses the coarse language of the times (“Chinaman,” “Chink,” and “coolie”). He is afraid that he has mistaken a Chinese worker for a bear and shot him by mistake. His tongue-in-cheek remarks are at best ambiguous: “Chinamen are sort of sacrosanct up here, a paternal govt figurin’ they are plumb harmless, an’ oncapable of protectin’ themselves in the Crude West, so it costs a man plenty even if he only takes a playful poke at one. I figger that for blastin’ one I’ll get hung.” It does not stretch charity to read this at face value as implying that Chinese workers were indeed harmless and that he was in fact afraid that he might just have shot someone who posed no threat. But the jocular tone is jarring even if it is meant to be of a piece with Tex’s mountain persona. The racist language and tone make it hard to read this story with enjoyment today.
—AG