Nan of Music Mountain — Story, Setting & Ideas

Obsession and Interiority

Despite the catalog subject "Western stories," the excerpts devote surprising space to de Spain's inner life. In Chapter XVII, his week in the hospital is spent not on recovery but on obsessive thought about Nan Morgan: "her comely body, which he worshipped to the tips of her graceful fingers; her alert mind, which he saw reflected in the simplest thought she expressed." The prose lingers on his longing to "make her, against a score of burly cousins, his own." This romantic fixation, rendered in almost devotional language, competes with the expected western tropes of violence and pursuit. Spearman frames de Spain's actions as driven by emotional compulsion rather than duty or revenge.

The Morgan Clan as a Law Unto Themselves

The Morgans are described as "a law unto themselves" with a "hardened code," living like "Ishmaelites" in their mountain fastness. Their leader, Duke Morgan, is "brains of the clan," influential enough to evade legal penalties while harboring outlaws. This portrayal aligns with the catalog's "Western stories" but adds a sociological dimension: the clan operates as a parallel power structure. The excerpts show de Spain recognizing that defeating the Calabasas gang does not solve the Morgan problem—"The Calabasas gang, yes; not the Morgans." The conflict is thus not simply good versus evil but a struggle against a entrenched family system.

Narrative Technique: Mannerism and Subtext

Spearman builds character through repeated physical tics. Lefever's whistling indicates "pressure on his sensibilities"; his habit of sitting sidewise on a table is an "idiosyncrasy" de Spain tolerates. These details create a subtext of unspoken tension. The dialogue among Scott, Jeffries, and Lefever about de Spain's behavior—"something was absorbing him in an unusual, even an extraordinary way"—shows the narrative withholding information, letting colleagues speculate. This indirect characterization, more typical of literary fiction than adventure, suggests Spearman's interest in psychological realism within a genre framework.

The excerpts from Nan of Music Mountain reveal a western that dwells on interior states and relational dynamics as much as on gunplay. Readers attentive to Spearman's use of physical detail and indirect dialogue will find a story that complicates the adventure label. The incomplete text leaves open how de Spain's obsession resolves against the Morgans' entrenched power, but the psychological groundwork is laid with unusual care for the genre.

Decades ago, I shelved Nan of Music Mountain and felt its stubborn yearning, that ache for a peace the heart won't grant. Years later, a quiet kinship surfaced in The Barrier — A Closer Reading, where a different wilderness holds the same lonely lesson. Some stories simply whisper the same truth, regardless of their dust.