Goodbye to the Purple Sage by Rex Benedict

First published: 1973

Type of work: Adventure tale

Themes: Coming-of-age, crime, death, and friendship

Time of work: The early twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: West Texas and Mexico

Principal Characters:

• Sagebrush Sheridan the First, Sheriff of Medicine Creek, whose life is dedicated to living in the tradition of the Old West
• Sagebrush Sheridan the Third or Fourth (Deppity), his faithful young companion, the narrator, a realist who can, however, understand the poetic imagination of the sheriff
• Cactus Jack, leader of the Pecos Gang and the sheriff’s arch enemy
• Sanatone Rose, a beautiful girl member of the Pecos Gang
• Ringo the Gringo, a polite, guitar-playing outlaw, who joins the posse after the sheriff deputizes him
• Old Santoo, the sheriff’s crony and chief of the Comanches

The Story

Goodbye to the Purple Sage: The Last Great Ride of the Sheriff of Medicine Creek is a Western whose comic tone is produced by an original use of cliches in plot and character. The story is told by Sagebrush Sheridan the Third or Fourth (“Deppity”), who greatly admires the protagonist, Sagebrush Sheridan the First, Sheriff of Medicine Creek, even while he sees the difference between the sheriff’s illusions and reality. The novel begins in Medicine Creek, Texas. The sheriff is jubilant because he has captured the six-member Pecos Gang, his old enemies, and has even confiscated their boots. Unfortunately, when the sheriff is thrown by his horse, the Pecos Gang escapes, and, though bootless, they ride toward Mexico.

After deputizing everyone he can recruit, the sheriff leads his posse on the trail of the Pecos Gang. Although the sheriff is long on imagination and boots, he is short on food and matches and has no water at all. Soon only the narrator remains with him. A polite outlaw, Ringo the Gringo, is persuaded to join the posse and aids the sheriff when he is ambushed by the black-hatted Pecos Gang, demanding their boots.

The Pecos Gang flees before a gang of fifty young Apaches, who soon are deputized and ride in pursuit of the outlaws along with the sheriff, Deppity, and Ringo the Gringo. At Pucca Flats, a town on the banks of the Rio Grande, they witness an abortive gunfight between the Backoff Brothers, who back out of sight, and the Sunset Kid, who rides off into the sunset instead of shooting his opponents.

After a group of elderly Comanches, led by Old Santoo, join the posse, there is an adventuresome week in Mexico, punctuated by snakebites, falls into cactuses, rainstorms, and an encounter with the Rurales. Desperate, the narrator first tries in vain to persuade the Pecos Gang to turn back toward Texas and then steals their black hats and has several Apaches impersonate the Pecos Gang, in order to lead the sheriff north. Having floated safely across the flooded Rio Grande, the sheriff and Old Santoo have an inspiration. They will capture the Pecos Gang with a Big Surround, of the kind used in the traditional buffalo hunts. This plan stimulates everyone’s imagination; the Indians get their minds on buffalo, and the Pecos Gang decides to surround the missing boots. Eventually, the Big Surround does net not only the Pecos Gang, without boots, but in addition one very old buffalo, a wagon train, cattle thieves and cattle, and even a Texas Ranger.

The sheriff, however, is losing his energy. The narrator had been disturbed by the fact that he resigned the leadership of the Great Surround to Old Santoo. Nevertheless, at the end of the novel, the sheriff arrives just in time to capture Cactus Jack and to die, with his boots on, in the arms of Sanatone Rose, the girl outlaw. At the funeral, Ringo the Gringo sings his sad Western ballads, and Cactus Jack, still in need of boots, delivers a eulogy, crediting the sheriff with keeping alive the poetry of the Old West.

Context

Rex Benedict’s fascination with the Old West is evident in his other novels with a Western setting, such as Good Luck Arizona Man (1972), which is quoted in the epigraph to Goodbye to the Purple Sage; Last Stand at Goodbye Gulch (1974); and The Ballad of Cactus Jack (1975). His interest, however, is not realistic or historical but poetic. Just before beginning his Western books, Benedict had published six volumes of poetry; in these novels, comic though they may be, he is again dealing with ballads, legends, and above all with the myths that shape the minds of a people.

The characters and events in Goodbye to the Purple Sage have precedents throughout Western books and films. In terms of the theme, however, probably the most in-teresting predecessors of the sheriff and his faithful Deppity are Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615). Like Quixote, the sheriff is possessed by his illusions, which for him transform the present into a past that actually existed only in literature. In his emphasis on ritual and on verbal formulas, in his impracticality, in his inability to avoid being cheated, as when he changes horses, the sheriff is perfectly quixotic. The Deppity, however, is far cleverer than Sancho; he manages to resist the pull of illusion and even to scheme to protect the sheriff, a function that is left to other characters in Don Quixote de la Mancha.

Despite the obvious differences between the masterpiece of Cervantes and the simple books of Rex Benedict, there is an important similarity, for in both cases works that are read by the young and the literal-minded for pure entertainment contain much matter for those readers who agree with Benedict about the importance of poetry in a prosaic world.