Books: Pack Rat With Vision

ARIZONA — Clarence Budington Kelland—Harper ($2).

Gaunt-faced, peppery Clarence Budington Kelland is a leading professional in the slick-paper magazine school of fiction. Twice as ingenious as most of his rivals, he has two standard plots: 1) streamlined, wisecracking romances, in which a duffer outwises the wise guys, 2) yarns—mostly historical—in which all stops are pulled out to paean the American Way. Arizona, a Civil War yarn published last week, uses Plot 2.

One of Phoebe Titus’ friends compared her to a pack rat, another to Joan of Arc. Neither would have been surprised had she sold the territory short when the Federal troops were withdrawn at the Civil War’s outbreak, leaving Tucson to be overrun by Mexican raiders and Apache scalping parties. But beauteous, powerful, 20-year-old Phoebe had Vision. “Right where ye stand,” she told a dubious group of fellow Tucsonians, “right where this filthy, crumblin’, ornery corner of hell is reelin’ ‘n’ roarin’ ‘n’ robbin’ ‘n’ killin’, there’ll be a city—and wimmin ‘n’ homes ‘n’ streets ‘n’ churches.”

Phoebe supported her dying father by baking pies. Next she started a freighting business, with its profits bought up the war-abandoned ranches of the Santa Cruz Valley, dirt cheap. One admirer, tall, lean Peter Muncie, she sent to Kentucky for a herd of cattle to stock her ranches. The other, Gambler Jefferson Carteret, a Southern aristocrat with drooping eyelids and ornate manners, went off prospecting, found a gold mine. By Appomattox Phoebe had the mine, the ranches, the cattle, her prosperous freighting business, an infant son. “Him ‘n’ Arizony is babies together,” she said. “You ‘n’ me, Peter, has got to help both of ’em grow up to be men.”