Books: The Bullies Never Learn

TWO ROADS TO GUADELUPÉ by Robert Lewis Taylor. 428 pages. Doubleday. $5.95.

In the first chapter of this new adventure novel, Mother is whacked on the head with an ax. In the second, a prairie wagon rigged with sails like a ship crashes into a store front. By the third, Mother’s two sons have been lured into joining the Missouri Volunteers to fight the Mexican War.

The sons—pompous, bookish Blaine Shelby, 33, and happy-go-lucky 14-year-old Sam—tell the story in alternate chapters. Angelina Hughes, a beautiful hoyden in love with Blaine, disguises herself as a soldier and fools everyone but perspicacious Sam, who stumbles upon her bathing nude in a river. Among the good guys are O’Hara, an Irish sergeant with a heart of gold; Hobbs, a sly, tall-tale-telling frontiersman; Spie-buck, a 6-ft. 4-in. Shawnee guide; and shrewd, Lincolnesque Colonel Alex Doniphan. The bad guys are legion, ranging from scoundrelly Mexicans to brash American bullies who never learn —they always pick fights with Elaine and end up flat on their backs.

With his 1958 bestseller, The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Author Taylor staked out a modest claim on the edge of the Mark Twain country. Young Sam, if not an authentic Tom Sawyer, is a reasonably good facsimile, and he can also take as much physical punishment as James Bond. For this new novel, Taylor has carefully mined the journals, diaries, .newspapers and histories of middle 19th century America.

Taylor seems so bent on entertainment that he often slips into anachronism, and some of the pert dialogue between Angelina and the Shelby boys sounds more like 1964 TV comedy than 1840 backwoods. However, except for such lapses, Two Roads clips along at a lively pace, and despite the well-staged battles and general bloodletting, readers get the reassuring impression that it’s all in fun.