The Searchers
Authors: Alan LeMay
THE
SEARCHERS
Alan LeMay
LEISURE BOOKS 
NEW YORK CITY
To my grandfather, Oliver LeMay, who died on the prairie;
And to my grandmother, Karen Jensen LeMay, to whom he
left three sons under seven.
“These people had a kind of courage that may be the finest gift of man: the courage of those who simply keep on and on, doing the next thing, far beyond all reasonable endurance, seldom thinking of themselves as martyred, and never thinking of themselves as brave.”
Contents
Other Leisure books by Alan LeMay
by Andrew J. Fenady
“Don’t ask me! As long as you live—don’t ever ask me!”
Alan LeMay wrote the words, but John Wayne as Ethan Edwards delivered them to Harry Carey Jr. after discovering the body of his niece Lucy after Comanche bucks had finished with her. And while he was saying them he plunged his knife into the earth again and again.
No actor ever spoke with more depth and despair, with a voice more choked with emotion, or eyes more laden with anguish.
“What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture?!”
But Duke had already drawn a picture, a searing picture of inhumanity and degradation.
No actor in any Western—or any drama—could have conveyed more passion, and yet, that was only one moment in a performance encompassing a panoply of emotion, humor and cruelty that John Wayne summoned for his unforgettable, towering characterization of complexity and contradiction.
Duke told me that Ethan Edwards was his favorite role. Not that it matters, but it also happens to be mine—with his Tom Dunson in
Red River
as a shining second.
He even named his last son Ethan after
The Searchers
character, who in the book is called Amos.
Duke is most often thought of as having portrayed unflawed, heroic characters. Quite the opposite is true. Quite often he portrayed the other side of the coin.
Howard Hawks had made highly successful pictures with Gary Cooper, including
Ball of Fire
and the Academy Award–winning
Sergeant York
.
When Hawks was casting the role of Dunson in
Red River
, he sent the script to Gary Cooper. Cooper sent it back with a note, “Sorry, Howard. Too dark.”
Then Hawks went to Wayne, who leaped at it. Dark or damaged, Dunson was a challenge and a chance to dispel the notion that Duke was little more than a personality. Dunson evolved, in more ways than one, from a young, idealistic frontiersman to a mature, obsessed martinet. But there were other “dark or damaged” characters in Duke’s repertoire. Jack Martin in Cacil B. DeMille’s
Reap the Wild Wind
, Captain Ralls in
Wake of the Red Witch,
even ‘Pittsburg’ Markham in
Pittsburg
. Each of whom was more sinner than saint.
So when Duke met Ethan Edwards from Le May’s novel and Frank Nugent and John Ford’s script, Duke made him his own—Ethan Edwards owed as much to John Wayne as Wayne owed to Edwards.
Ethan Edwards has been called many things; cold, cruel, racist. It’s true that his character was brushed with all those hues, but people forget that at the core he was noble—yes, noble—and loved.
Loved by his nieces, his neighbors, his brother and more telling, by Martha, his brother’s wife. And noble, because in spite of his love for her, he stood aside so she might marry his own brother because Ethan also knew that they all would be better off for his sacrifice.
Ethan’s love for Martha and her love for him remained concealed except for a look that passed between them and the way she caressed his Confederate coat when she thought no one was looking.
There was even a certain nobility in his determination to kill his niece, rather than have her live as the crazed chattel Ethan came across after their captivity and submission to the Comanche bucks—their “leavings” as Vera Miles put it to Martin Pauley.
But in the end “leavings” or no—Ethan could not bring himself to pull the trigger and take the life of the niece he had loved. “Let’s go home, Debbie” summed it all up in four words.
Yes, noble.
In the movie, Ethan lives on, mission completed, but still alone—an outsider framed in the doorway against nature’s everlasting monuments. Then the door closes, leaving him with our thoughts—and his.
From first frame to fade out, Duke never wavers in his riveting interpretation of Ethan Edwards— except once. During the scene when his real-life son Patrick as young Lt. Greenhill is more than holding his own with veteran Ward Bond, in Duke’s eyes there is the look of a proud father, rather than that of Ethan Edwards.
Amazingly the picture was shot in fifty-six days— including only a half day at Bronson Canyon in the heart of Hollywood, where the “Let’s go home, Debbie” scene was filmed—and in nowhere near chronological order—for 2.5 million dollars. It reaped a fortune for Jack Warner and his company. Wayne had, in the previous few years, reaped several fortunes for Mr. Warner. Duke and Warner both liked and respected each other.
Big Jim McLain
,
Island in the Sky
,
Hondo
,
The High and the Mighty
, were just a few of the bull’s-eyes Duke scored for Warner.
Duke called John Ford “Coach” or “Pappy”—but Jack Warner was the only man I ever heard Duke call “Boss.”
I had nothing to do with
The Searchers
, but I’m proud to say I did have something to do with John Wayne.
I developed and produced
Hondo
for television, and wrote and produced
Chisum
. While we were preparing, shooting, and in post-production on
Chisum
, I spent a lot of time with the Duke on
Hell-fighters
,
True Grit
,
The Undefeated
, on land and at sea aboard his yacht,
Wild Goose
.
No one who ever worked with him or even knew him for some time could help falling under his spell. It was amusing to see dozens of us on the set, on location or on his ship, standing, moving, canting and even talking like him without hardly even realizing it.
No man was more a part of the American landscape. John Wayne was the snow-painted Sierras where eagles circle high. He was the night wind wailing through Monument Valley. Pine tops tall and uncut. He was hoof-beats moving West. He was a man to match the mountains.
I was his pal and his partner—still am his partner, thanks to the percentage he gave me for writing and producing
Chisum
.
I’ve had the honor and pleasure of working with some of the greats—men and women—Robert Mitchum, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Reynolds, Angela Lansbury, Bob Hope, Gail Russell, Robert Taylor, Anne Francis, Helen Hayes, Ray Milland, Broderick Crawford, Ben Johnson, Christopher Reeve, and oh, so many more.
But those years with the Ringo Kid, Quirt Evans, Tom Dunson, Captain Brittles, Hondo Lane, Rooster Cogburn, John Simpson Chisum—and yes, Ethan Edwards, were the greatest—and so was he.
“There was a man. We shall never see his like again.”
Supper was over by sundown, and Henry Edwards walked out from the house for a last look around. He carried his light shotgun, in hopes the rest of the family would think he meant to pick up a sage hen or two—a highly unlikely prospect anywhere near the house. He had left his gun belt on its peg beside the door, but he had sneaked the heavy six-gun itself into his waistband inside his shirt. Martha was washing dishes in the wooden sink close by, and both their daughters—Lucy, a grown-up seventeen, and Debbie, just coming ten—were drying and putting away. He didn’t want to get them all stirred up; not until he could figure out for himself what had brought on his sharpened dread of the coming night.
“Take your pistol, Henry,” Martha said clearly. Her hands were busy, but her eyes were on the holster where it hung empty in plain sight, and she was laughing at him. That was the wonderful thing about Martha. At thirty-eight she looked older than she was in some ways, especially her hands. But in other ways she was a lot younger. Her sense of humor did that. She could laugh hard at things other people thought only a little bit funny, or not funny at all; so that often Henry could see the pretty sparkle of the girl he had married twenty years back.
He grunted and went out. Their two sons were on the back gallery as he came out of the kitchen. Hunter Edwards, named after Martha’s family, was nineteen, and as tall as his old man. He sat on the floor, his head lolled back against the adobe, and his mind so far away that his mouth hung open. Only his eyes moved as he turned them to the shotgun. He said dutifully, “Help you, Pa?”
“Nope.”
Ben, fourteen, was whittling out a butter paddle. He jumped up, brushing shavings off his blue jeans. His father made a Plains-Indian sign—a first pulled downward from in front of his shoulder, meaning “sit-stay.” Ben went back to his whittling.
“Don’t you forget to sweep them shavings up,” Henry said.
“I won’t, Pa.”
They watched their father walk off, his long, slow-looking steps quiet in his flat-heeled boots, until he circled the corrals and was out of sight.
“What’s he up to?” Ben asked. “There ain’t any game out there. Not short of the half mile.”