I just walked into the Cross Plains Library and guess who I see? None other than Rusty Burke, who’s finishing up work on The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (due out at the end of October). I mentioned my blog post from Weatherford, and he claimed that the Cross Plains Library had wireless internet. Score! That should make blog posts a bit easier.

I left Weatherford around 8:00 a.m. and cruised through Peaster. Future visitors take heed: the mini-mart is closed. From there I traveled to Decatur (see below), and toured the old downtown area. While there, I picked up a copy of Dobie’s Coronado’s Children (from The REH Bookshelf) for $6.00.

I was in Decatur because of Howard, of course. In the same letter I quoted last time, to August Derleth, September 4, 1933, Howard says:

Then I returned to Fort Worth, and wandered north west through Decatur, another old town ( which I think of in connection with my great-grand uncle George Walser, who, hauling supplies from that town to the frontier settlements of Montague county back in the early days, lost an arm through a peculiar combination of red licker, a blue blizzard and a fall from his wagon;) through Jacksboro, once the jumping-off place for the buffalo-hunters, and a place I hadn’t seen for about twenty years; and southward back to Cross Plains through the hilly oil belt country.

So, from Decatur, I cruised through Jacksboro on my way to De Leon and on through Comanche, where I had lunch at Star Beau’s Restaurant. And then, finally, into Cross Plains. More later, maybe.

LEO ASKS: So is the title of the book now officially The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, or is that still scheduled to be supplanted by The Mad Immensities of Night: Selected Horror Stories and Verse by Robert E. Howard?

AND RUSTY ANSWERS FROM CROSS PLAINS: “To answer your question, the official title is now The Horror Stories of Robert E Howard. The Mad Immensities of Night joins Desolate as Eden (Steve Tompkins’ original title for The Black Stranger and Other American Tales) as Howard-titles-that-should-have-been.