In 1993, Fran Striker Jr. published a novel titled One More River, a thrilling tale of the wild wild west. His father, co-creator of The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet, worked on the novel for the last 15 years of his life. In spite of Striker's demanding requirements to script radio programs and Lone Ranger and Tom Quest novels, he still made the time, and found the energy, for the exhaustive research, planning, plotting, writing and revising of One More River. "He wanted it to be the best fiction he ever created, for after a lifetime of spinning tales for juveniles, River was to be for an adult audience," Striker, Jr. explained. Unfortunately, Striker died in a car crash in 1962 before seeing his job to completion. So in 1993, Striker, Jr. pulled out the dusty manuscript and self-published the novel -- the only non-Lone Ranger western story to originate from the Striker typewriter.
The origin of this novel dates back to September 1945, when Striker penned a four-episode story arc on The Lone Ranger radio program, concerning The Camel Brigade, a project commissioned by the U.S. Army. From 1857 to 1860, the feasibility of using camels for military purposes on the western deserts was tested, with encouraging results, at and near Fort Davis in Southwest Texas. The United States National Museum has on display the mounted skeleton of a camel that died at Fort Tejon, California. This is the only remaining physical evidence of the War Department's Camel Brigade.
Jefferson Davis fought as a colonel during the war against Mexico, then went to Congress as a United States Senator from Mississippi. In Washington he spent much of his time interviewing military officials in the hope of finding a means to speed the delivery of supplies to the isolated outposts in the southwestern frontier. To connect the forts strung out across the Indian country, Army sentiment favored the construction of a road from San Antonio to Southern California. Senator Davis knew that congress would reject such a proposal because of the high cost and because the road would have to be built under conditions of combat with hostile Indians. He favored a suggestion that came from major Henry C. Wayne. Wayne had read about the dromedary artillery used by the French Army in Algeria. He believed that camels would solve the problem of transportation in the Southwest. Senator Davis, after exhaustive research and study, plunged whole-heartedly into plans for a camel brigade.
Striker later recycled the historic details, added a romantic triangle between two men and one beautiful woman, and fashioned a new novel about The Camel Brigade. One More River contained no reference to The Lone Ranger and Tonto, and avoided the three criminal elements from the 1948 Lone Ranger novel to form a more adult approach involving murder, torture and bloodshed. the Striker novel borrowed many historical elements and figures for use in One More River, to create what followed the formula of a 1950s Universal Studios Technicolor western. Names of fictional characters from The Lone Ranger radio programs were recycled, as was subplots from the September 1945 radio story arc. The torments and privations that taxed human endurance to the limit -- ranging from hostile Indians, dying of thirst in the desert, to men killing each other in an effort to survive -- trying hope and despair, famine and feast, salvation and violent death -- the wagon train and cavalry company from Fort Defiance went through numerous escapades to cross the summer desert and the Colorado River.
The novel comes recommended if you can find a copy. Three different printings (hardcover and paperback) exist and the price is not steep (no doubt because of the lack of demand for such a novel). Fans of The Lone Ranger have often expressed surprise when they learn that Striker wrote a non-Lone Ranger western novel. If you are a fan of western fiction, this is perhaps one of the best I have read in more than a decade.
