Telegraph Days

Praise for
Telegraph Days

“McMurtry balances his fast-moving romp of a story line with unexpected disturbing scenes … Nellie's amorous high jinks may seem over the top, but McMurtry is just pulling readers' legs a little. The light-hearted humor adds to the novel's fun.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“
Telegraph Days
is a picaresque and entertaining ride.”

—
USA Today

“It's a darn good read: an entertaining spoof about the Wild West that brings alive the romance of outlaws, gunfighters, and shootouts.”

—
The Washington Post

“Nellie Courtright is brassy, sassy, classy, looking for love anywhere, anytime. She's got a memory that won't quit. And, with a money-back-guaranteed, knee-slapping, jaw-dropping, eye-popping tall tale on every page … It's hard to imagine anybody having more fun than McMurtry while he wrote this—unless it's those who read it.”

—
New York Daily News

“Readers won't be able to help cracking a smile.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“An easy, breezy read.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Nellie Courtright is just what readers have come to expect from the author: a spunky protagonist of the American West, making short work of the villains who come along and, it seems, opening her arms to the charming ones.”

—
Rocky Mountain News

“Good news for the legions of McMurtry fans.”

—
Library Journal

“
Telegraph Days
is filled with telling historical detail and atmospheric with choking dust and whiskey-breathed cowhands.”

—
Texas Monthly

“Worthy to stand on the same shelf with
True Grit
and
Little Big Man … Telegraph Days
is an entertaining read and perhaps the most endearing of his minor Western-myth-busting romps.”

—
The Dallas Morning News

B
Y
L
ARRY
M
C
M
URTRY

When the Light Goes
Telegraph Days
Oh What a Slaughter
The Colonel and Little Missie
Loop Group
Folly and Glory
By Sorrow's River
The Wandering Hill
Sin Killer
Sacagawea's Nickname: Essays on the American West
Paradise
Boone's Lick
Roads
Still Wild: A Collection of Western Stories
Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen
Duane's Depressed
Crazy Horse
Comanche Moon
Dead Man's Walk
The Late Child
Streets of Laredo
The Evening Star
Buffalo Girls
Some Can Whistle
Anything for Billy
Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood
Texasville
Lonesome Dove
The Desert Rose
Cadillac Jack
Somebody's Darling
Terms of Endearment
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers
Moving On
The Last Picture Show
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas
Leaving Cheyenne
Horseman, Pass By

B
Y
L
ARRY
M
C
M
URTRY AND
D
IANA
O
SSANA

Pretty Boy Floyd
Zeke and Ned

A Novel

L
ARRY
M
C
M
URTRY

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Larry McMurtry

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition June 2008

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
P
APERBACKS
and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at
1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

Designed by Karolina Harris

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: McMurtry, Larry.

Telegraph days : a novel / Larry McMurtry.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PS3563.A319T38 2006
813′.54—dc22 2005057458

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-5078-8
ISBN-10: 0-7432-5078-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-5093-1 (pbk)
ISBN-10: 0-7432-5093-1 (pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-4146-5

Y
AZEE
D
AYS

T
ELEGRAPH
D
AYS

W
ILD
W
EST
D
AYS

T
OMBSTONE
D
AYS

C
ALIFORNIA
D
AYS

Telegraph Days

B
OOK
I
 
Yazee Days

“I H
OPE YOU'RE
carpenter enough to build an honest coffin,” I told Jackson, my younger brother. About an hour ago, I would guess, our father, Perceval Staunton Courtright, had foolishly hung himself from a rafter in the barn.

From the rope burns on his hands, it seemed likely that Father changed his mind at the last minute and tried to claw his way back up to the rafter, where he might have rid himself of the inconvenient noose—last-minute mind changes were a lifelong practice of Father's. In this case, though, the mind change had come too late, meaning that Jackson and I were faced with the necessity of burying Father in windy No Man's Land, a grassy part of the American West that, for the moment, no state claimed.

My younger brother, Jackson, was just seventeen. Here we were, the two surviving Courtrights, having already, in the course of our westering progress, buried two little brothers, three little sisters, an older sister, three darkies, our mother, and now look! Father's tongue was black as a boot.

“I'm a fair carpenter, but where will I get the lumber?” Jackson asked, surveying the vast grassy prairie. We were just south of the Cimarron River, in a part of the plains populated by no one, other than Jackson and myself—and I, for one, didn't plan to stay.

“Use some of this worthless barn,” I told my brother. “It's only half a barn anyway, and we won't be needing it now.” Father had first supposed that the prairies beside the Cimarron might be a good place to start a Virginia-style plantation, but he wisely discarded that notion while the barn was just half built. Now, with Father dead, we were down to Percy, our strong-minded mule, and a flea-filled cabin with
glass windows. Ma had insisted on the glass windows—it was her last request. But she was dead and so was our gentle, feckless father. We had no reason to linger on the Black Mesa Ranch—the name Father had rather grandly bestowed on our empty acres.

I was twenty-two, kissable, and of an independent disposition. My full name was Marie Antoinette Courtright, but everyone called me Nellie. Mother told me I got named after Marie Antoinette because Father happened to be reading about the French Revolution the night I was born—my own view is that he anticipated my yappiness and was secretly hoping the people would rise up and cut off my head.