KID RUSSELL: EPISODE TWO

For Episode One plus background information click HERE

KID RUSSELL

EPISODE TWO

Title: LUCKY BOY

The Year: 1882

Synopsis: We move on to the period in which future artist Kid Russell was working for the famed Jake “Lucky Boy” Hoover. Lucky Boy was a former prospector turned trapper, guide and professional big game hunter. After having been fired by his previous employer in 1881 (see Episode One), Russell struck up a friendship with Hoover.

During the two years that Kid Russell worked for Lucky Boy, he learned all about trapping and hunting, though he never fully warmed up to either trade, however, since he preferred painting wildlife to blood-sports. He took much more enthusiastically to learning the survival lore that went hand-in-hand with them.

Charley’s favorite of all the businesses he and Lucky Boy pursued was serving as guides for wealthy Easterners as well as European and Russian Nobility and tycoons, many of whom flocked to the Montana area in the 1880s. These magnates and blue-bloods loved vacationing in the already romantic Wild West and enjoyed the scenery plus the big-game hunting. (See the Euro-Western Shalako as well as The Hunting Party for the kind of dangers such expeditions could encounter.) 

Kid Russell and Lucky Boy would accompany their clientele to keep them from getting lost and to keep them safe from any random groups of Native Americans they came across. Under Lucky Boy, the Kid had picked up a few Native American languages as well as Sign Language, and these proved crucial to avoiding violence on many occasions.

If the indigenous people encountered were renegades then gunplay might be unavoidable. Gunplay was always unavoidable when dealing with bandits trying to rob the well-heeled customers of Hoover and Russell.

Once again, this series would present Kid Russell’s exploits in the over-the-top fashion of the most violent Spaghetti Westerns, caring no more for reality than did old television shows about Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickok and others.

The opening teaser would present the Kid and Lucky Boy clashing with Native Americans when their latest European or Russian clients’ snobbery and pomposity leads to violence.

After the stylized, high body count gunplay would come an interlude back in Helena – with Kid Russell as usual going on a drinking binge at the saloon/ brothel run by THE Chicago Jo Airey, one of Helena’s most famous women. Viewers would also get a scene with Charley partying with his real-life favorite saloon girl there, Dutch Leina.

Next would come additional European or Russian clients for another big game hunting foray. This outing would run afoul of a gang of outlaws trying to rob the wealthy customers.

Kid Russell, with a slight assist from the older Lucky Boy, would blow away countless bandits and save the clients. He’d also romance one of the women tagging along on the trip and cause a little trouble back in Helena after Russell and this fictional blue-blood would be found out after spending a night together at one of the city’s hotels.

I’LL POST ANOTHER EPISODE SOON, SO KEEP CHECKING BACK.

FOR FOUR MORE NEGLECTED GUNSLINGERS – BOTH MALE AND FEMALE – CLICK  HERE 

FOR SIX MORE NEGLECTED WESTERN FIGURES CLICK HERE:  https://glitternight.com/2012/06/18/six-neglected-wild-west-figures/

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