Author James French Dorrance…
NEVER FIRE FIRST: A Canadian Northwest Mounted Police Story by James French Dorrance – Book Review.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t you dare shoot, you uniformed brute!”
Sergeant Seymour turned to see Moira O’Malley glaring at him from behind an automatic pistol of her own, a blue-black little gun that she held as steady as a pointed finger.
“At last I believe,” the girl went on, passion in her voice, but not the slightest waver in her aim.
“Just what do you mean, Moira?” the Mountie asked, keeping one eye on the beaten Harry Karmack on the floor who seemed as startled by the girl’s intrusion as himself.
“That I’ve found the murderer of my brother and don’t propose to see him claim another victim,” she said.
So that was what Karmack had told the girl. That was why the light of her wondrous eyes had gone out for him…
From NEVER FIRE FIRST: A Canadian Northwest Mounted Story, a novel by James French Dorrance, The Macaulay Company, New York, 1924.
Who Was Author James French Dorrance?
James French Dorrance (1879-1961) was the son of Dr. John Woods Dorrance, a prominent Presbyterian pastor first in Los Angeles and then in Santa Barbara.
After graduating Cornell University in 1903, James worked for the New York Tribune. He also sold news stories to other local area papers such as The Birmingham Age-Herald. And short fiction to the popular Ace-High Magazine, People’s Ideal Fiction Magazine, Munsey’s Magazine, Top-Notch Magazine, TipTop Semi-Monthly and Far West Stories. He published at least 18 books and numerous short pieces between 1912 and 1932.
James was working for The New York American when he met Ethel Arnold Smith. He fell in love with her when he saw (and heard) her singing solo at the Sands Street Methodist Church in Brooklyn. They married on June 26, 1906.
Ethel Smith Dorrance, Western Writer.
Born in 1880, Ethel was the only daughter of the Rev. W J Smith, founder of the Central Presbyterian Tabernacle of San Francisco. She grew up in Woodmont, Virginia. She began her writing career selling articles to Washington and Baltimore newspapers. Ethel published her first novel A MAID AND A MAN in 1909. She gained some notoriety in 1924 over the risqué content of a screenplay she based on her own novel DAMNED: The Intimate Story of a Girl, “a girl who was so beautiful that she meant ruin for any man who beheld her — even for Satan himself.”
But Ethel’s most beloved novels by the public were the Westerns she coauthored with James, such as GLORY RIDES THE RANGE and LONESOME TOWN.
And their three Mountie novels:
BACK OF BEYOND, CODE OF THE YUKON and GET YOUR MAN: A Canadian Mounted Mystery (printed in England as RAWSON OF THE MOUNTED).
“Together to THE END…”
Their first coauthored literary work was “The Whitewashed Wall,” a novella printed in the May 10, 1913 issue of The Cavalier Magazine.
Together, from 1914 to 1930, they wrote and published over 40 works, from short stories appearing in magazines like All-Story Weekly, Ranch Romances and Top-Notch Magazine to full-length novels. Some under the pseudonym Seth Ducane.
They brought a wonderful sense of domestic sentiment to their works.
An example of what I mean is in this Dedication for their 1919 novel FLAMES OF THE BLUE RIDGE: “To the memory of PAT this book is fondly inscribed. As a third collaborator he attended upon the writing of the story with unflagging optimism and helped to light the way to THE END with those flames of dog devotion that burn steadiest and bluest in the white bull-terrier heart. ETHEL and JAMES.”
In the early Thirties James and Ethel shocked their devoted fans when they suddenly divorced. Ethel married James H Hickey. The Catalog of Copyright Entries from the 1940’s and after show James Hickey renewing Ethel’s half of the rights to the Dorrance-coauthored works in his own name.
James Dorrance published fewer fictional works but continued on as a veteran newspaperman. He retired in his birthplace, Santa Barbara, California.
He’s still remembered by Northwestern aficionados for his five Mounted Police novels. The three he wrote with Ethel and two later novels on his own: THE LONG ARM OF THE MOUNTED and NEVER FIRE FIRST: A Canadian Northwest Mounted Story.
“But the training at the Regina school of police that a Mountie never fires first is strict and impressive. Constable La Marr could not take a pot shot even with the intent only to wound the flounderer.”
So the young “green constable” Charlie La Marr held his fire and stepped out to arrest the man he believed to have murdered his friend, the trader’s clerk Oliver O’Malley.
La Marr managed to arrest the “Eskimo” without incident and took him to the Mounted Police outpost at Armistice. When La Marr told his officer commanding that he had arrested Avic for murder, Staff-Sergeant Russell Seymour explained that the Native who La Marr had brought in was not Avic but another man, one who had agreed to turn himself in for a different offence. Chagrined by not “getting his man,” the young constable asked to be given a second chance to arrest Avic.
“Remember the motto of the Force, young fellow,” Sergeant Seymore cautioned as he handed over the arrest warrant.
La Marr stuffed it into a pocket underneath his parka. “Aye — get me man!”
“Not that,” said his superior with a frown. “It’s ‘Never fire first!’ See that you bring Avic back alive. There’s more depends on that than you know.”
And so begins this classic Northwestern (or Northern) novel of twists and miscalculations. James Dorrance added plenty of adventure and romance to his yarns, although they’re as much Mysteries as hard-riding Westerns.
A few weeks later Moira O’Malley, sister of the slain clerk, arrives.
Moira is a beautiful woman, of course, with black hair and “eyes as blue as the heart of an Ungava iceberg.” Sgt Seymour and Harry Karmack, the trading company manager, agree not to reveal the tragic details of her brother’s death for a while. And then the fugitive Avic staggers in from a winter storm, telling the Sergeant that he had brought in Constable La Marr on a sled. La Marr was badly injured and needed surgical aid. Moira is an excellent nurse.
The battle between Seymour and Karmack for Moira’s love begins. And ends in a bitter fistfight. And then in a long chase that will see the two men battle again months later in a Rocky Mountain gold camp.
This novel is an expanded combination of two novella’s Dorrance published in Top-Notch Magazine: “Never Fire First” in the March 15, 1923 issue and “The Will of the Mounted” in the January 15, 1924. Which explains the shift of story locale in the middle of the novel from the icy Arctic settlement of Armistice to a boomtown called Gold in the Rockies of British Columbia. Common practice, I guess, in the heyday of the pulp magazines. Doesn’t stop a good story from being a good story.
James French Dorrance seemed intrigued by the Mounties’ hard discipline and draconian code of behavior.
The unspoken order to Get Your Man. The “Quixotic Slogan” to Never Fire First. They were the backbone of his Mounted Police novels. And make it worth reading. The two fistfights in NEVER FIRE FIRST reflected the training and delight many real-life Mounties took in boxing.
Dorrance’s presentation of the Indigenous Peoples, especially the Inuit, hasn’t stood the test of time. Of course, some of the easy racism of that era came from the offhand misrepresentation by travel writers who claimed to have actually “lived among the Natives.” Dorrance believed his sources. It would be another 28 years before Farley Mowat’s THE PEOPLE OF THE DEER would reveal the real lives of our Inuit People of the High Arctic.
And also 28 years before Frank Fenton, writing the screenplay for MGM’s classic movie The Wild North, used Dorrance’s scene of the hunted fugitive bringing back the injured Mountie who had been trailing him.
James dedicated this dramatic novel to “John Woods Dorrance, Father and Friend.”
Live Free, Mon Ami! – Brian Alan Burhoe
Did you like this Mountie Fiction Book Review?
YOU MUST SEE “THE WRITERS OF THE NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE” — MY MOST POPULAR LITERARY HISTORY POST:
“Thanks for a wonderful in-depth article on Mountie fiction. I’m a big fan of the Mounties and I really enjoyed the amount of details you provided and found many, many more books to put on my wish list.” Jack Wagner
“I just discovered your blog recently. I’m all for anything that increases people’s knowledge about these older, mostly forgotten authors. That post on Mountie fiction is great!” Western writer James Reasoner
An expansive study of the writers who created the magnificent Mythology of our North-West Mounted Police. My Top 10 Mountie Fiction Writers in some detail — and a look at many other authors. Lavishly illustrated with breathtaking book and pulp magazine cover art. FREE TO READ ==> The GREATEST AUTHORS OF NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE FICTION
“Get Your Man!” The Long Arm of the Mounted & Other Mountie Maxims
“James French Dorrance seemed intrigued by the Mounties’ hard discipline and draconian code of behavior…”
When Dorrance was writing a 100 years ago, those Victorian Age masculine values of honour, valour, duty and self-sacrifice were already slipping away. Being replaced by discourtesy (men no longer tipped their hats to women) and by modern-day selfishness (“I have a right to do whatever I want!”).
Mountie Fiction was almost a lament for a nobler time “when men were men.” A remembrance of a proud Force of a few hundred men who rode into a wilderness as big as Western Europe and accomplished the impossible. SEE Canadian Mounties: Creation & History of the Royal Mounted Police
A Good Mountie Yarn
“I’m always in the market for a good Mountie yarn…” See James Reasoner’s Rough Edges Book Review: Forgotten Books: The Long Arm of the Mounted – James French Dorrance
“James French Dorrance is an author whose literary contributions are marked by a style that intertwines evocative storytelling with a deep understanding of the human experience. His writing often delves into themes of isolation. And the search for meaning within the vast landscapes, both physical and metaphysical, that his characters inhabit.” DigiCat Publishing
NOTE: This is posted on July 1, Canada Day 2021, in memory of the men and women in uniform who have staunchly served our True North. Especially members of the Canadian Army’s Algonquin Regiment, which was established on this day in 1900.
