For some reason SIX BITS A DAY seemed just a bit lightweight in comparison to the other two Hewey Calloway books, THE GOOD OLD BOYS and THE SMILING COUNTRY. Maybe it's because this last "prequel" in the Calloway trilogy presents a younger, slightly more callow version of Hewey. Maybe because older is sometimes better. Nevertheless, this is still a darn fine piece of writing. No surprise there, of course, as I've come to think of Elmer Kelton as the Dickens or Twain of the American western genre. And Hewey Calloway could even be Twain's Huck, a little older, after he "lit out for the territory."

The book has all the elements of a pretty good western - cattle rustlers, scrapes with the law, a little bit of shooting - mostly "off-stage," good guys, bad guys and even a cattle drive. But Kelton's kind of western is usually a bit gentler, spoofing the kinda stuff you often got in the Saturday matinee westerns. Hewey is a bit cautious, if foolhardy, and doesn't fit the matinee model for white-hat hero. He himself admits to a Texas Ranger just before an imminent confrontation with a baddie: "I'd better tell you. I'm real consistent with a pistol. I miss every time."

But the truth is, Hewey has a good heart and a kind of down-home smarts that makes seem just heroic enough - a genuine "good old boy," if there ever was one. Having met Hewey as an older man, I'm glad I got this chance to have met him as young man, one who'd finally escaped the drudgery of his farming boyhood and traveling (farther) west to seek his fortune as a real cowboy. And his ambitions are pretty modest, as he comments one night by the campfire -

"This is the life we was born for ... Breathin' the clean outdoor air, eatin' from the fat of the land. We got good horses to ride and nobody around to boss us. Paradise couldn't be no better."

Indeed, Hewey. Who needs all the complications and responsibilities that come along with success and wealth? Ride 'em, cowboy. ( )