Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

By 1937 he was using a roster of marvellously improbable pen names - 'Winchester Remington
Colt, Kurt von Rachen, René Lafayette, Joe Blitz and Legionnaire 148 among them.His legendary
writing speed led to rumours that he typed on to a continuous roll of paper that fed automatically
into an electric typewriter with a keyboard of his own design featuring single keys fur commonly
used words like 'and' and 'the'. It was also said that editors in New York sent messengers to Ron's
hotel room with a cover illustration and note asking him if he would be kind enough to write a story
to fit the picture. The punchline was that the messengers would be told to wait while Ron dashed
off the story, such was the prodigious fertility of his imagination.
Towards the end of 1937, Ron sold his first hardback novel. Buckskin Brigades, published by
Macaulay, was said to have been inspired by his experiences as a small boy in the wilds of
Montana when he became a blood brother of the Blackfoot Indians. The theme of the book revolved
around the mistreatment of the Indians by the Hudson Bay Company, although the message did
not perhaps get across too forcibly because the Hudson Bay Company sent Ron a case of whisky
after publication.
Polly was very pleased that Ron had been able to cross the divide between pulp fiction and
'respectable' publishing, although she was even more pleased that Macaulay had offered an
advance of $2500 for Buckskin Brigades. It was money they badly needed to clear their debts. They
both waited - Ron was back from New York - with considerable impatience for the cheque to arrive.
On the morning the local post office telephoned to say there was a money order for collection, Ron
rushed out of the house and was gone for hours. He returned in the late afternoon in a state of high
excitement and announced to Polly that he had bought a boat, a wonderful boat, a thirty-foot ketch
called the Magician. It was a double-ended Libby hull, the kind they used to catch salmon up in
Alaska. It had a small cabin and he was going to put a new engine in it and change the rigging and