The Rifleman, the BOOK

I got the greatest surprise in the mail yesterday!  Remember how I told you that my new favorite old show is The Rifleman?  Well, my aunt found the book pictured below at an antique mall and GOT IT FOR ME!  I love it!  You know why?  They have pictures every few pages.  So what I'm going to do for this fine post is do what teachers are supposed to tell kids to do when we teach them to read.  We tell them to take a picture walk and try to figure out what the story is about.  I am going to do just that.  I bet I'll be pretty close to the real story!  Picture walks work!

Okay, from the front cover I can tell the book is going to be mainly about Lucas McCain and his young, loyal son Mark.  I can tell from the tense, protective stance that Lucas is taking that Mark might be in some danger.  Luckily Lucas's trusty rifle is on the scene.  They look to be outside a dwelling with a thatched roof.  I don't recall people in the Old West living in thatched roof dwellings.  It's not a good idea.  Rats get up there and nest.  You know where else rats liked to go in olden times?  In lady's big bouffant hairdos.  The ladies used to plaster their hair up with lard, and at night when they slept vermin would attack their hair.  That's why when your hair is messy it's called a "rat's nest."  I'm not even kidding.  Look it up.  

Another reason thatched roofs and hair-lard products aren't a good idea:  Fire.  

Here is the first illustration.  Lucas seems to be looking over the rifle of a friend of his.  I wonder if he likes it or not?  Maybe he is giving his friend some rifling tips.  At this point in the story, things are going well for Lucas. 

Mark is doing pretty well too!  "Hey pretty little lady, I like your spats!"

Uh oh, first sign of trouble.  Looks like Mark is getting kidnapped.  AGAIN.  Mark is ALWAYS getting kidnapped.  He lures kidnappers from all over the country to kidnap him.  And they even risk kidnapping him despite the fact that his father is the Rifleman, renown all over the West for his accuracy of shooting anything he wants from the hip without aiming.  Mark is irresistible to kidnappers.  

Oh, wait a minute.  Maybe Mark didn't get kidnapped.  He seems to be just fine and with his father watching a man drive a horse through a body off water.  I don't get this.  Who is that guy?  What happened to Mark's kidnapper?  Shouldn't there be a picture resolving that?  If Lucas took his rifle to the kidnapper, I want to see it in illustration form!  

Now what are they looking at?  I don't know.  This is getting frustrating.

What?  Somebody seems to have died. Four dirty looking men carrying a mustachioed man somewhere on a stretcher.  I would guess they are trying to get rid of the body.  What does this have to do with the kidnapper and the water-horse and the thatched roof?  I don't know.  

Here's Mark getting stalked by bad guys again.  Hey Mark, why don't you just stay home?

Okay, what in the HELL is going on now?  Mark appears to be baking something and from the mean look on his face I am guessing that he is in the process of poisoning the batter.  Maybe he is baking some cookies for all his captors.  Why is Pippi Longstocking in this book???  Mark, be more careful with that poison!  It doesn't grow on trees, you know!

Jesus Mark, again???

Apparently Mark got the shit kicked out of him but then got saved and is getting some medical care from a VERY happy doctor and a pretty lady with a giant bowl of soup.  Perhaps they are considering kidnapping Mark?  I'm almost positive they are.

This must be the epilogue picture.  Mark is healed and he and Lucas are shirtless and fixing fences together. Why not?  When you're working closely with barbed wire, you want as much skin as possible exposed.  They are probably talking about all the kidnappers and the morality of poisoning cookies even if they are for kidnappers.  Nobody expects poison in their cookies, Mark.  Nobody.  Have the decency to use a rifle, for God's sake.  Poisoning is the woman's way of committing Old West murder.  

Well, the picture walk wasn't everything I'd hoped.  It must really suck to be a kindergartener, illiterate little psycophaths.