The sheer implausibility of success has kept me from posting this for a while, but what the heck…I’ve seen some amazing things on SDMB.
In the late 60s/early 70s I had some books that were sort of Time Life-style: hard bindings, fairly thin content (<100 pages), maybe in the 8.5 x 11 range or slightly larger. One of them was a collection of stories. One of those stories was pretty bizarre, but it did stick in my head, and it went something like this, perhaps only vaguely like this:
A guy is on a horse in maybe pioneer days, in the woods, and somehow he’s being stalked by a cougar, mountain lion, something like that. He gets injured and separated from his gun and perhaps horse, and he crosses a stream that is populated - and here it gets surreal - by stingrays. Stingrays? Really? Maybe it’s piranhas, but in my memory it’s stingrays. Maybe the woods are near a beach? Anyway, somehow the stingrays are on his side and they keep the mountain lion from crossing long enough that he gets his gun back in the nick of time and kills the mountain lion. Yay stingrays!
Crazy, right? Maybe I dreamed it. Good luck with this one.
There was a series in the 80’s called the Enchanted World. It was somewhat misnamed as it dealt with tales and legends from many cultures. Is it possible it was in one of those. There is a list of the volumes
on Wikipedia here
The story you describe sounds like “The Rays Defend the Ford,” by Horacio Quiroga, a tale alternatively titled “How the Rays Defended the Ford.” It’s available in Sr. Quiroga’s Jungle Tales, also known as South American Jungle Tales, and in some anthologies; among other sites, Project Gutenberg makes the text available. I hope this is the story you remember.
Following bordelond’s fine suggestion, I looked for the story in the Childcraft series but didn’t find it; then again, I didn’t search through every edition. The Reading for Interest series, published by D.C. Heath and Company in 1942, includes the tale, as “The Rays Defend the Ford,” in Volume VI, titled The Brave and Free. Both series had the longfall mentioned by needscoffee: the books contain more than 300 pages; additionally, these volumes are about nine inches by seven inches, smaller than what you remember.
If this information pans out for you in some useful way, maybe it can help you find an answer. Should you remember any other details, such as descriptions of other stories or whether the books were illustrated, maybe there’ll be some more help forthcoming. At the very least, I hope you have some fun combing through the web, Maserschmidt. Thank you for presenting such an interesting set of questions.
I was unfamiliar with the writer, but after seeing those covers — edition after edition — I read the Wikipedia entry: Horacio Quiroga - Wikipedia .
A very interesting life. An obsession with jungle life, a fascination with Edgar A. Poe, obsessives courtships and a succession of very young wives, attempts to domesticate wild animals and other semi-scientific projects, many tragedies involving guns.