kat--

Add my voice to the chorus of those who prefer the original. Kath makes good suggestions about things like brackets to insert clarifiying words, too. I'd say anwhere you abridge or insert, make sure you use ellipses or brackets or whatever's necessary to convey that you've "cleaned up" the text. And in places where he strings together many sentences into one, there's no reason you can't use periods rather than semicolons.

"...she thought he was a halfbreed. And, some ruffian type was fixing to kill some kid...."

rather than

"...she thought he was a halfbreed; and, some ruffian type was fixing to kill some kid...."

for instance.

Also, I mentioned in a different thread that my dad's a historian; he's also a former director of the Center for Oral History at USD, and co-author of a book on oral history. I'll ask him your question some time this week and get back to ya.

Chris