Argosy, June 23 1934

I bought this one because the cover illustration made me curious.

This is one of those all-purpose men's magazines. There's only a couple of Western stories in here so I'm reviewing just those.

The Trail of Danger, Part 1 by William MacLeod Raine

California, 1849. A young sailor, Dennis Gifford's ship is shanghaied by pirates, but he makes a daring escape into Monterey. There he is attacked by a couple of thugs, but he begins to realize that one of them is a powerful criminal who is courting a pretty girl, Rosita Martinez, whose garden our hero tries to escape into.

The criminal calls himself "Juan Bandini", but at one point he very nearly gives away his real name- Juan Castro.
Really, dude? If you're the greatest bandit in California, you can't make a dumb mistake like that. Luckily for him Dennis and Rosita don't notice him second guessing his own name and go about the conversation like it was nothing.

Gifford is taken in by Rosita's family, without telling them that the two had met a little beforehand, lives in comfort and is offered land (lucky kid), but he has to stay at the place anyway because he eventually convinces them that this "Bandini" guy whom the family knew is, of course, Juan Castro, who is hunting him, because he hates Americans. 

Rosita's father Ramon was a little suspicious of him anyway. 

So Gifford goes with one of Rosita's brothers to investigate and runs into Juan's lieutenant, Felipe, who is essentially described to have teeth just as nice and white as his leader's. They also meet the obligatory muscle of the gang, Pedro, who isn't too different from Lupo in A Coffin Full of Dollars, or Gualtero in South of Rio Grande. The two young men eventually arrive at the hills, meet a bunch of soldiers and together they try to take on the gang. 

Back at the Martinez place he receives a letter from Juan asking for Rosita's hand in marriage and threatening to kill Gifford. Dude, just write about the marriage part if you want Rosita's father on your side. You don't need to put him off by threatening Gifford as well.

"He is full of flourishes and courtesy, but every few words the threats break through." You think?

The pacing of this story goes along at breakneck speed. I'm almost considering having the full novel.

Very engaging and fun to read, even if it doesn't break any new ground. You've still got the hero, the girl, the villain and his musclebound henchman... it's all very formulaic.

Picture Rock, Part 3 by Frank Richardson Pierce

And speaking of formulaic...

So this guy named Jerry McGrath is out to kill a man named Spider Darby who is determined to get control of McGrath's father's mine.
However, when Darby's daughter Lois starts flirting with him as part of a scheme, she begins to fall in love with him for real. 

It's not very memorable but it kept me reading anyway.

The Gringo Bandit by William Hopson (1947)

Ed Lash, an American supporting the Revolution, is assigned along with lawyer Jim Abernathy to deliver a message from Pancho Villa to General Gonzales: Colonel Holden's cattle have been held in Sonora and the order being sent is to move the cattle to Arizona.
But things are incredibly complicated by a love triangle he was involved in. He had shot down Rufe Stinson in a gunfight over Gloria, Colonel Holden's daughter, who is said to have caused it. Of course, she didn't intentionally cause it, but apparently she's to blame anyway.
Rufe's brother Buck, who was masquerading as an Orozquista, "Fuentes", and was working with Abel Ortiz Argumedo, comes looking for revenge and plots with Abernathy to kill Lash. However, Abernathy is in love with Gloria and wants to marry her, and a girl named Maria Elena Chacon is in love with Lash, having been a nurse for him.

The book deals a little with race and cultural identity: Lash is derogatorily called a "greaser lover", and feels almost more Mexican in some ways than American. He speaks fluent Spanish, is personal friends with Villa and feels comfortable socialising with Villa's other soldiers.
On the other hand the Chinese people are faceless, "scurrying" servants. Their boss, Stelle Bleeker, doesn't even bother to speak their language or learn their names, even though she knows the story of one of them.
Plus, the novel generalises all Americans to be civilised people. When Buck Stinson assaults Ed Lash, Hopson writes, "This was no longer an American or even a sane man." This implies that although Mexicans like Villa can be and are sensitively drawn, apparently they are not sensible or "civilised" the way Jim Abernathy or even Ed Lash are.

Gloria Holden is an ideal "pure" woman always seen in Hollywood Western movies, the prim and proper lady whose life always revolves around men.
Maria Elena Chacon is in love with Lash, but turns him down just so he could be with Gloria (whom he claims to hate but doesn't). But why would she leave him to be with Gloria if she's going with Gloria to Arizona after the Revolution anyway? I understand that she doesn't want to be where she is anymore since her family is dead, so there's nothing more for her in the country. That gives her a better motivation than just demure romantic sacrifice.

Predictably, Maria is killed off after she leaves Lash on his own, which is part of a plot to get Lash out of the way so Abernathy can have Gloria for himself. And probably racist misogyny on the author's part. 

It's interesting that Lash sees her as a symbol of Mexico. It's as though he tries to find himself through her, or that she defines the country for him.
Still, he ends up with Gloria, which feels awfully contrived.
The most charismatic woman in the book is Stelle Bleeker, but she's a fat innkeeper and somehow her weight and unattractiveness give her more proactivity, since apparently she's not acceptable to be anyone's property.

Abernathy is not a particularly gifted lawyer. Most of the time I forget he is one. When he tries to cover up his murder attempt of Lash, he can't keep track of his own lie. He stated that Lash was killed at a hotel, and then changed it almost immediately, claiming that he died fighting in the Revolution.

As for Ed Lash himself, some things about himself are interesting, such as feeling more Mexican than American, but not enough to distinguish himself as a unique character.

There were typos throughout the novel, evidence that it was likely written and published in a haste. That's why the English isn't "ferfect". Even the grammar could be awkward at times. There is one point where Gloria says to her father, "Did you and Jim force Ed to go to Chihuahua to see Villa on pain of death by hanging?" What exactly did she mean by that? When Lash and Abernathy were in Chihuahua, the only one they saw with a rope around their neck was a horse that Villa took for his army.

There are so many plot threads in this one that don't all fit together. The love triangle, the revolution and the cattle drive. The revolution storyline interests me the most, as we have this man integrating into a social group he feels at home with. The battle is vividly realised, and probably the best thing about the whole book.
There was a romance plot, too, in The Wonderful Country, but it doesn't interfere with the story's central theme of cultural identity.

Overall, this is a clumsy mess. The dialogue can be a bit banal, and it doesn't quite fit together as a whole. Reading more about the Mexican revolution has been fun, though.

Blood for a Dirty Dollar by Joe Millard (1973)

Blood for a Dirty Dollar is probably the strangest of Joe Millard's spinoff novels so far. And that's saying something. The last one had a circus. This one has a Medieval castle with knights in suits of armour.

Some time after the Civil War, some English jackass named Lord Veldon gets the insane idea of moving an entire English castle, stone by stone, to the American desert, where it was rebuilt near the Broken Hills, known to be a den of thieves, gets a bunch of guards to dress like Medieval knights but with long-range guns and refuses to deposit whatever treasure he's got in the bank. A couple of scientists go to investigate the castle and mysteriously disappear, and a "brown butterball" with a $20,000 bounty on his head named Bandera has something to do with it.

The Man with No Name- Manco, Joe, Blondie, whatever you may call him, goes in to investigate, too, and while at the tavern closest to Veldon Castle he runs into one Saginaw Kirp, life insurance agent and another Lee Van Cleef lookalike. Kirp is not the peaceful life insurance agent he makes himself out to be. He's described exactly the same as Shadrach except without the scar. They have a distinctive "wedge shaped" face and everything. They even both wear frock coats!
However, unlike in A Coffin Full of Dollars, Millard doesn't make any clever remark about the fact that Lee Van Cleef has turned up in two of Sergio Leone's movies in different roles.

Joe and Kirp get a lead on Bandera when they meet a cagey reporter who claimed to have interviewed him. They go and check out the bandit chief's hideout and what follows is a loose retread of Joe/Manco and Shadrach's discovery of Apachito's hideout in A Coffin Full of Dollars, only with scientists in captivity, and Bandera's men making copies of the armor (but bulletproof, unlike the armor at Veldon Castle) and a greasewood powered wagon to storm Veldon Castle with.

Meanwhile a petty thief named Jingles goes west to sneak into Veldon Castle. I enjoyed his subplot. He was a fun little rascal, even though he did distract from the story a bit.

This one has the same problem as in the last one I read: The Man with No Name talks too much. Was it so hard just to write his inner monologue, just as thoughts? Also, he rarely loses his temper and when it does it comes out in a terrifying slow burn. He never raises his voice. Millard should have made note of that. Either that or he was really good at pushing Joe past his limit.

Bandera, real name Juliano Bandera Mescato, is described in the exact vague manner as his counterpart Apachito: squat, swarthy and with a "guttural" voice. Any other details he would have cared to share? Apachito in A Coffin Full of Dollars is said to have the "unmistakable stamp of Indian blood on his features". Bandera's face is only "broad". "Broad" is still no help.
We do get to know more about Bandera than we do about Apachito, including how he found his hiding place, and a little bit of his backstory.
He's not as entertaining as Apachito, but he livens up the story, even though he's a one-note villain in the vein of Gold Hat from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Sometimes Millard writes his accent phonetically, but most of the time he forgets to.
By the way, I like how his middle name means "flag". Very lofty.

And as it turned out, Kirp, who is a former Confederate officer, knew "Bandy" from the Civil War days. What are the odds?

The book jumps back and forth in time quite a bit which got me a little confused at times.

Everyone squawls a lot. There is an awful lot of squawling.

There's a really liberal use of the word "cute" as an insult. (Mind you, the word "liberal" is an insult in itself, too, so I've heard)

And a crazy final battle in the courtyard of Veldon Castle.

This, like the other licensed "Dollars Trilogy" fanfictions, was rushed out to cash in on the movies and therefore doesn't feel like a story that the Man with No Name belongs in.
Still, this is one wild story. It's kind of fantastical. If you're into that sort of thing.

Cowboys and knights. I never thought of those two elements going together.