A pretty run of the mill novel, but with some nice twists and turns and a couple of interesting characters.
Law Rides the Range is the story of Joe Morgan, the man who grew up with a reputation for being the son of an outlaw; his father, Wade, killed the town boss, Shotgun Riley and went off to join the Hole in the Wall Gang, the Wild Bunch.
As a child, Joe shot Riley's comrade, Bull Mitchell the saloon owner, but as he grows up he's taught not to become an outlaw like his father, but to become a lawyer instead. A lawman, anyway.
Now he's decided to bring Mitchell and the Clantons to justice, and finds himself in a love triangle between his childhood friend Amy Steele, and the new girl in town, Kit Kavanaugh.
I was pleasantly surprised by Kit because she defied all my expectations of what I've seen from female characters like her in Hollywood Westerns. She's much too complicated to be a "bad girl", which she would have been in any other story. Not only did she have the conscience to go out and rescue her romantic rival Amy from the Clanton brothers, she also manages to avoid getting captured herself, even chasing them out with a few threats.
I thought she was going to get killed so she can be out of the way for Joe and Amy to get married. No way. She personally encourages them to marry, and goes off and marries Pete Smyth instead.
At times she was the hero of the story, not Joe.
Sure, she's told not to fight by Wade Morgan during his final standoff, but other than that, she's a badass all the same.
Coburn gives a very good sense of time, place and even community, allowing us to get to know some of the townspeople of Pay Dirt.
The story isn't all that memorable and the characters are mostly archetypes. I'm getting shades of Morgan Park from Silver Canyon reflected in Bull Mitchell. They both even get in fistfights with the respective heroes.
We know that Amy Steele is the civilized girl, the good one, that the hero is fated to marry. But at least unlike in Silver Canyon the hero knows the girl for a long time, as opposed to deciding to marry her at first sight and refusing to take no for an answer.
The action and suspense is good in this one. There's even one moment that really shocked me.
In the end, everything is set right and Joe and his father's partner Bob Burch hang up their guns, with amazing ease. Everything is tied up satisfactorily, even though lives have been lost in the process.
Law Rides the Range was an engaging read that I got through quickly.
Not much to say about it, but Kit was really cool.
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