The Iron Bronc by Will Ermine (1944)

A wandering gunfighter named Jim Grimwood wants to buy a railway line from his nemesis, Slade Rankin, who tricks him so he can get ahead in the race. Then that gunfighter falls in love with a pretty railroad owner and offers to help her so he can show up his rival.

Not much to say about the story. It's pretty generic.

That said, Grimwood himself is the best Western hero I've seen since Joe Warder from South of Rio Grande. He's not as smarmy as Matt Brennan from Silver Canyon, and much better fleshed out than Joe Morgan from Law Rides the Range, and even Ed Lash from The Gringo Bandit.
Grimwood, to say the least, has credible character flaws. He can be and has been fooled by the enemy a couple of times and is bent on getting even with Rankin. He's also torn over his love for Pat Ryan and his revenge on Rankin complicates the situation until, of course, he decided to redeem himself.
Granted, he's still a stereotype but a pretty well done one.

Grimwood's friend Andrew "Timber" Smith reminds me of the kind of roles Bud Spencer usually played, the gentle giant with a lot of strength, warmth and intelligence. He's described as a "gay cat", meaning that he's a drifter with no real home, and who prefers adventure to settling anywhere. The "gay" part does mean "happy" although he does seem to be rather dismayed when Grimwood is more interested in his lover than his friend.

Pat Ryan is not as bland as some of the other main female characters in Western stories I've read in the past, but definitely not as strong or defined as Carmel Alvarado from South of Rio Grande, Kit Kavanaugh from Law Rides the Range, Sally Simmons from The Million-Dollar Bloodhunt, the Deever women from A Coffin Full of Dollars or Belle Buckley from Surrender, Hell! None of those women exactly pass the Bechdel Test but they're much better fleshed out as characters.
Ryan does have a determination to keep her business and some leadership skills but ultimately Grimwood makes most of the decisions, not her. Ultimately she's just a prize to be won.

Though it's predictable and not very adventurous in its plot elements, it's a fun and engaging novel.

By the way, one of Rankin's men is called Blue Peters.

You thought that, too, didn't you?

Rio Kid Western July 1950

Guns of Fort Benton by Tom Curry

The plot basically is, Captain Bob Pryor, his sidekick Celestino Mireles and Buffalo Bill Cody (!) are chasing down outlaws Cal Doak and Baldy Baldwin who are selling arms to the likes of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall, and they gather the help of ranchers Lease Ward and Joe Haskins to help them fight.

What can I say? It's pulpy men's adventure. It's very colourful and romanticised. It's not so much about daily life as it is about action and drama.

I found this story hard to get through. Probably because it's about the US Cavalry, which I don't know enough about. Or because the characters are all very bland and boring. Pryor is way too clean cut to be an interesting hero and Celestino is barely there for most of this one, so we don't know their relationship beyond him calling Pryor "General". Maybe Celestino's his secret gay lover, who knows?

It does get a bit better. There's a bit where Pryor and Cody abduct an unconscious henchman of Baldwin's and try to get some information about Baldwin's plans by bringing him to partial consciousness and pretending to be his bosses. That bit was fun.

It does remind me of why I like Westerns so much... there are characters in it who aren't perfect, who are a bit more interesting than the law abiding hero. Basically every time I choose to watch Cimarron Strip whenever it's on TV.

I'm not too interested in stories guest starring real life heroes of the historical United States, but that's just me.

Surrender, Hell! by Robert J. Hogan

A short story about a man who tries to get his childhood friend to surrender or he be shot down. The characters are very interesting.
Sometime in the past, Walt Buckley and Cato Lane fought for the hand of Belle Boyd, and Buckley won.
Buckley and Lane are both very interesting characters. Buckley's a typical law abiding hero, but he's very divided on whether or not to kill his old friend. Cato, though an outlaw on the run, is a character both the reader and the hero sympathises with, especially since it's revealed that Cato rescued Buckley from drowning in quicksand when they were very young, and Buckley has been forever in debt for that. Furthermore, Cato left a hidden stash of money for Buckley to spend.
Buckley's wife, Belle, is gentle, but strong, and having had her in the middle of this love triangle adds another layer to her character.

The story was short, but very engaging with characters who were fully realized, which surprised me.

Guadeloupe Gunfire by Nels Leroy Jorgensen

Burke Donahue is a wandering gunfighter who has returned from Mexico after two years of absence. He had been the son of a successful cattle rancher, but the ranch was sold after his father's passing, he and his Tony had split between them what was left, and they went their separate ways. Both brothers gained a bad reputation. It's not quite explained what Burke did, but Tony was rumored to have killed his previous employer. Of course, he was framed for it by two half-Mexican men he had become a comrade of.
Not very much to say about this story. The characters are pretty thin.

Army Commission by Barry Scobee

This has the potential to be a greater story but some of it goes nowhere.
Sergeant Duggan is commissioned by Major Townstreet to burn down a Native American camp and send the people and their sub-chief back to their "assembly grounds", or else he'll be discharged from the army. Duggan had been friends with the sub-chief and had been specially selected to appeal to him.
The dialogue can be clumsily written, such as when the sub-chief, only known as "Jimmy Bigpants", rightly refuses to be moved back to the assembly grounds, and then agrees to go back there when Duggan drops the matches he had been ordered to burn the tepees with into the fire.
The atmosphere for most part is very rich, especially the army's journey towards the encampment.
Of course, there is a woman in the story with feelings for the handsome young sergeant... I have a feeling that some Western stories are just male wish fulfilment fantasies.
Again, the characters are kind of thin. It did seem to have been written in a haste.

Other features of this issue include Gun Titan of the West by John A. Thompson, a short biography on gun manufacturer John Browning; The Bunkhouse, a feature by "Foghorn Clancy" telling the story of outlaw Nathaniel Reed.

And finally, an unsung hero's letter to the editor...

'A Mighty Girl' would have a field day with this. Though even if it is 1950 she shouldn't care what men think of her. What was the point of sending her photograph, whether or not she knew that all the editor would approve of was her looks? Well, her heart was in the right place.

It seems to me that whoever the editor is, he made fun of Lutjens for her assertiveness. "You can come out of hiding", indeed. Their response wasn't helpful or fair, and it wasn't funny to assume that Ms. Lutjens was emasculating her agitator.

The attitudes towards women in 1950 still shock me.

All that aside, it was a mixed bag of stories. Some I enjoyed, and others I found difficult to get through.

Law Rides the Range by Walt Coburn (1935)

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.

The Million-Dollar Bloodhunt by Joe Millard (1973)

If Pachuco's so squat, why does he look like Arturo de Cordova here?

A bounty hunter, a sassy acrobat, a Lee van Cleef aeronaut and an alcoholic dwarf all meet in a desert. Adventures and shenanigans ensue.

Manco is chasing after the two-bit outlaw Froggy Benson when he's basically run over by a hydrogen balloon and Benson makes off with his horse and gun.
The accident was caused by Professor Samson Garff, an aeoronaut and Lee Van Cleef lookalike, with Saginaw Kirp's "tawny, leonine eyes", who is Manco's only hope of recovering his possessions.
Among Garff's crew are Sally Simmons, the acrobat, and the dwarf Jigger. This circus troupe is different to the one in A Coffin Full of Dollars. A bit smaller and more ragtag. The blurb paints them as double-dealers and "treacherous" but they seem like okay people.

Froggy Benson, described as being "like one of nature's bad jokes", had worked under the bandit chief Pachuco, and had earned a large price on his head. He's the subject of a prophecy envisioned by an old Apache medicine man, Buffalo Going Away, and gets a shirt from him which they all believe to be magical but of course ultimately it's just a dud. And it doesn't help that Buffalo Going Away repeatedly overestimates Benson's power. When we see Benson kill someone, it is a literal misfire.

Meanwhile Pachuco is in prison waiting to be hanged, but escapes from the vast prison in a vividly written, death-defying stunt. Garff's balloon knocks him off the outer wall into the prison courtyard, but ends up on the right side of the wall when he clings to the grapnel rope. So Pachuco escapes not only with strength, but with luck, too.
To paraphrase Manco, Pachuco "is only half as smart as he thinks, but twice as smart as he talks and acts". His bloody murder of his cellmate shows him to be as vicious as El Indio from a Few Dollars More, but he's more comically impetuous.

Now free from prison, the outlaw makes his way to the hidden gold stash only he knows about.

Like Apachito and Bandera, Pachuco is described as "squat", "swarthy", "pudgy", "fat", etc, and little else. Neither he nor his other counterparts are given important facial details. Are their foreheads prominent or not? What are the shapes of their noses, or their lips? Pachuco's only other physical distinction is that he's shirtless for most of the story (which begs the question as to how he could have hidden a makeshift knife in his sleeve if he doesn't wear a shirt). Even though his name potentially means "flashily dressed".

Pachuco appears to be very little in the story, but he is the best written between himself, Apachito and Bandera, even though ultimately the three are virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable. The three are all classic bandidos out of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Nevertheless, Pachuco has the potential to be among the revisionist character types of the mid-Sixties onwards.

I've learned from this book that Manco can speak perfect Apache. That would have solved a problem or two in A Dollar to Die For (which was by a different author, but still.)

Speaking of Manco, he has the same problems as before. He talks too much and even raises his voice a couple of times. Talking that much had gotten him into trouble in A Coffin Full of Dollars and he would have known that.
I heard that when he got the script for A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood crossed out most of his lines and told Leone that it was a better idea if he communicated through his expressions rather than through dialogue, and it worked.

Manco's constant yapping reminds me less of Clint Eastwood, and more of John Wayne. It's not his voice I want to be hearing when I'm reading these, it's Eastwood's.
True, Eastwood is just as dogmatic and self-righteous these days but that's beside the point.

Manco not only raises his voice this time around, he yells. That's something I can't imagine. His outburst is written as such "MY GUN AND MY HORSE!"

Professor Garff, like Pachuco, is virtually indistinguishable from his counterparts. He has a very similar personality, too: gruff, tough and intelligent. Like Shadrach, he is a bounty hunter, and like Kirp, he has had a past with the respective bandido of the novel; While Kirp knew Bandera from the Civil War, Garff made a deal to break Pachuco out of prison so he could fly over and get the gold from the bandit's hideaway. But the twist is, Garff wants the bounty on Pachuco as well as the gold because he feels like he needs to be rewarded by the Mexican government.

So, since they're both after the same thing, Manco and Garff are forced to work together, inevitably.

Sally Simmons is a pretty cool character. She's like all the Deever women in A Coffin Full of Dollars  put together. Sure, she makes food and coffee for the men and sort of needs to be saved by Garff and Manco at one point, she does dare to shove Pachuco off his horse with her strong gymnast's arms (that's what I meant by "sort of") and escape from the outlaws, as well as save herself from Pachuco when he tries to abduct her a second time. She is not a groundbreaking character by today's standards but she is a very capable woman for the time the book was written.
She also has quite a standard love-hate relationship with Garff, who found her when she was homeless and hungry, and in the end decides to marry him. Manco secretly disapproves and decides she deserves someone better (not him, either, although his manners have been better around women ever since he put on that poncho.)

Until recently I thought that in the entire Dollars franchise, including novels, the only bandido whose life Manco/ Joe/ Blondie spared was Tuco Ramirez in both The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  and A Dollar to Die For. There was another- Pachuco, whom the bounty hunter wanted to keep alive so he could lead him to his hidden gold stash. However, the situation is complicated when Apaches come after the outlaws, and the posse hunting Pachuco arrives, too. In the end, Manco could not protect Pachuco, who was killed by a stray bullet as he gunned down Froggy Benson.

So in the end the whole journey was pretty much pointless, just like both endings of The Good, the Bad, the Weird . In the International ending, Tae-goo is in the Pachuco role, but in the Korean ending, he's in the Manco role, and it wouldn't be the last time; In GBW 's Korean ending, Tae-goo pulled the same trick that Joe did in A Fistful of Dollars, and like Manco in this book who doesn't get the gold but collects the bounties on Pachuco and his lieutentant Much-Belly, though he never got the treasure, Tae-goo was able to escape with the diamonds that Chang-yi With him.

The novel goes along quickly, despite the padding of banter between Garff and Manco, and has some pretty good action scenes in it.

The story is basically just men's adventure, but it's fun.

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.