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.

Silver Canyon by Louis L'Amour (1951 - 1956)

My first Louis L'Amour story! I'd describe this as 'Flaming Irons' with cattle, and better.

Illustrator unknown

It was first published as Riders of the Dawn in an issue of Giant Western in 1951, but it was expanded in novel form in 1956.

The book is hard to get into at first, because there's so many characters to be introduced to all at once, but once the story gets going it becomes a gripping, tightly plotted adventure.

Gunfighter Mathieu Brennan rides into Hattan's Point, into the middle of a ranch war between the Maclarens and the Pinders over the Two-Bar ranch, owned by an old man named Ball. While at Hattan's point, Matt falls in love with Maclaren's daughter Moira and immediately decides to marry her, despite the fact that they've only just met.

Matt visits Ball and is taken under the old man's wing, but soon after a visit to the Benaras family (a forgettable family who serve as reliable allies) Ball is killed, and Matt swears revenge.

I liked how even though the main character was an experienced shot and tough guy, he has his own weaknesses which he makes up for in tenacity. Realistically after a gunfight he takes ages to recover, yet he's still smart, strong and always picks the perfect places for attack and defense. He's sort of like a cowboy John McClane but younger.

For another ally he has small, strong, lovable Irish wrestler Brian Mulvaney, a trusted confidant. I enjoyed reading about him and part of what kept me engaged was the hope that he'd live in the end. I do wish he was fleshed out a little more, though.

There's also Canaval, who is pretty cool sadly underused in the story.

The love interest, Moira, is competently written and has some good moments but she's mostly a typical love interest in an adventure story, a man's idea of what a woman is like. The moment Matt meets her and declares he's going to marry her, she reacts with an anger and outrage, but an anger that is almost superficial and turns into curiosity.
The quote follows: "I'd have gotten exactly nowhere, but now she would be curious, and there is no trait that women possess more fortunate for men." I only wonder what kind of message that sends to women, or men attracted to women, for that matter.
She isn't completely weak, and even actively helps him once or twice, but in the end she's just a prize for Brennan to win, and there's barely anything she does in the novel that doesn't revolve around him.

The supporting characters are pretty forgettable. What was Key Chapin's role again?

Some of them are unevenly described. Is Morgan Park's face handsome or ugly? It's hard to picture him properly. L'Amour keeps going on about his tiny feet. I know it's an important plot point, but does he have to keep bringing him up?
Oh, and he's also after Moira, which just makes her a prize to be won. Not as egregiously as the woman at the end of Flaming Irons, though.

Park, The Slades, Miller and Booker are all two-dimensional antagonists. There's not even any entertainment value to them.

This is an engaging story that unfolds with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing. It even becomes a bit of a whodunit mystery somewhere around the middle of the book. Sometimes the plot can get convoluted but some loose ends are tied in the end.

I'm not normally interested in stories about cattle businesses. I've seen so many movies about cattle drives. But this novel held my interest and I recommend it. It has a lot of atmosphere and emotion.