SHERIFF OF BIG HAT

 

SHERIFF OF BIG HAT
By Barry Cord
A Wagon Wheel Western, 1958

Three men rode into Del Rio on three different trails. They were known as the Unholy Three – and they deserved their nickname. Doc, Jackson, and the Kid, were their names. They had nothing in common – except a willingness to hire out their guns.

Barry Cord packs a lot into this short western. Questions come at the reader from the first pages. Who are the Unholy Three being the main one to start with. They ride together but know little about each other. It seems they’ve been hired to stop a range war, but it soon become evident there’s a lot more at stake than that. 

It’s not long before the Kid’s past is revealed. Del Rio is the town the Kid grew up in. It’s to town he fled with the accusation of murder hanging over his head. Soon his relationships with various townsfolk cause more problems, especially when the Kid rips the badge of the town’s sheriff and pins it one his own shirt. What of the girl the Kid left behind? She’s the daughter of the old sheriff and the sister of the man the Kid is supposed to have killed.

As the tale races through its many twists and turns it becomes evident there isn’t going to be a happy ending for many of the characters, if any. There’s a dark tone to the proceedings. Men make promises that they’ll kill each other. Bullets fly thick and fast. Some of the bad guys are obvious but the author keeps some a secret, such as who killed Ann’s brother and who murdered the Kid’s father. 

I’ve read a quite a few books and short stories by Barry Cord and I can’t remember his descriptions of violence and torture ever being quite so graphic as they are in a couple of scenes in this book. 

Barry Cord is a pseudonym used by Peter Germano and I was once more thoroughly entertained by one of his books. This may not be the best of his work, but it is certainly worth reading. 

Arcadia House, who put out the Wagon Wheel Westerns really let the author down and it really makes me wonder if they employed a proof reader. For instance, a word that should finish a sentence isn’t there, but it does turn up at the end of the previous page all by itself. There are also words with missing letters or they are badly printed so it’s hard to read them. The gaps between words and sentences vary in size too. None of this makes it unreadable though. I do have one or two other Wagon Wheel Westerns and I am now intrigued to see of they are as badly printed as this one.