EXCITING WESTERN - October 1953

 

EXCITING WESTERN
British Edition, Vol. II, No. 9
Atlas Publishing, October 1953

The British edition of Exciting Western started by taking it contents from the American pulp of the same name with the occasional stories sourced from other American western pulps. As time went on most of the stories came from other western pulps. This is the case with this issue of Exciting Western as all the contents, except one, were taken from the Spring 1953 issue of Thrilling Ranch Stories. The other tale, Fiddle-Foot was taken from Exciting Western, March 1953. 

The opening novella is Rustler’s Run by Lewis B. Patten. Burt Norden is doing his best to look after his mother whose gone into a state of depression since her husband died. Burt is sweet on one of the neighbouring rancher’s daughters, Lucy, but the path to true love isn’t running smoothly. Lucy’s mother is dying and another young man, Mitch Riorson is showing interest in her. Mitch is always picking fights with Burt and they are getting more vicious each time fists fly. It seems it won’t be long before one kills the other. On top of all this is the mystery of missing cattle. Patten’s portrayal of human emotion is first class and his action scenes are well depicted. The story was a little predictable, but even so, still made for an exciting read.

Next comes the short story Fiddle-Foot by Ben Frank (real name Frank Bennett). Freddy had some strange help: a stuffed gorilla, a pet skunk – and Stella’s red-hot skillet! This tale is told in a light-hearted tone throughout and contains quite a few amusing scenes. It tells the story of how the Foster Memorial Museum came to be in the basement of the Courthouse in Mumblepeg. It involves a couple of old-timers, an attractive housekeeper, and a stolen windmill, as well as the already mentioned gorilla, skunk and skillet. This story would fall into the category of comedy westerns, and I felt that it was the perfect length for this type of tale, any longer and it would have outstayed its welcome. 

Paul Randell Morrison’s novelette Grip of the West followed. This is set in the time of automobiles and telephones, but once the opening scene is played out, I could easily imagine it as a western taking place in an early time period. The main character is well-to-do Gary Cortland who, whilst drunk, is dumped on a train heading west as a prank. Cortland ends up working on a ranch, saving the day when a river threatens to burst its banks, and falls in love with the rancher’s daughter, Peggy. Cortland also discovers that he enjoys the harder life of a cowboy than living in a city where everything is done for him. All through the story I was waiting to see if Cortland would get revenge on his two friends who put him on the train and how he does that was amusing and just. Entertaining.

The fourth and final tale in this issue of Exciting Western is the short story The Ranger Takes a Wife by Frank P. Castle. Flounces and frills, ruffles and lace – To her they were pretty. To him a disgrace! Tough rancher Chris Talley decides he needs a wife to keep house and do chores. A homeless girl struggling to survive fits the bill and after a quick wedding they are married. That’s when differences in their outlook to life emerge, things Chris can’t accept. There’s also the Guerra family who Chris believes are cattle thieves. More trouble erupts when his wife Loretta befriends Victoria who is one of the Guerra clan. This is a tough tale that contains some harsh dialogue and scenes. I was never sure how this tale would end. The conclusion was a little to perfect as Chris changes his viewpoint all too suddenly. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the story and would like to check out more of Castle’s work.

The last page is taken up with the article Rope Rascality by Ferris Weddle. I usually don’t read these parts of the pulps but I did this time. It proved to be a collection of tall tales of when a lasso was used, a couple of which made me smile. 

Overall, this was an enjoyable issue of Exciting Western. For me, the best two stories were those by Patten and Castle.

FIGHT FOR THE VALLEY

 

FIGHT FOR THE VALLEY
By Lee Leighton
Panther Books, January 1962
Originally published by Ballantine Books, 1960

Five long years of waiting…nursing and nourishing his hatred…learning how to slap leather fast enough…growing from a frightened young boy to a fast and fighting man…waiting, always waiting for the final day of reckoning – until, with savage suddenness – it came!

The above blurb makes this sound like it’s going to be a tough, dark, brutal read to me. Boy, was I wrong. The book is beautifully written and I soon found myself caught up in the storyline. I wanted to know what would happen, so had to keep turning the pages. But, where was the action? 

The book is split into three parts; The Boy, The Youth, and The Man. The story follows Tommy Gordon as he grows from a naïve youngster struggling to understand adults and his feelings towards two young women. He lives on a ranch but is not wanted by the owner, Mike Dugan, although the rest of the family accept him with open arms. Witnessing a horrific beating, Gordon leaves. He drifts from place to place. Grows into a capable young man. Gordon is then drawn back to the area of the ranch he once called home and it seems inevitable this will lead to a violent confrontation between him and Dugan.

Lee Leighton is a pseudonym used by Wayne D. Overholser, and I think this is the first full-length book I’ve read by him, although I have read a couple of his short stories. Overholser began his career by writing for the western pulps in 1936. 

Here's a quote from Overholser discussing his output in general “I have tried to be accurate in describing my settings and consider character more important than action.” That is exactly what you get in Fight for the Valley. It’s an excellent portrayal of character development, of a growing young man. Although there is very little in the way of gunfights the book does contain a couple of hard-hitting scenes that help shape Gordon and some of the other characters, one of these scenes being quite heart-wrenching and I though Overholser handled this particularly well. It was obvious from the beginning that Gordon and Dugan would face-off and I was glad to find that it didn’t quite play out as I expected and that it provided a satisfactory conclusion to the tale.

I have a couple of other westerns put out under Overholser’s own name and one co-authored with Lewis B. Patten – this latter book written for the children’s market – and a few short stories, so I guess the question is will I be reading any of them anytime soon? The answer has to be nope, not in the foreseeable future as I prefer my westerns to have a lot more action in them. Having said that, if I pick out a pulp or anthology that includes one of his stories I will read it, and I aim intrigued by the book he wrote with Patten to see how their styles mix and how they went about writing a children’s story.

A KILLING IN KIOWA

By Lewis B. Patten

Signet, April 1972

None of the four was really drunk, but all were feeling reckless and wild. They’d been talking about women and all four wanted one. Not one of them would have dared attack Daisy alone, but tonight they were a miniature mob. She was only a girl from the saloon. For money she’d probably take on anyone. Well, tonight she was going to take on all four of them. And she wasn’t going to get a dime for it . . .

The vicious events that follow force Matt Wyatt, sheriff of Kiowa, to a bloody showdown between the law and the lawless . . . 

A story that mixes western and murder mystery extremely well. Who did the killing isn’t really a mystery as Daisy knows who attacked her and the victim names two of them before dying. Part of the book follows Wyatt’s as he tracks down and arrests the four young killers, two fifteen-year olds, one sixteen and one seventeen.

The intrigue comes from the fact that Wyatt knows them all, knows their families. One of the killers is his deputy’s son. Wyatt is also in a relationship with the deputy’s daughter. Enforcing the law puts a massive strain on these friendships and could bring about the end of them.

Two other fathers are desperate to save their sons from prison and the noose. They aren’t above threatening Daisy and the Doctor to change their stories. If bribery isn’t enough then there’s other methods. How can Wyatt keep the killers in jail if the witnesses won’t back his play? It’s these storylines that really gripped me and kept me turning the pages.

This is a fairly dark tale. It’s a gritty story that never lets up in pace and one that made it impossible to guess at its outcome. Wyatt is badly wounded about half-way through the story, a brutal wound that could kill him but bringing the killers to justice seems more important to him than his own life. 

A Killing in Kiowa is a short book compared to today’s standards and I wish it had been longer. Although the conclusion is satisfactory, I felt there was more of the story to tell. Perhaps the author intended for his readers to decide how a couple of the unfinished story threads came to an end. Even though the book finished in this way, I still enjoyed it and look forward to reading more of Lewis B. Patten’s work soon.

Home is the Outlaw

By Lewis B. Patten

Fawcett Gold Medal Books, 1958

Morgan Orr stepped clear as the horse fell. He looked at the dying animal with pity, then he drew his gun and put a bullet into the horse’s head. Then, weary and empty, he turned and stared down at the town.

Ten long years and this is what it came to. Ten years of violence while the name of Morgan Orr became whispered from one end of the frontier to the other, while his gun became a legend told in a thousand saloons. Ten years of watchfulness etched in his bony face, of wildness and caution stamped in his long, lean stride.

And this is what it came to. A ragged, hungry man, limping down the slope of the mountains – tired of killing, sick of his life, heading back to his home at last. Back to a place called Arapaho Wells – the last town in the world that would let him hang up his gun….

This book has a fairly dark tone throughout. Patten excels in his writing of despair, frustration and empty hope. The surprise that greets Orr when he meets Tena again – the woman he left behind but never stopped loving – causes more grief to rise within him, all written so well the reader will share the pain Orr feels.

Even though Orr tries to lay down his gun (he even sells the weapon) and step away from fights, you just know he won’t be able to do so forever. One man cannot control his own destiny it seems.

Orr is an interesting, and troubled man, and Patten doesn’t give him an easy ride, even having a childhood friend wanting to draw on him, to be the man who kills fast gun Morgan Orr. This is a confrontation Orr does his best to avoid.

All this mixed into a plot that includes mistaken identity, a crime that will completely destroy the town that can only be kept secret by killing, and you have a twisting storyline that you can never be sure of where it will go next, thus providing a gripping and exciting read.  

I’ve only read a handful of Lewis B. Patten’s work and they always leave me hungry for more and this book has reinforced that desire.

The Red Sabbath

By Lewis B. Patten

Tandem, 1976

Originally published by Doubleday, 1968

“The column of dust was like the smoke from a monstrous prairie fire, boiling, yellow. Beneath it was a savage horde, yelling, barbaric in their feathers and brilliant paint, firing into the air out of sheer exuberance, coming in hungry for the vengeance due to them for fifty years of broken promises, for half a hundred savage massacres.”

Sioux, Cheyenne and Kiowa, they longed to wipe out the detested Yellow Hair. But not only the Indians loathed General Custer; many of the men who rode with him towards the valley of the Little Big Horn also hated Custer, and with good reason. He was ruthless and vain and ambitious – and he needed a victory. So he led two hundred and twenty-five men of the 7th Cavalry into one of the bloodiest massacres in American history. With them was Miles Lorette, hard-bitten civilian scout whose life had twice been wrecked, by white men and Indians, and who was to take part in the violent and terrible hours of that blood-soaked Sunday in 1876.

This whole book pretty much takes place over that one bloody Sunday, moving into the next day for the conclusion. The story is told in the first person through Miles Lorette and his back-story is explained through a series of flashbacks during lulls in the battle.

There are many exciting, and tense, scenes throughout, one of the best for me being the desperate attempt to get water. Patten superbly portrays the fear of discovery and the frantic race back to the soldiers’ lines when discovered.

Lorette finds himself with Reno and Benteen’s commands, pinned down and helpless to go to Custer’s aid, hoping for Custer’s death but saddened by the thought of the loss of the men with the General. Lorette isn’t the only man who has these wishes, for most of the characters Patten features in his novel also want to witness Custer’s death for past wrongs.

Lewis Patten captures the atmosphere of the battle and its immediate aftermath in moving and visual prose. Even though the outcome of this savage clash between white men and Indian is well known, I still found myself swept up in the story, eagerly turning the pages to see what happened next, the final scenes of Lorette riding through the masses of dead making for a powerful ending to the book.

The Red Sabbath is a must-read for anyone with an interest in Custer and/or the Indian Wars, and, of course, for fans of Lewis Patten’s work.

This book was the winner of the Spur Award for best western historical novel in 1968.