OWLHOOT REVIEWS

THE SCOUT OF TERROR TRAIL, Walker A. Tompkins, Thorndike Press, 2004

This large print edition is a reprint of a 1944 Phoenix Press hardcover, which in turn was cobbled together from a series of linked novelettes that appeared in the pulp WILD WEST WEEKLY in the early Thirties. This was a common practice in WILD WEST WEEKLY at the time, since the editorial policy called for no serials. Tompkins, who is given credit for inventing what is called the “six-story series”, was the most prolific author of such series, which enabled the magazine to boast “All Stories Complete” on the cover (when actually they were anything but) and yet the authors could still put the stories together and sell them as novels later on.

THE SCOUT OF TERROR TRAIL is one of the most famous six-story series from WILD WEST WEEKLY, not because it’s particularly good (it isn’t), but because it’s memorable for its bizarre, over-the-top setting and plot. The hero, Deo Daley, is a scout for the famous Eighteenth Cavalry, stationed at Fort Adios in New Mexico Territory. Daley’s nemesis is the notorious Mexican bandit leader, Don Chirlo (“the scar-faced one”). Unknown to Daley, but not to the reader, the real villain is cavalry lieutenant Curt Thode, who is working with Chirlo. Along with old codger Tex Garland and Tex’s beautiful and plucky daughter Irene, Daley discovers a Spanish castle in a hidden valley, built hundreds of years earlier by the famous pirate Don Picadero, who came to New Mexico after retiring from a career of looting ships on the Spanish Main and concealed a fabulous treasure somewhere in the Alcazar de los Ladrones – the Castle of Thieves.

Whew. If you’ve followed all that, it should come as no surprise that Curt Thode and Don Chirlo also want to get their hands on Don Picadero’s treasure, so a hundred and fifty pages or so of running around the castle ensues, during which the two groups capture and are captured by each other, the heroes escape from numerous death traps and discover several secret passages – when they’re not being threatened with torture by the villains – and provide roughly the same amount of action you’d find in a movie serial from that era, and structured pretty much the same way, at that. Every so often the heroes appear to triumph, and that’s where the seams are between the original novelettes.

This story comes from early in Walker Tompkins’ career. Later on he became a pretty solid author of more realistic traditional Westerns, and his books from the late Forties and Fifties are dependably quite good. At this stage in his career, though, he’s in full pulp melodrama mode (the villainous Curt Thode even has a pencil-thin mustache, immediately marking him as one of the bad guys). THE SCOUT OF TERROR TRAIL is so breathless and lurid that I enjoyed it, but I would recommend it only to readers who have an appreciation for pulp fiction’s flaws as well as its virtues.

(Note: All six stories from WILD WEST WEEKLY don’t appear in the novel version. The first two, which apparently set up the conflict between Deo Daley and Don Chirlo and establish Curt Thode as Chirlo’s secret ally, are omitted, causing the book to start rather abruptly in the middle of the siege of Fort Adios.)


TRAIL BOSS FROM TEXAS, Barry Cord (Peter B. Germano), Thorndike Press, 2004

Originally published by Phoenix Press in 1948, this is Peter Germano’s first novel under the pseudonym Barry Cord, and as far as I know, his first full-length novel overall, although his shorter fiction had been appearing in the Western pulps as far back as the mid-Thirties.

Larry Brennan is the title character, who has brought a herd of cattle from Texas to Colorado to deliver them to an old friend of his boss. Unfortunately, the rancher Jeff Halliday, who was supposed to take delivery of the cattle, is murdered just before Brennan arrives, and after wiring his boss to ask him what to do next, Brennan has no choice but to wait for an answer. This delay gives him plenty of time to get mixed up in a range war that he originally wants no part of, as well as a land grab motivated by the impending arrival of the railroad.

These are classic Western story elements, of course, and Germano doesn’t really do anything new with them. This is a good solid traditional Western, though. Germano has been quoted (in TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN WRITERS) as saying that his writing was influenced by the work of Ernest Haycox and Luke Short (Frederick D. Glidden). That can be seen in his terse, unsentimental prose style and his hardboiled action scenes. His books often have strong mystery elements in them, as well. TRAIL BOSS FROM TEXAS suffers a little at first as Germano crowds in too many characters and plot angles in too few pages, but eventually everything gets straightened out and the story flows better. In the Fifties, when he was one of the regular writers of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS under the Jackson Cole house-name, and during the Sixties, when he was a prolific novelist for the Ace Double line, among other publishers, his storytelling abilities were more developed and he became one of the best Western writers of the period.


THE SQUARE SHOOTER, Walt Coburn, G.K. Hall Large Print, 2001

By 1957, when this novel was originally published, Walt Coburn’s once-formidable talent had deteriorated due to age and drink until his output was very hit-and-miss. THE NIGHT BRANDERS, from the same era, is the worst Coburn novel I’ve read. But he was still capable of turning out a good story sometimes, and luckily, THE SQUARE SHOOTER falls into that category.

The plot is one that Coburn used many times: a young man is raised by an outlaw and believes the older man to be his father, only to discover that his past is really a mystery. In this case the young man is known only as Boone, and his outlaw foster father is Jawbone Smith. When he finds out that Jawbone isn’t really his father, Boone sets out to discover the truth about his past, making a deadly enemy out of Jawbone in the process. Boone’s quest involves him with a shady gambler, a judge and his beautiful daughter, a half-crazed mountain man, and assorted owlhoots, all of whom may or may not have secrets of their own that connect them to Boone.

While this plot is nothing new, Coburn keeps a pretty tight rein on it this time, so that all the last-minute revelations at least sort of make sense. Coburn is obsessed with the sins and dark secrets of the past and their affect on the present, and sometimes his plots get away from him and become overly complicated. THE SQUARE SHOOTER avoids this for the most part and provides a fast-moving, exciting story. Worth reading.