Forgotten Books: Return of the Rio Kid - Don Davis (Davis Dresser)

Art by A. Leslie Ross?

Starting out, there are two things to consider about the Rio Kid novels by Don Davis. First of all, this is not the same character as the Rio Kid who headlined his own Western pulp for more than a decade. That Rio Kid was actually Captain Bob Pryor, former cavalryman, who roamed the West after the Civil War and had adventures with his sidekick Celestino Morales that often involved actual historical characters and events. That Rio Kid was created by Tom Curry, and his exploits were chronicled by a variety of top-notch Western pulpsters.

1949

The Rio Kid in four novels by Don Davis is really a young, good-guy outlaw named Hugh Aiken, although his real name is hardly ever used. He’s just the Rio Kid, or the Kid. These novels were published in hardback by William Morrow in 1940 and ’41, reprinted in various Columbia Western pulps, and then appeared in paperback editions from Pocket Books in the late Forties and middle Sixties. I read at least one of those Pocket Books reprints in the Sixties, because I remember sitting in my eighth grade homeroom in school reading it. I don’t believe it was this first one in the series, though.

The other thing that makes this series interesting, to me, anyway, is that “Don Davis” was actually Davis Dresser, better-known under the pseudonym Brett Halliday, which he used on the long-running series starring Miami private detective Michael Shayne. When I read that Rio Kid book back in eighth grade, I had no idea that “Don Davis” was also the author of the Mike Shayne books I’d been reading and enjoying for several years. And it would have been even more far-fetched if someone had told me that someday I’d be writing Mike Shayne yarns of my own . . . but that’s exactly what happened, of course. Strange, all the connections that our lives weave in and out.

1964

But to get on to the actual book at hand . . . RETURN OF THE RIO KID begins with the Kid on his way back to the United States after a three-year self-exile in Mexico, where he had fled after killing a crooked sheriff in a gunfight in Arizona. Because of that shootout, he’s been branded a killer and a fugitive, even though he was actually in the right. After a run-in with a gang of bandidos in a village near the Rio Grande, the Kid crosses the border river into Texas, hoping that’s far enough away from Arizona that he can live peacefully without the law catching up to him.

Unfortunately, there’s not much chance of that, because he lands smack-dab in the middle of a range war and a murder mystery. The ruthless cattle baron leader of one faction mistakes the Kid for a hired gunslinger he’s sent for; the beautiful young woman on the other side believes the Kid is actually a Texas Ranger who’s come to clean up the mess. This is a pretty good plot twist by Dresser, and he has the Kid playing it to full advantage for a while, before things take another turn and the rest of the book is basically a long sequence of capture/escape/running gunfight.

Art by H.W. Scott

I really enjoyed this yarn. It lacks the complicated plot of a Mike Shayne novel, but it’s the proverbial whirlwind of action, all of it taking place in the span of 24 hours. I love fast-paced books like that. Dresser’s writing is smooth as it can be, with a few scenes that border on poetic among all the hard riding and powder burning. The Kid is a very likable protagonist, too. The book’s only real drawback is an abundance of thick “Western” dialect of the “yuh mangy polecat” variety, but I even got used to that, to a certain extent. It’s early in the year, but this may well be a contender for my top ten list at the end of the year.

Some bibliographic notes: As mentioned above, RETURN OF THE RIO KID was first published by William Morrow in 1940, then reprinted in the June 1941 issue of BLUE RIBBON WESTERN. Following that came a 1949 paperback reprint from Pocket Books and a 1964 paperback also from Pocket Books. Through a discussion on the WesternPulps email group, I recently discovered that it was also reprinted in paperback as GUN HELL AT BIG BEND under the pseudonym Matt Rand by Belmont Books in 1962, with no indication that it’s part of the Rio Kid series by Don Davis.

1962

Joseph Silberkleit, owner of Belmont, also published BLUE RIBBON WESTERN, so I suppose he figured that gave him the right to reprint the book. Matt Rand (spelled Mat Rand in the pulps) was a house-name used throughout the Columbia Publications pulps and also on several reprint Westerns from Belmont. And to bring this up to the present, an e-book edition of RETURN OF THE RIO KID is actually still available from Open Road Media. If you’re a fan of traditional action Westerns, I think it’s well worth reading.

Oh, one more thing. There’s a signed copy of the William Morrow edition available from an on-line bookseller, if you have an extra $250 to spare. I thought about buying it, but not for very long before reason prevailed.