The Hawk Rides Back From Death - Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

A while back, I read GUNS OF THE DAMNED, the first novel by Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount) featuring Silver Trent, known variously as El Halcon de la Sierras and the Rio Robin Hood. Trent, you may recall, is a good-guy outlaw operating mostly in northern Mexico, where he and his band of noble owlhoots battle their arch-nemesis Esteban Varro, also known as El Diablo. I really liked that first yarn. It was over the top, sure, but it was full of blood and thunder and stirring prose and great action scenes.

Now I’ve read THE HAWK RIDES BACK FROM DEATH, the second novel in the series, which appeared in the Popular Publications Western pulp THE WESTERN RAIDER (October/November 1938).  Trent and his men—old codger Magpie Myers, giant Lars Johannson, two-fisted priest Padre Pete, alcoholic sawbones Doc Brimstone, gambler Beau Buchanan, and an assortment of others—are still battling Esteban Varro, who has gotten ambitious enough to raise an army and try to overthrow the Mexican government. Trent vows to stop him, but the campaign is complicated by the presence of the girl he loves, beautiful young Gracia Cary.

That’s all the plot there is to speak of in this novel. It’s just a framework on which to hang 40,000 or so words of action scenes, a series of ambushes, captures, escapes, running battles, and a final epic showdown. Trent and his men are shot to pieces and take enough punishment to kill a normal man . . . but, ah, Silver Trent and his Hell Hawks are not normal men. In Mount’s hands, they’re the stuff of myth and legend, much like their models, Robin Hood and His Merry Men.

I thoroughly enjoyed THE HAWK RIDES BACK FROM DEATH. The action scenes are just great, the characters are good, and Gracia, bless her heart, is no pale flower to be rescued but instead fights right alongside Trent just like Helene does with Ki-Gor. But the thinness of the story bothered me a little this time around. I’m kind of ready for Silver to settle things once and for all with Esteban Varro. Maybe he will in the next book, which I hope to get around to more quickly than I did this one. All of the Silver Trent stories are available in very nice trade paperback reprint editions from Steeger Books.