Gunfighter's Return - Leslie Ernenwein

Leslie Ernenwein was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps from the late Thirties to the end of the pulp era. He also wrote several dozen Western novels and had a successful career as a journalist. I read a couple of his novels many years ago and remember enjoying them, and recently I’ve read a few of his pulp stories and liked them as well. So I figured it was time to read another novel by him and picked up GUNFIGHTER’S RETURN, published originally by Gold Medal in 1950. That’s my copy in the scan. I feel like I should know the artist who did the cover, but I don’t, and there’s no signature that I can see.

This book has a terrific opening paragraph:

Durango died at noon. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t even grunt. He just lay down and died.

I don’t know about you, but something that terse and hardboiled sure makes me want to keep reading. The Durango referred to is the leader of a revolutionary movement in Mexico who was betrayed to the federales by a cantina dancer. He and American gunfighter/soldier of fortune Jim Rimbaud are the only ones who escape an ambush by federal troops, and when Durango dies, Rimbaud is left on his own to make it back across the border to Arizona if he can.

It's no spoiler to say that he does so. The book’s title is GUNFIGHTER’S RETURN, after all. He finds himself back in the cowtown where he recuperated from a gunshot wound a couple of years earlier. There’s a girl there he’s interested in, a pretty redhead who runs a café. After his narrow escape, Rimbaud thinks maybe it’s time for him to give up helling around and settle down.

Yeah, we all know how well that always works out in Western novels, don’t we?

A range war is brewing, and in a nice twist, it’s connected to that failed revolution in Mexico. The man who saved Rimbaud’s life two years earlier is now on the run from the law, framed as a rustler. Rimbaud owes him and is the type who always pays his debts . . . and it doesn’t matter that the hombre he’s indebted to is also engaged to the girl Rimbaud wants for himself.

From this setup, Ernenwein spins an excellent hardboiled Western yarn with plenty of gritty action and a frankness about sexual matters that’s unusual for the era. There’s a large, well-developed cast of characters, a nice sense of time and place, and a pace that never lets up for very long. Jim Rimbaud is a tough but hardly superhuman protagonist. He suffers a lot of punishment in this book but manages to keep slugging away at his enemies.

This is one of the better Westerns I’ve read recently and really makes me want to read more by Ernenwein. Luckily, I have several of his books on my shelves and e-books of several more on my Kindle. If you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, I give GUNFIGHTER’S RETURN a high recommendation.