Review: Silver River Ranch - Leslie Scott

In addition to several hundred novels featuring Texas Rangers Jim Hatfield and Walt Slade, A. Leslie Scott wrote dozens of stand-alone novels, although some of these were rewritten and expanded from either Hatfield or Slade novels with the protagonist changed. But quite a few of them appear to be original stories not based on any of Scott’s pulp work. One such novel is SILVER RIVER RANCH, published by Arcadia House under the name Leslie Scott in 1961 and reprinted a couple of times in large print editions since then. I read the original Arcadia House edition. That’s my copy in the scan.

This novel opens with a vicious and bloody knife fight between the protagonist, stalwart young rancher Val Dixon, and brutal Blount Roberts, part of a trouble-making family that owns a rival ranch. Neither man dies in this encounter, but the fight solidifies the position that Dixon and the Roberts family are bitter enemies.

Except for Rosalee Roberts, a beautiful redheaded cousin of Blount and his brothers. Dixon is in love with her and hopes that someday she may return that feeling, but it seems unlikely given the rivalry between the ranches.

Complicating things is that everybody in the West Texas valley where this novel takes place has been losing stock to rustlers. Dixon hires a gunslinging young cowboy named Billy Flint, who may or may not actually be Billy the Kid, rumored to have survived his shooting by Pat Garrett over in New Mexico a while earlier. Together, Dixon and Flint set out to track down the rustlers, who they figure will turn out to be the Blount brothers.

SILVER RIVER RANCH will seem very familiar to anyone who’s read very many novels by Leslie Scott. There’s plenty of action with assorted bushwhackings and clashes with the rustlers, plus some tentative romance between Val Dixon and Rosalee Roberts and a lot of riding back and forth, sleeping, and eating. However, there’s nothing about mining or railroading, two of Scott’s favorite themes, and the descriptions of the landscape are a lot less detailed. This is Scott in pared-down mode, which makes for a very fast-moving book. The action scenes are consistently good, although the great knife fight that opens the book is the high point in that respect.

If you’re already a fan of Leslie Scott’s work, you’ll certainly enjoy this novel. It’s not fully representative of his usual yarn-spinning but close enough that if you’ve never sampled any of his stories before, you could start with this one just fine. I’ve enjoyed every one of Scott’s stand-alone novels I’ve read over the years, and this one is no exception.