Forgotten Books: The Two-Gun Man - Charles Alden Seltzer

Charles Alden Seltzer was in the top rank of the first wave of popular Western novelists in the early Twentieth Century. He wasn’t as influential as Owen Wister or as popular as Zane Grey, but he held his own against such authors as Clarence E. Mulford and William MacLeod Raine, although those two are probably better known today. A few years ago, I read one of Seltzer’s Northerns and liked it fairly well, but he was much more renowned for his Westerns and I figured it was time I gave one of them a try.

THE TWO-GUN MAN was published in hardcover by A.L. Burt in 1911 and reprinted in paperback by Belmont under the title FERGUSON'S TRAIL, as well as (probably) abridged versions appearing in the March 1936 issue of WESTERN ACTION NOVELS and the November 1950 issue of THRILLING WESTERN. It’s the story of a range detective named Ferguson (I don’t think we’re ever told his first name) who is hired to find the rustlers who have been plaguing the Two Diamond Ranch. It’s implied that the boss of the Two Diamond expects Ferguson to kill said rustlers, but he’d rather bring them to justice and won’t kill them unless he’s forced to. That determination is reinforced when he discovers that the small rancher suspected of being responsible for the rustling has a beautiful sister staying with him while she tries to write a novel about the West.

As you’d expect, Ferguson falls for the sister, and THE TWO-GUN MAN, like a lot of other early Westerns, turns out to be more of a romance novel than a shoot-em-up. The plot is very simple, the real bad guy might as well be wearing a big sign on his back, and there’s only one gunfight, which comes at the end of the book, and one ambush earlier on. Only one punch thrown, that I recall.

However, don’t think that means THE TWO-GUN MAN is without any appeal. It’s well-written overall, and Seltzer does a good job of capturing the setting vividly without resorting to the sometimes over-flowery prose of Zane Grey. The characters are interesting, and the fact that the heroine is writing a novel based on the events in the book gives it a sort of meta-fiction feeling, although it was written long, long before anybody came up with the concept of meta-fiction. Yes, it’s pretty mild, but most of the Westerns from that era were, with the notable exception of Mulford’s Hopalong Cassidy books. I really need to reread some of those and see how they hold up. But to get back to Seltzer, I enjoyed this book enough that I plan to read more by him, although I probably won’t get in a hurry to do so. He’s one of the founding fathers of the Western as we know it, and THE TWO-GUN MAN is available in various public domain e-book editions, as are many of his other books.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, September 1949

This is another action-packed cover from Sam Cherry, one of my favorite Western pulp cover artists (and paperback cover artist, too, for that matter). Inside this issue of GIANT WESTERN are stories by Wilbur S. Peacock, Allan R. Bosworth, T.C. McClary, and Ben Frank, plus classic reprints by Charles Alden Seltzer and Frederick R. Bechdolt. The big guy in the red shirt looks a little like James Arness to me, but this is too early for Arness to have influenced the art, I think.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, August 1950

That's a nice cover by George Rozen on this issue of GIANT WESTERN, and some pretty good authors inside, too. Jim Mayo was Louis L'Amour, of course, and a few years later he expanded his novella "Showdown on the Hogback" into the novel SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE. Then there's W.C. Tuttle, one of my favorites, with a story featuring his character Cultus Collins (I haven't read any of this series). Also on hand are Leslie Scott, another favorite, writing under his pseudonym A. Leslie, old-timer Charles Alden Seltzer, Arch Whitehouse, better known for his aviation stories, and house-name Charles Alan Gregory.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 8, 1933

"World's End", the serial by Victor Rousseau that starts in this issue of ARGOSY, sounds pretty apocalyptic. The cover by Paul Stahr makes the situation look pretty dire, too. Maybe somebody who's read this one can tell us what it's about. Elsewhere in this issue are stories by Charles Alden Seltzer, Robert Carse, and George Worts writing as Loring Brent with an installment of a Peter the Brazen serial.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, April 25, 1931

It may not be politically correct, but this is one of cleverest uses of the red sun motif on SHORT STORIES covers that I've come across. The art is by Remington Schuyler. Inside are stories by Robert Carse, Charles Alden Seltzer, Cliff Farrell, and several lesser known writers. I've enjoyed everything I've read by Carse, and I'll bet this is a good yarn, too.

Forgotten Books: Gone North - Charles Alden Seltzer

Technically this novel may not be forgotten, since Altus Press just reprinted it as one of the first entries in the Argosy Library, but I think it's safe to say that before that, not many people other than Matt Moring remembered it. Charles Alden Seltzer is best known as a Western author, but he wrote other sorts of adventure fiction, too. GONE NORTH, as its title implies, is a Northern, since it takes place in Canada's Great North Woods, but it doesn't have Mounties or snowstorms or dogsleds or many of the other trappings we associate with that genre. It does, however, have a varied cast of characters after a fortune in gold.

What else does it have, you ask? Well, how about a great stone castle in the middle of the woods, complete with towers and cannon and secret passages, populated by bloodthirsty pirates (the sea-going kind, who have moved north), foppish but deadly European aristocrats, a beautiful young girl raised by the above-mentioned pirates, and a prisoner who knows the location of a fabulously valuable gold mine. If that's not enough, how about a two-fisted protagonist who made a fortune in the Klondike and now roams the world in search of adventure and wrongs to right? Then there's his sidekick, a giant Indian who steps on his enemies' necks in order to break them. Throw in some sword fights, a lot of running around in those secret passages and tunnels, epic brawls like you'd find in movie serials from Republic Pictures, riding the rapids in canoes, and assorted other mayhem. How Seltzer overlooked a quicksand scene, I'll never know.

This novel appeared as a six-part serial in ARGOSY in March and April of 1930, and the readers must have been holding their breath from one installment to the next. GONE NORTH is old-fashioned, sure, but it's also extremely entertaining if you're a fan of the adventure pulps. I loved it. It's exactly the sort of thing Ace Books would have reprinted in one of those small-size paperbacks in the early Sixties, and I would have read it on my parents' front porch on a summer day, utterly enthralled. It's hard to recapture that feeling now, but GONE NORTH does at times, and I'm grateful to Altus Press for bringing it back.

I've been wanting to read some of Charles Alden Seltzer's Westerns for a while. Now I want to even more.

The Argosy Library from Altus Press

Altus Press Announces The Argosy Library

The First Series of Releases Features Popular Authors Such as Lester Dent, Otis Adelbert Kline, W.C. Tuttle, and George F. Worts

March 18, 2015: Altus Press today announced the premiere of its new line of books: The Argosy Library series.

Founded at the end of the Nineteenth Century by publishing tycoon Frank A. Munsey, Argosy Magazine quickly became one of the most popular—and prestigious—fiction magazines of its day and spawned a publishing revolution.

Known as one of the most literate pulp magazines, Argosy published thousands of short stories and novels, many of which features some of the most influential series characters in popular fiction.

With the inauguration of The Argosy Library, Altus Press plans to bring back into print the best of the Frank A. Munsey Company, sourced from its suite of sibling titles such as Argosy, The All-Story, and Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly, among others.

The Argosy Library expects to showcase the varied mix of genres that made Argosy one of the most popular pulps of all time, and Series 1 does just that by showcasing adventure, mystery, western, science fiction, fantasy, and crime stories by some of Munsey’s most popular authors such as Lester Dent, W. Wirt, Otis Adelbert Kline, W.C. Tuttle, George F. Worts, and Theodore Roscoe, among others.

The Argosy Library will be released in series of ten books at a time—in matching trade dress—and will be available in softcover, hardcover, and ebook editions. In addition to being available separately, each series of releases can be purchased as a single, heavily-discounted set.

Series 1 of The Argosy Library is expected to be released in May.

For more information, please visit Altus Press.com.

Titles in Series 1 of The Argosy Library:

Genius Jones

by Lester Dent, introduction by Will Murray

The gold-dusted saga of a red-bearded young giant, raised in the Arctic on seal-meat and encyclopedias, who descends on civilization with a loud and solid crash. In his search for wisdom and adventure, the man Jones doesn’t have Aladdin’s lamp—but he doesn’t really need it…. Never before reprinted, it’s the longest novel Lester Dent ever published, and one of the most famous. This edition restores text cut from its original publication. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

271 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

When Tigers Are Hunting: The Complete Adventures of Cordie, Soldier of Fortune, Volume 1

by W. Wirt

The sagas of Jimmie Cordie and his crew were among Argosy’s most popular series when it was brought to that magazine during its early ’30s renaissance. Quite clearly an inspiration for the creation of Doc Savage, this edition collects his first nine adventures. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

240 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

The Swordsman of Mars

by Otis Adelbert Kline

Harry Thorne, explorer and swordsman, had scarcely more than heard of the Red Planet, Mars—when an amazing thing happened…. Otis Adelbert Kline is well-known as one of the best fantasy/adventure contemporaries of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This edition is sourced from the original magazine text and includes all of the original illustrations. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

237 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

The Sherlock of Sageland: The Complete Tales of Sheriff Henry, Volume 1

by W.C. Tuttle, introduction by Sai Shankar

Once voted Adventure Magazine’s most popular author, W.C. Tuttle introduced the world to one of his longest-running, and most popular series characters, Henry Harrison Conroy, in the pages of Argosy. Collected here are the first four stories. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

269 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Gone North

by Charles Alden Seltzer

When Jim Fallon started for the Hudson Bay country, he wasn’t sure whether he was on a man-hunt or a wild goose chase—but he found his quest was fraught with real enough peril. Among the best novels ever written by one of Argosy’s most popular authors. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

220 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

The Masked Master Mind

by George F. Worts

One of Argosy’s most popular authors pens this never-before reprinted novel of a trail of crime that ran from sleepy Maple Hollow to Steel City. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

265 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Balata

by Fred MacIsaac

Trees of living gold in the Amazon jungles, guarded by alligators, poisoned darts and rival hunters—such was the lodestone that drew an American expedition, and the unwilling Pete Holcomb…. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

216 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Bretwalda

by Philip Ketchum

’Twas the mightiest weapon the eyes of man had ever beheld; its mystic name meant “Ruler of Briton.” And from over the Northern Sea came a Viking’s thrall—the only man in the world who could wield that fearsome steel—to save good King Alfred and the homeland he scarce remembered. Collecting—for the first time—all 12 stories of the Bretwalda saga. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

479 pages / $29.95 softcover / $39.95 hardcover

Draft of Eternity

by Victor Rousseau

A groundbreaking science fiction, post-apocalyptic & time travel classic from the early days of The All-Story by an underrated writer. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

183 pages / $17.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Four Corners, Volume 1

by Theodore Roscoe

Mystery runs rampant in the quiet, upstate New York town of Four Corners…. Easily one of Roscoe’s best-written series, Volume 1 collects the first half of this lost masterpiece of the pulps. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

201 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

(Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to these. It's a great time to be a pulp fan!)