A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Hottest Fourth of July in the History of Hangtree County - Clifton Adams

A lot of Western authors have written Fourth of July novels. It’s a situation with plenty of built-in dramatic possibilities: hot weather, small town, lots of people crowded in, etc. I believe Harry Whittington’s well-regarded Gold Medal Western SADDLE THE STORM is a Fourth of July novel. Not sure because it’s been a lot of years since I read it. 

THE HOTTEST FOURTH OF JULY IN THE HISTORY OF HANGTREE COUNTY is Clifton Adams’ entry in this little sub-genre, and it’s a good one. The title itself is an ironic joke, because, as it’s explained in the novel, Hangtree County is only three years old. The book is set in Oklahoma in 1892, three years after the territory was opened for settlement. All the action takes place in one day, which places the novel in another sub-genre I like, books with a compressed time span.

Marshal Ott Gillman is getting too old to be a lawman, or at least he thinks he is. His deputy is another old-timer, even though he’s still known as Kid Fulmer, just as he was when he was a young outlaw in Texas before going straight. They make a good pair, both still more capable than they think they are, but this Fourth of July tests their ability to keep law and order because of all the outsiders coming into town for the celebration. Not everyone is in town because of the holiday, though. Some of them show up because of an old grudge against Marshal Gillman, and violence threatens to break out along with the festivities.

This isn’t a Grand Hotel sort of book with a lot of interweaving storylines, as Adams keeps the focus on Ott Gillman and the danger facing him, as well as several moral dilemmas the marshal has to grapple with. The pace is deliberate, even slow, for most of the book, but the occasional scenes of violence are sudden and brutal and effective. Anybody who thinks that all Westerns are just shoot-em-ups should read a book like this, which is almost all characterization and mood. Everything leads up to a very suspenseful climax.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on September 12, 2008. You'll hardly ever go wrong with a novel or story by Clifton Adams. He's one of the most consistent Western writers I've found when it comes to solid, entertaining yarns. This novel isn't currently in print, but his series about another lawman, Amos Flagg, written under the pseudonym Clay Randall, is available in e-book editions from Piccadilly Publishing, and I highly recommend those books, too.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, February 1952

Here's another Wanted Poster cover, this one by Sam Cherry. GIANT WESTERN was one of the Thrilling Group Western pulps, although it didn't last as long as most of them. The lead story in this issue is by Clifton Adams writing as Clay Randall, so I'm sure it's good. Philip Ketchum, another consistently good author, is also in this issue, along with a couple of writers I'm not familiar with, Lee Priestly and Sam Carson, both of which appear to be real names. I expected Sam Carson to turn out to be a house-name, but it's not, according to the Fictionmags Index. I don't believe I've ever read an issue of GIANT WESTERN. I don't own this one, and it doesn't appear to be available on-line, although PDFs of several other issues can be found at the Internet Archive.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: The Rio Kid Western, September 1951

I was reading quite a few pulps earlier this year, but I got covered up with other things and sidetracked from them for a while. I plan to read more of them between now and the end of the year, and the September 1951 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN is a good place to start. That’s my battered, stained, spine-rolled copy in the scan. I’ll put a better scan from the Fictionmags Index at the bottom of the post, but I like to show you the actual copy I read whenever I can. I’m pretty sure the cover art is by George Rozen.

The Rio Kid has long been one of my favorite Western pulp series. For those of you unfamiliar with the character, the Rio Kid is Bob Pryor, a stalwart young Texan from the border country (hence his nickname). Pryor fought for the Union during the Civil War and rose to the rank of captain as a cavalry officer serving under General George Armstrong Custer. Returning to Texas after the war, he found that his parents have been killed by bandits. After avenging them, he sets off on a life of drifting and adventuring, accompanied by a sidekick he picks up in the course of the first novel, the dashing young Mexican Celestino Mireles. The gimmick of the series is that Pryor and Celestino always find themselves involved with historical characters and settings in adventures that, if they didn’t happen, could have—and should have. The series was created by veteran pulpster Tom Curry, written by Curry and numerous others, and ran for 76 issues from December 1939 to May 1953. Quite a few of the novels were reprinted in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies by Popular Library and Curtis Books.

The Rio Kid novel in this particular issue was written by D.B. Newton, who authored a few of these pulp character novels but is better remembered for his non-series Western pulp stories and a long career turning out hardback and paperback Western novels under his own name and the pseudonyms Dwight Bennett and Clement Hardin. He was a fine writer, a little more thoughtful and restrained than some of the pulpsters, but he could still bring the fast-paced action when he needed to. His last work was creating the Western series STAGECOACH STATION, packaged by Book Creations Inc. and published by Bantam under the house-name Hank Mitchum, and writing a number of the early novels in that series. As one of the various Hank Mitchums myself, I’ve always been pleased that I got to work on a series created by D.B. Newton.

But to get to “Scorpions of Silverado” at last, it’s set in the silver mining boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Bob Pryor and Celestino Mireles are sent for by Dave Cook, the real-life founder of the Rocky Mountain Detective Agency, who has been hired to uncover the leader of a criminal gang wreaking havoc in the town. Pryor and Celestino do so, of course (the mastermind’s identity is no secret to the reader, having been revealed early on), but not before some shootouts, fistfights, a battle in an abandoned mine, and an attempted lynching. H.A.W. Tabor, Leadville’s leading citizen, is another historical figure who plays an important part in the story, although the bad guys are all fictional. It’s fast-moving fun, pretty lightweight but very entertaining. Also, while some modern readers might be offended by Celestino’s thick accent and his sidekick status, he’s really the dominant figure in this novel, doing most of the detective work and figuring out what’s really going on. I’ve always liked Celestino. He’s much more than the comedy relief some might take him for.

Next up is “Snake Charmer”, a short story by Robert J. Hogan. Best remembered for the G-8 series and other air war yarns, Hogan wrote a lot of Westerns, too, and was good at them. This story about a mining company payroll robbery and an old-timer who used to travel with a carnival is an entertaining story with some nice twists.

Clay Randall, author of the novelette “Make a Bigger Boot Hill” in this issue, was really Clifton Adams, one of the best of the hardboiled Western writers of the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties. This tale about a Texas Ranger pursuing the outlaws responsible for his wife’s death and catching up to them in a squalid bordertown is one of the few misfires by him that I’ve read. The writing is good and the characters are interesting, but the plot is pretty thin and somehow the story just never really engaged me.

The novelette “Kill-Crazy Trail” is by Reeve Walker, a Thrilling Group house name known to have been used by Walker A. Tompkins, Tom Curry, Charles N. Heckelmann, and Chuck Martin. Other authors probably used it as well. Having read the story under that name in this issue, I don’t know who wrote it, but I’m fairly confident it wasn’t any of the authors previously associated with the name unless possibly Heckelmann. It doesn’t read at all like the work of Tompkins, Curry, or Martin. However, this tale of a young rancher forced by circumstances and his own bad judgment to turn outlaw is a good one. Despite the bloodthirsty title, it’s actually a rather mild, heartwarming yarn with good characterization. I liked it quite a bit.

The issue wraps up with “Old Pete”, a short story by one of my favorite Western authors, A. Leslie Scott, writing here under his A. Leslie pseudonym. The title character is a roadrunner who plays a vital part in the showdown between a young lawman and a gang of bank robbers. The story doesn’t have much of the flowery description that’s a hallmark of Scott’s prose, but it does have some nice action and humor. He could spin a yarn, that’s for sure.

Overall, this is a solid issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. None of the stories are great, but they’re all good. The Clifton Adams story is the weakest of the bunch (there’s a sentence I’ve never written before and possibly never will again), and it’s certainly not terrible, just not quite to my taste. Other readers might like it the best because Adams has a really nice hardboiled style. If you have this issue on your shelves, it’s well worth reading.

Forgotten Books: Boomer - Clay Randall (Clifton Adams)

Clifton Adams wrote quite a bit of Western fiction about the oil boom in Oklahoma Territory in the early Twentieth Century, and his novel BOOMER, published by Perma Books in 1957 under the pseudonym Clay Randall, is a prime example of that. Joe Grant (an alias) is on the run from the law after robbing a bank in Missouri. He's not a hardened owlhoot but rather a farmer who was cheated out of his land by the banker he held up. Fate leads Grant to lend a helping hand to a beautiful blonde who's on her way to an oilfield boom town in Oklahoma. Grant goes with her, figuring he can hide out there.

It won't come as any surprise to experienced Western readers that Grant soon finds himself in even more trouble. The blonde's father is a wildcatter who's engaged in a war with another oilman. Throw in murder, a romantic triangle, a deadly hired gun, a doggedly determined U.S. marshal on the trail of the bank robber, and a blue norther, and you've got yourself the makings of a fine traditional Western.

Adams' work is always notable for its bleak, hardboiled prose that verges on poetry in places, and there's plenty of that in BOOMER as the ugly landscape and the perilous weather are portrayed in stark, vivid terms. Adams also knew the oil business well and provides just enough detail about it without going overboard on the subject. His characters are realistic, with plenty of flaws, and he has the knack of making the reader care about them. He's one of the best of the hardboiled Western writers and deserves more of a reputation than he has these days. If you've never read his work, BOOMER would be a fine place to start.