Kid Calvert is the only son of outlaw Gunner Calvert and was
raised by Gunner and his gang, known as the Calvert Horde. Also in the gang are
massive Swede Andersen, also known as The Giant, fancy-dressed gambler Dandy
McLain, and assorted other supporting characters. Most of the men in the gang
wound up on the wrong side of the law through bad luck or other mitigating
circumstances, and Gunner holds them to a strict moral code. They're good guy
outlaws, much like Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and they always avoid clashing
with honest lawmen, saving their bullets for the crooked star packers.
But then, while the Calvert Horde is trying to save the herd of a small rancher
from minions of the local cattle baron, both Gunner Calvert and Sheriff Mart
Reynolds are mortally wounded in the resulting gun battle. Gunner and Reynolds
have always respected each other and managed to dodge this tragic confrontation
until now, but with both of them dead, The Kid has to take over the gang and
finds himself facing the new sheriff . . . who happens to be Mart Reynolds'
beautiful, gun-toting daughter Terry.
That's the set-up of OWL-HOOT HORDE, the lead novel in the very first issue of
the pulp WESTERN ACES. This magazine was intended at first to be a Western
character pulp, with Kid Calvert headlining every issue in a novel written by
veteran pulpster Lawrence A. Keating under the house-name Clint Douglas. But
publisher A.A. Wyn changed his mind and WESTERN ACES became a standard Western
pulp, although it did feature a number of series characters, most notably L.L.
Foreman's Preacher Devlin, who eventually moved over to WESTERN STORY. There
were four more Kid Calvert novels in WESTERN ACES, although they were scattered
out over the next year and written by a different author, Phil Richards. Will
Murray explains all this in detail in his excellent introduction to a volume
from Altus Press that reprints all five Kid Calvert yarns.
I found OWL-HOOT HORDE to be a pretty entertaining debut to the series. I think
it's the first thing I've read by Lawrence A. Keating, who wrote one of the
Masked Rider novels and a lot of other stories for various Western pulps. His
style is a little clunky in places, but his action scenes are good and he
provides some nice dramatic moments. The inevitable ill-fated romance between
The Kid and Terry Reynolds is well-handled. There's nothing ground-breaking
here, just good solid pulp storytelling. I'll be reading the other Kid Calvert
novels over the coming months and reporting back on them.
