The Trail of Death - Peter Henry Morland/Max Brand (Frederick Faust)

“The Trail of Death”, which appeared in the May 21, 1932 issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE under the pseudonym Peter Henry Morland, is the third and final novella to feature Jim Tyler, the daring gunman and adventurer also known as The Wolf. It’s a good wrap-up to the series with numerous references back to the previous two stories.

After battling Mexican bandits El Tigre and Miguel Cambista separately in the first two stories, in this yarn the two villains team up to seek their vengeance on Jim Tyler. Fate lends them a hand, as one of Tyler’s friends whom he had previously rescued from the clutches of El Tigre, ventures south of the border again because he’s in love with a beautiful señorita. El Tigre and Cambista kidnap him, knowing that when Tyler gets word of his friend’s plight, he will come to their stronghold to try to save him, and then they’ll have Tyler right where they want him!

Of course, things don’t necessarily work out the way the two schemers hope they will. Plenty of action and derring-do ensue as Tyler sets out to foil their evil plan.

It all makes for an exciting, well-written tale that has a satisfying ending. Frederick Faust leaves the door open for more adventures of Jim Tyler, but as far as I know, there weren’t any. All three stories were reprinted under the Max Brand name in the collection DON DIABLO, a puzzling title since there’s absolutely no reference in any of the stories to a character known by that name. The e-book edition of that collection is still available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, and used copies of the print editions are pretty easy to come by. Also worth noting is that this third story appeared under the title “Greaser Trail” when it was published in WESTERN STORY. Evidently “The Trail of Death” was Faust’s original title for it, and somebody changed it back to that for its reprint appearance.

DON DIABLO is a really solid collection. I’m a little surprised it wasn’t published as a fix-up novel back in the Fifties or Sixties, as so many of Faust’s series of linked novellas were. If you’re a Max Brand fan and haven’t read this one, it’s well worth your time.

Rawhide Bound - Peter Henry Morland/Max Brand (Frederick Faust)

I was a little thrown by “Rawhide Bound”, the second Jim Tyler novella which appeared originally in the April 23, 1932 issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE under the name Peter Henry Morland and then was reprinted in the collection DON DIABLO under the Max Brand name. As you may recall from my review of “Mountain Raiders”, the first novella in the series, Jim Tyler is a drifting gunman/outlaw/adventurer sometimes known as The Wolf. When I started reading “Rawhide Bound”, I expected another epic clash between Tyler and the Mexican bandit called El Tigre.

Instead, Tyler is back north of the border, visiting an old prospector who’s a friend of his. The old-timer has discovered a fabulously valuable gold mine. Then he’s wounded and kidnapped, and Tyler sets off to find and rescue him.

The trail leads Tyler to an abandoned hacienda in a desolate mountain pass that’s been taken over by a gang of outlaws. Because of his encounter with these owlhoots, he winds up being imprisoned and tortured by yet another Mexican bandit.

At first, this doesn’t read like a sequel to “Mountain Raiders”, and Jim Tyler (who is never referred to as The Wolf in this one) could be any of Frederick Faust’s borderline superhuman protagonists. This novella also seems like it was cobbled together out of elements from several different yarns.

However, Faust’s colorful, compelling prose elevates it beyond what it might have been, and eventually, connections with the previous story are revealed. The torture scenes are harrowingly suspenseful, although I thought the ending itself wasn’t all it could have been. Overall, I liked this story, although not as much as the first one, and I’m looking forward to the third and final Jim Tyler tale, which I hope to read soon.

Mountain Raiders - Peter Henry Morland/Max Brand (Frederick Faust)

Max Brand, whose real name was, of course, Frederick Faust, is another author whose work I’ve been reading for 60 years. The first thing I read by him was the novel SINGLE JACK, in a Dodd, Mead hardback checked out from the Fort Worth Public Library bookmobile that came out to our little town every Saturday morning. I loved it and have gone on to read many more of his stories and novels over the decades. (Years later, the Fort Worth Public Library discarded that same exact copy of SINGLE JACK and it wound up in our local library, where I checked it out and read it again. I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the book that time around, but I remained a Max Brand fan.)

Faust wrote three novellas about a gunman/adventurer named Jim Tyler, sometimes known as The Wolf. These were published in the venerable pulp STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE under the pseudonym Peter Henry Morland in the spring of 1932 and many, many years later collected in a Leisure paperback volume under the Max Brand name called DON DIABLO. That collection is still available in an e-book edition on Amazon, which is where I read the first Jim Tyler novella “Mountain Raiders”, originally published in the April 9, 1932 issue of WESTERN STORY.

This one is set in the mountains of Mexico, where the manager of a group of silver mines owned by an American syndicate hires Tyler to fight off the raids of a notorious bandit known as El Tigre. Tyler rounds up a group of fellow gunfighters and adventurers to deal with El Tigre. This part of the story has a definite Magnificent Seven feeling to it. There’s a huge battle, of course, in which (SPOILER—but not much of one) Tyler and his men emerge triumphant through the use of a clever trick on Tyler’s part. Then, halfway through the story, things abruptly change and Tyler, at the behest of a beautiful señorita, gallivants off to rescue a Mexican revolutionary who’s been unjustly imprisoned.

Despite the fact that “Mountain Raiders” reads more like two short stories crammed together than an actual novella, the writing is excellent, as you’d expect from Faust, with vivid descriptions, top-notch dialogue, and some great action. El Tigre is a fine villain and I’m sure he and The Wolf will clash again. Jim Tyler is an intriguing character, and I’m eager to read more about him, although I’ll probably space out the other two novellas. If you’re a Max Brand fan, though, I think I can already recommend DON DIABLO.