Review: Run to the Mountain - T.V. Olsen

A while back I read T.V. Olsen’s hardboiled Western novel DAY OF THE BUZZARD and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I decided to give RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN a try. To be honest, both novels are available together in a double volume that you can find on Kindle Unlimited, which is the version I read instead of the original paperback from Gold Medal shown above.

With winter closing in, drifting cowboy Bowie Candler seems to be out of luck. He’s on foot after a mountain lion kills his horse, and bad weather is threatening. But wouldn’t you know it, things just get worse for him. He finds some horses and takes one of them, but that just gets him in trouble with the vicious son of a local rancher. Bowie winds up working on the ranch, which is a hotbed of lust, ambition, and tragedy. RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN is part noir, part soap opera, and part hardboiled Western (the ranch is losing stock to rustlers, which is the most traditional Western part of the plot).

Olsen writes really well, spinning his yarn in tough, terse prose that does a particularly good job with the harsh Colorado landscape. (I think it’s Colorado; Olsen never gets specific about that, but people go to Denver.) The supporting cast is excellent, with a number of truly despicable villains and a great sidekick for Bowie.

But man, this is a dark book! Several sympathetic characters die, Bowie isn’t a very effective protagonist most of the time, and although there are a few slivers of hope here and there, the ranch is a pretty grim place. I haven’t read a lot of Olsen’s work yet, but he reminds me of Lewis B. Patten and H.A. DeRosso. I think he writes well enough that I want to read more of his books, but I may try one of his historical adventure novels next, instead of another Western.

Review: Day of the Buzzard - T.V. Olsen

Val Penmark, a crusty old rancher out for vengeance, and Jason Drum, a young cowboy who wants to recover the money his family depends on, are a two-man posse chasing a gang of bank robbers through the badlands of southern Arizona in DAY OF THE BUZZARD, a 1976 novel by T.V. Olsen published originally by Fawcett Gold Medal. A couple of women wind up involved in the chase, as well as an Apache war party, and you can tell right from the start that this is going to be a really gritty, hardboiled Western yarn.

Considering that he was regarded as a top-notch Western writer for many years, I’ve read surprisingly little by T.V. Olsen. Years ago I read one of his paperback novels and remember not liking it much. Since then I’ve read a few of his pulp stories and thought they were pretty good. But DAY OF THE BUZZARD is the first Olsen novel I’ve read since high school, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

This one is really good, with Olsen doing a fine job of capturing the blazing heat and arid terrain of the setting. For some reason, I don’t associate his work with the Southwest, but he nails it here. None of the characters are particularly likable, even the two protagonists, but they’re all interesting. The outlaws are suitably despicable, especially the gang’s leader. The action scenes are well-done, and Olsen creates some genuine suspense.

I raced through this novel, and it left me very interested in reading more by T.V. Olsen. At one point, Leisure reprinted DAY OF THE BUZZARD in a double volume with Olsen’s novel RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN. Amazon owns the rights to all those old Leisure books now, and that double volume is still available in e-book and paperback editions. Highly recommended if you’re a fan of hardboiled Westerns, with the caveat that since it came out in 1976, the language and sex scenes are a little more graphic, although not Adult Western level.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second December Number 1957

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my beat-up copy in the scan. I don’t know who did the cover art.

When I sat down to read "Lone Hand" by T.V. Olsen, the lead novel, it didn't take me long to realize that the opening few pages of it are pretty blatantly plagiarized from Joseph Chadwick's 1951 novel RIDER FROM NOWHERE, published by Gold Medal, which I happen to have read earlier this year.

Consider these passages:

Chadwick: His cigarette grew short and finally scorched his fingers. He dropped the butt and deadened it under the heel of a shabby boot, very deliberately; he was a careful man, and, although he owned not a single acre of this vast sweep of range, or any range, he wanted to start no grass fire.

Olsen: His throat was parched with thirst, and the acrid dry taste of smoke wasn't helping. He ground the cigarette under his heel, mashing it deep into the earth. Trace Keene was a saddlebum who hadn't an acre of land to his name, but the scruples of a better past made him take care against starting a fire on the sweeping expanse of New Mexico grass.

Chadwick: He found himself trembling; it was partly from excitement, partly from the hunger that was a dull ache in his belly and a quivery weakness in the rest of him. He could see the brand mark on the horses from here, a curious brand unfamiliar to him.

Olsen: The horses were so close now that Trace could make out the brand mark on the hip of the nearest. It was a curious design unknown to him. Not that he cared who owned the animals. His legs were already cramped from miles of unaccustomed walking.

In Olsen's paragraph just prior to that, there's a line about "the quivering weakness of thirst and a belly-knotting hunger".

The first few pages of both are full of such similarities, and the action that takes place is the same: the protagonist watches a band of horses in hopes of catching one; they drift away from him; he moves closer; the horses finally come close enough for him to rope one of them and put his saddle on it. Then two cowboys who work for the ranch that owns the horses ride up and catch him.

I used the word "blatantly" above, because one of the characters introduced late in this scene is even named Chadwick.

Now, from that point on, the stories diverge from each other, and although there are minor similarities, it's more a case of both of them being save-the-ranch yarns, I think. And Olsen's novella is pretty darned good overall, a traditional plot but well-handled, with some nice writing and gritty action scenes. I'm baffled as to why he would have used Chadwick's opening like that, though. 1957 is pretty early in Olsen's career, but he was already selling regularly to the few remaining Western pulps by then and I believe had already sold a novel to Ace. At this point there aren't really any answers to be had, but I just found it curious. I'm used to pulp authors cannibalizing their own work but it seems rare for one of them to swipe something from another writer.

Edward Carr is an author whose work I’m not familiar with. His story in this issue, “Desert Chase”, is about the vengeance-seeking brother of a slain stagecoach guard pursuing the outlaws responsible for the killing into the brutal desert of northern Mexico. The owlhoots have a hostage, a young woman, who they leave behind thinking their pursuer will have to save her instead of coming after them. Carr, who published only about a dozen stories in the Fifties, spins a suspenseful, well-written yarn here.

From what I’ve read of his work, Robert E. Trevathan was a pretty solid author of traditional Westerns. He published about a dozen stories in various pulps during the Fifties and wrote approximately the same number of Western novels during the Sixties and Seventies. Unfortunately, most of his books were published by Avalon, the small, library market publisher, so they never got much attention. He’s almost completely forgotten these days. His story in this issue, “Cherokee Strip or Bust”, is an Oklahoma Land Rush yarn, and the protagonist is a little unusual. He’s a bookkeeper whose ambition is to run a general store. It’s well-written, and I enjoy offbeat tales like this now and then.

“Trouble at the Cimarron” by Leola Lehman is something a little unusual in RANCH ROMANCES during the Fifties—an actual romance story. And it’s a good one, with a female protagonist joining a wagon train headed out the Santa Fe Trail. Lehman is completely unknown to me and like Trevathan published only about a dozen stories, but she tells a good story here with some satisfying action at the end.

Unlike Carr, Trevathan, and Lehman, Ray G. Ellis was more prolific in the pulps, authoring more than three dozen stories during the Fifties and early Sixties. His “Piano Wrangler” also features a somewhat unusual protagonist, a former lunger from back east who came west for his health and wound up playing the piano in a saloon. Now he’s fallen for one of the girls who works there, wants to marry her and buy a ranch and get them both out of the saloon, but before he can do that, he has to face a challenge from one of the local bullies. This is a fine, well-written yarn.

There’s also a serial installment of a novel by James Keene (Will Cook) and the usual assorted features and fillers, but I didn’t read any of them.

Overall, this is a top-notch issue of RANCH ROMANCES. There’s not a bad story in the bunch. If I hadn’t happened to read Chadwick’s novel not long ago, I never would have known that Olsen lifted some of the opening from it, and even with that, it’s the best story in the issue and has made me want to read more by Olsen, an author whose work has never grabbed me in the past. If you have this one, it’s worth pulling down from the shelf and reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First January Number, 1957

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. It’s in really good shape, too. The scan is from my copy, and that nice cover is by Sam Cherry, who painted nearly all of the RANCH ROMANCES covers from the Fifties.

The issue gets underway with the featured novella “Woman at Wagonwheel” (despite what the cover says, there’s no “The” in the title on the actual story) by Ray Gaulden, a fairly prolific Western pulpster and novelist who had at least one book made into a movie (FIVE CARD STUD). This is a pretty good hardboiled yarn with a standard save-the-ranch plot that’s elevated by Gaulden’s smooth prose, some interesting characters, and a well-handled romantic rectangle. I’ve read and enjoyed several of Gaulden’s pulp stories, but I don’t think I’ve ever read one of his novels. I really ought to.

Todhunter Ballard is best remembered today as mystery writer W.T. Ballard, but he was a very prolific and well-regarded Western writer, too. His short story in this issue, “To Know the Truth”, is a mining boomtown yarn involving an attempted swindle, a two-fisted miner, and the beautiful female editor of the local newspaper. It’s minor Ballard but still well-written and entertaining.

Seven Anderton was a fairly prolific pulp author for three decades, from the late Twenties until his death in 1958. He wrote in nearly every genre but was probably best known for his Westerns and detective stories. As far as I know, he never published a novel or published outside of the pulps. He’s mostly forgotten today, but there are still fans of his work around, including me. His novelette in this issue, “Queen of Jacob’s Kingdom”, appears to have been his last Western story. It’s a good one. The protagonist is a young man who has gone west to make his fortune in the ranching business, but he runs afoul of the local cattle baron and makes things worse for himself by falling for the man’s beautiful daughter. There’s actually more romance than action in this one, something of a rarity during the Fifties despite the magazine’s name, but the writing is top-notch and the story works well.

J.L. Bouma wrote quite a few Western novels, but during the late Forties and on through the Fifties, he was busy writing dozens of pulp stories, first in the detective pulps and then the Westerns, becoming a regular contributor to RANCH ROMANCES. His story in this issue, “Canyon Crossing”, is also heavy on the romance angle, as a young woman who’s about to get married has to deal with the return of an old beau who deserted her. There’s also some horse rustling and a twist ending that very predictable, leaving us with a story that’s readable but maybe a little too much on the mild side.

T.V. Olsen had a long, successful career as a Western novelist and is still highly regarded by many Western readers. He was never very prolific as a short story writer, turning out only a couple dozen of them, and most of those appeared in RANCH ROMANCES. “Stampede!” is, not surprisingly, a trail drive story with some good action and characters that are more complex than you usually find in a story of this length. I’ve read a few of Olsen’s novels and am not much of a fan of them, but I liked this story quite a bit.

The least well-known author in this issue is probably Robert E. Trevathan, and long-time Western readers might even recognize that one, since he wrote a number of novels for Avalon Books, the library market publisher. I’ve even read a few of ’em, but I don’t remember anything about them. He wrote a few stories for the Western pulps during the Fifties, including “Prairie Wind” in this issue. It’s about a young wife who has a hard time coping with the hardships of life on the frontier, and having the local cattle baron causing trouble for the homesteaders in the area just makes things worse. Trevathan writes fairly well, but the ending of this story is a little abrupt and not really believable.

There’s also a serial installment by Joseph Wayne (probably Wayne D. Overholser) that I didn’t read since I don’t have the whole thing, and the usual assortment of features like Western movie news, horoscope stuff, and requests for pen pals. Overall, this is probably the mildest issue of RANCH ROMANCES from the Fifties that I’ve read. All the stories are well-written and reasonably entertaining, with the stories by Gaulden, Olsen, and Anderton taking top honors, but several of them are really lacking in action and drama. It’s worth reading if you have it close to hand, but I wouldn’t go digging for it in your collection.