I’ve written about Amos Flagg before He’s sheriff of Sangaree County in the Texas panhandle. Based in the town of Academy, he had only one deputy. The pair were the only law in the whole county.
Gunner Flagg, father of Amos, was a former outlaw that had come to live in Academy after his last stint in Huntsville Prison. Amos hadn’t seen him in twenty years when that happened. He’d decided to go straight, mostly, when a scheme blew up in his face.
Straight, but still a bit of a con man at heart, he’s got another scheme secretly going. Having written newspapers back east, he’d sold them on a series of articles on bad men of the west. Jesse James wasn’t long murdered and readers were hot on these Robin Hoods. Gunner’s idea was to secretly get word out that there was a place to hide in a valley of Sangaree and plenty of good food and liquor available. A photographer/news reporter was part of the plan.
The outlaws would get good provisions and a place to rest. All ythat would be required was an interview and a few pictures.
But, as with all Gunner’s scams, things go awry and Amos is left to smooth it out and rescue the hostages.
Another terrific entry in Clifton Adams’s western series.
The plot is not new, but I like what the author has done with it. A lot of action, hair breadth escapes as our heroes attempt to avoid the villains plans.
Wade Forester comes home to Nevada, in the silver rush years, after three years of wandering. His father is missing, his sister seems to have lost her mind after losing her child, and brother-in-law seems to want him dead. So he must stay in the shadows as he searches for the reasons. A beautiful Young woman named Patricia Laughlin is also looking for her family. She has trouble trusting anyone. Bridger Calhoun, the brother-in-law, just might be the man to do it.
?
The pair end up opposing each other after a crossing and Wade has a decision to make. Should he risk his life to help her? You know how things must go. Calhoun and Wade end up competing for her. She’s a key piece to what’s really going on in the little valley.
Everyone believes Wade a stone cold killer and wants him out of the way.
Well, not everyone. Wade has friends who fill him in on things happening in the valley and he doesn’t like it.
Well done western novel. The author lived in the area and knows it well. Can be ordered HERE.
Buck Jones is Sheriff Buck Gordon, a man caught up in a budding range war.
Edward LeSaint as John Walton is one side and Will Walling as Dad Turner the other. Gordon’s problem is that Turner raised him as if he was his son and Gordon loves “kid brother” Clint(a very young John Wayne).
But Gordon makes it clear at a church service that he will not take sides. His almost father violated the law by driving his cattle onto Walton land for grazing because he’d always done so. But Walton was in the right, saying he barely had enough grazing land for his own. In the budding feud a man died. Dad Turner claims Walton has been rustling his cattle. Gordon makes it clear that the feud will stop.
Wayne’s character is in a Romeo and Juliette subplot with Judy Walton(Susan Fleming) and that leads to trouble when he declares for her hand with her father. A bitter argument follows, Clint leaves, then Walton is murdered, a gun shown sticking in the window.
Clint is blamed and Gordon arrests him to save his life as a lynching is in progress. His gun has a fired shell, he claims he shot at a coyote, but missed. The trial finds him guilty and he’s scheduled to hang the next day.
Gordon is looking into the rustling charge. A letter was found in his hand written by a seller letting him know he was coming to examine the cattle he’d sold to Walton, still penned up. He’d tell him then who from whom he’d bought them.
That night someone releases those cattle and in the chase Buck is shot. The only clue is a piece of cloth caught in a nail on the gate. Buck regains consciousness almost to late the next morning. He has to get into town to stop the hanging and clear Clint’s name.
Not a bad film, though in a Wayne biography it was referred to as the first in a collection of “cheap, assembly line pictures.”
\THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK is a bit different from the other Spillane works Mr. Collins has been completing, mostly Mike Hammer stuff. Significant chunks of prose with notes has been the norm. Here, we have an unfilmed movie script that Mr. Spillane wrote for his friend John Wayne.
So, a complete story by Mickey Spillane with Max Allan Collins putting his considerable skills into turning it into a novel. Never been fond of the term novelization.
A mysterious stranger rides into Trinidad, New Mexico and into a situation. A crooked sheriff, a gentle rancher, aged and blind, and his daughter. The town pretty much cowed by the sheriff and his deputies.
It would have made a good movie, exactly the sort of thing from that period. With Mickey Spillane’s touch of rough action in the mix. I can see Wayne in the role. Mr. Collins even invites the reader to picture the Duke, or any other western star, as you speed through the pages. I did, reading it in just a few hours.
I under stand it’s the first of several Caleb York novels. Not sure whether Spillane left some ideas in his notes or that Collins will be the idea man. Either way will be fine with me.
The black man’s role in the old west has always fascinated me. It’s received short shrift in history, though western fiction has been a bit more honest in portrayals.
Cole Winters, one of the first African-American lawman of the Old West, is the hero of this book. Raised by Native Americans, Winters was hired by the U.S. Marshals Service to track down and bring back outlaws in the Indian Territories.
Winters, when his gun fighter brother, Joseph Two Guns, late of the Buffalo Bill show, becomes wanted for a crime he did not commit, merely defending himself, Winters does what only he can do. He hunts him down. To save his life.
Course Winters has a price on his head from killing the murderers of his wife and son. She was Joseph Two Guns’ sister. The man he killed was a rich man’s son. He’s being pursued even as he’s trying to get Joseph to safety.
Not to mention Jessie, the young woman trying to get home and rescue little sister from an indifferent father.
Together the trio has a lot to deal with to get things done.
U.S. Marshal Gideon Miles has always had more problems carrying out his duties than most marshals. You see, Miles is black and in 1885, the war and the reasons for it still weigh heavily on people’s minds.
So when on the trail of a gang of bank robbers and their fifteen grand haul, he finds himself caught in an ambush in Hell Town, Wyoming. No local law and the majority as crooked as those he pursues, the few honest are unwilling to aid a “black man” arresting whites.
Short of ammunition and surrounded, Miles must think, use his head, to get out of this mess.
I’m a fan of Grainger’s(David Cranmer in disguise) writing. Always delivers interesting stories in this series of Miles and his sometimes partner Cash Laramie.
From 1942, APACHE TRAIL stars Lloyd Nolan and William Lundigan as brothers “Trigger Bill” and Tom Folliard, two men on opposite sides of the law. Trigger Bill takes after their father, always out for the easy score, and Tom is more like their mother, easy going, basically honest. The film is based on a short story, Stage Station by Ernest Haycox.
Trigger Bill’s attempts to toughen his brother up results in Tom spending three months in jail after he’s bullied into a stage robbery attempt. He doesn’t flee like his brother and the others when the law jumps them. He’s finally released after three months in jail by a circuit judge that never even gets out of the stage, citing “consorting with known criminals” as the charge.
Tom can’t get his old job as shotgun guard back, but the Wells Fargo man believes in Tom and offers him a job as station master right in the middle of Apache territory. It’s about to be closed down because of the danger and finding someone willing to run it. Tom knows everyone from his former job and all finally agree to stay on.
Donna Reed plays Rosalie Martinez, the “almost eighteen” daughter of the station’s cook, who’s always had a thing for Tom.
A stage, with a strong box of money and passengers, pulls in shortly, just ahead of an Apache war party, soon followed by a cavalry officer. Someone has stirred the Apache up. and not too much later, Trigger Bill shows up. Tom is immediately suspicious, with that strong box of money on hand. He takes his brother’s guns, not willing to send him back out.
The next morning an arrow is shot into the stage and Tom decides to sneak out and do some scouting. The strong box is locked up and he tells his men to keep an eye on Trigger Bill. The cavalry officer leaves as well, heading to a nearby fort with plans to send help. Tom spots an Apache party with a white prisoner who he frees with a bit of guile. On the way back, he hears a tale of a white man, adopted into the tribe, then slaughtering a number of Apache and taking a peace pipe. Geronimo and his people are looking for him. Getting back to the station, he’s just in time to catch Trigger Bill trying to flee with the strong box and one of the women. In the gunfight, Tom outdraws brother, putting a bullet through each hand.
They find the peace pipe on him and learn the truth.
Then they settle in for a long battle with the Apache. After a lull, one Apache approaches and tells them they want the “white Apache.” No more deaths are necessary. It comes down to a vote, using domino tiles, white dots up to save him, black side up to send Trigger Bill out of the walled station. The deciding vote comes down to Tom and Trigger Bill calls him a fool for voting save. “I’d have sent you out there to save my skin!”
We learn different though, with both men showing a brotherly love that neither probably would have believed even just a few days before. Interesting film. I enjoyed Nolan in the Mike Shayne movies from that same period. I’d never seen him in anything from his younger years, always playing character roles in films I had seen previously.
A number of those faces one sees in movies without knowing names pepper the rest of the cast. The only one I could name was Chill Wills.
Richard Prosch brings us another adventure of John Coburn, The Peregrine, a man with a reputation in 1889.
He’s hired on to bring Tie-Down Sam Gustoffson to trial as a witness against his cousin Willy for the slaughter of a whole family. What Coburn doesn’t know is the sheriff of the small town they’s stopped off in for the night to get something to eat and Coburn to visit a lady friend was also another cousin of the same family. And he was incensed that one family member would rat out another.
Therefor Sam had to die.
Not to mention The Peregrine.
Another welcome addition to Richard’s growing body of work. Most excellent. Available HERE.
A story of a family estranged from each other. Silas Smith had fought for the North in the war. His Southern father-in-law, a hidebound old Rebel, had poisoned his wife and young sons minds against him so that, after years away, they hated him.
Silas walked away and had seen none of them for a dozen years. In that interim, he’d become a lawman in a small Nebraska town.
Then his mother-in-law came to see him. His wife was dead, his father-in-law had committed suicide, two of her other sons were gone. All that was left were her, her youngest and weakest son, and his two sons. She wanted them to reconnect and extracted a promise from Silas to give it a try.
This is the story of he halting steps each side takes to do that, especially when their lives depend on each other.
Another fine western from an excellent writer. Can be ordered HERE.
REDEMPTION: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer will be running as a promotional before the sequel, MOLLY LEE, comes out. The book will be priced at .99 cents.
Texas panhandle. Based in the town of Academy, he had only one deputy. The pair were the only law in the whole county.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
