Lone Rider from Texas: Western Stories (Five Star Western)

This is a seven-story anthology from the years 1936-9, all of its entries originally published in the specialized "pulp" magazines of the day, including the third ("Lawman of Latigo Wells") of Dawson's to see print. Like all Dawson's fiction, they exude a feel for the country and the people that is rarely matched by Western writers of today, and offer headlong action and good, tight plotting. Perhaps the best of the lot is "This One Good Eye," in which an outlaw who left his young son to be reared by a friend many years ago learns that the young man has become a sheriff and run afoul of a long-time foe of the father's. His response is to travel to his son's town and get himself hired on as a deputy. (Not a few "badmen" did turn "good" and become famous upholders of the law.) In the title story, as in many of Dawson's, a man accused of a crime he didn't commit sets out to prove his innocence; "Bushwhack Heritage" turns on a son's bitter feelings toward his father combined with his curious reluctance to accuse the man of a murder he's sure his parent committed. The remainder of the collection is similar--good action stories with strong, lone heroes facing big odds. Readers of traditional Westerns should enjoy them, and teens just learning their way around the genre can read them without any concern on their parents' part that they may read something they shouldn't.