Ghost Brand of the Wishbones

These three short novels were originally published in "the pulps," 1939-41, and like all pulp stories they have their share of action, but like all Dawson stories they also offer more-than-ordinarily complex plots, wonderful description (especially of the land), and characters who, while they're perhaps not fully developed, aren't cardboard cliches either. In "Hell's Half Acre," small rancher Ed January is being pressured, as are his counterparts, to sell out to either a big sheep-raising concern or their largest cattleman neighbor. Ed doesn't propose to do either. Framed for the murder of another small-scale cowman, and helped only by cowhand Tom Gault and the daughter of an old prospector friend, he discovers a conspiracy and brings the truth to light. "Sagerock Sheriff" centers on veteran lawman Tom Platt, who is convinced that the prisoner in his jail, though tried and convicted, didn't kill the brother of the girl he loved, and sets out to prove it; he too discovers a conspiracy (if only of one). And in the title piece, Bill North, with his 500-odd cattle boldly rustled off the very train that was taking them to market, follows them to a rich mountain basin nearly ruined by the feud between its two biggest cowmen. Each of these stories has a twist or two, and each includes the Glidden brothers' (Dawson's real name) trademarks of strong, loyal, levelheaded women and evocative pictures of the Western countryside. Though Dawson, like his brother Luke Short, really found his voice in full-length novels, these shorter ones are far from a bad introduction to his work.