"Iron Men and Silver Stars" edited by Donald Hamilton (Gold Medal, 1967)

Donald Hamilton’s 1967 Gold Medal anthology Iron Men and Silver Stars collects 11 short stories and 1 essay from members of the Western Writers of America. It is a diverse collection, some stories leaning more towards action, others towards drama, and even the occasional comedy. Many were new stories for the collection, though a few were reprints, like Todhunter Ballard’s “The Mayor of Strawberry Hill,” from The Saturday Evening Post. Ballard’s story was actually one of the few that I couldn’t get into – it’s about a judge whose hasty and ill-thought decisions cause a town to run amuck. I could see there was supposed to be humor, but it missed me, and I couldn’t latch on to any of the characters.

Hamilton himself provides two of the best pieces. “The Great Tradition” is an essay that originally appeared in The Roundup, the WWA newsletter, in praise of Western writers like Zane Grey who captured his imagination as a reader, and who wrote damned good entertainment. It’s an essay that champions storytelling and imagination and unpretentious writing. Here is how it opens:

“They are trying to tear down Zane Grey. Little men with dry and scholarly minds who never followed the U.P. trail or rode with the riders of the purple sage by the light of the western stars are pursing their thin lips and saying that fifty-four millions copies are all very well, but it just proves you-know-what about the pubic taste, and after all, the man couldn’t write.”

Hamilton’s other contribution is the short story “The Guns of William Longley,” about a young gunfighter who returns home to find his intended has chosen a new man. When he steps out into the street for a duel, he feels that his guns are haunted by the ghost of their former owner, the notorious William Longley. It’s a terrific story in the vein of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” that has a lot to do with the creation of Western myths and legends.

Another standout story was Luke Short’s novelette “The Hangman,” about a deputy marshal on the hunt for a bank robber. When the deputy pays an ex-girlfriend to single out the wanted man, he wonders whether the money will overcome her love for the outlaw. At the heart of the story is the complex moral code of the Old West, how the distinction between good and bad was never a clear line, and about the ethical vagaries when it came to standing up for the law and standing up for what is right. Many Western stories touch on these themes, but when done right they still resonate, and Luke Short does a terrific job. I also really enjoyed “Peace Officer” by Brian Garfield, about a jaded, one-armed sheriff who gets one last shot at redemption.

Perhaps my favorite story was from an author I had never heard of before, Carter Travis Young, called “Green Wounds.” It’s a suspense story about a mysterious young man who starts a conversation with the local sheriff but who knows a few more things about the sheriff’s shady past than he should. Introducing readers to new writers is one of the jobs of a good anthology, so I think that editor Donald Hamilton fulfilled his duty. Apparently Carter Travis Young also wrote a full-length novel for Gold Medal called Shadow of a Gun. I will try and track it down.

I should also mention the unique artwork by Stan Galli on the cover. I love this sketch of a sheriff – I don’t recall see many sketches on the covers of Gold Medal books, mainly just paintings.

Here are the full contents of the anthology:

“The Great Tradition” by Donald Hamilton
“Green Wounds” by Carter Travis Young
“Epitaph” by Tom W. Blackburn
“In the Line of Duty” by Elmer Kelton
“Peace Officer” by Brian Garfield
“The Mayor of Strawberry Hill” by Todhunter Ballard
“Lawmen Stand Alone” by Lin Searles
“Coward's Canyon” by John Prescott
“The O'Keefe Luck” by Wayne D. Overholser
“The Hangman” by Luke Short
“Lynch Mob at Cimarron Crossing” by Thomas Thompson
“The Guns of William Longley” by Donald Hamilton

And a couple of quotes that I liked:

“The years had reduced John Morgan to a kind of bookmark, which only marked the place where a great lawman had been.” – “Peace Officer,” by Brian Garfield

“Killing had been the natural way of the times. A man did not survive without killing. Now, according to Dave, a man did not survive if he killed.” – “The O’Keefe Luck,” by Wayne D. Overholser

"Texas Fever" by Donald Hamilton (Gold Medal, 1960)

Donald Hamilton is best known for his series character Matt Helm, a government secret agent that would ultimately appear in print in 27 books, all published under the Gold Medal imprint. (A 28th was written but, as of now, remains unpublished.) In 1960, the same year that that Hamilton christened Matt Helm with Death of a Citizen, he also published a Western novel for Gold Medal that seems to have fallen off the radar since its publication: Texas Fever. An unjustly overlooked part of Hamilton’s bibliography, it is first-class entertainment written with absorbing characters and a zestful plot.

Texas Fever is about Chuck McAuliffe, a young man on a cattle drive with his brother, Dave, and their father, Jesse. They plan on taking the cattle into Kansas and selling them for a hefty profit – that is, if they can avoid the rustlers and slip past The Quarantine, which is set on keeping Texas longhorns out of Kansas for fear of spreading disease. Along the trail they meet up with Amanda Netherton and her Papa who was badly wounded in a skirmish with some bushwhackers. Chuck is immediately taken by Amanda’s beauty, but Jesse has his own lingering suspicions about the duo and their intentions.

Western book reviewer Nelson Nye gave Texas Fever a short but positive mention in The New York Times when it was first released. He wrote that, “This story is well told....and it's a corker, gents, done up in full color.”

Hamilton writes the story with a close third-person, and he does a great job capturing the mindset of his main character, the angry young man Chuck McAuliffe. Too young to fight alongside his father and brother in the Civil War, Chuck was left behind to single-handedly take care of the house, the ranch, and his mother. When the war ended, an unspoken gulf separated the men in the family – neither could appreciate the sacrifices and grief the other went through. This family history becomes a strong current running throughout Texas Fever.

At times, the novel seems like a coming of age story, at others a revenge saga, and at others a rousing adventure yarn set on the fabled cattle trails leading north from Texas to Abilene. Hamilton writes with a combination of energy and lyricism – there’s a driving force behind his plot, but also a patience and care for his characters and their development. I like what Hamilton was doing with the Western genre and I’m looking forward to reading his other Gold Medal Westerns, which include Smoky Valley, the anthology Iron Men and Silver Stars (review coming soon), and reprints of the Dell books Mad River and The Two-Shoot Gun (originally called The Man From Santa Clara).

Some of Donald Hamilton’s wisdom from the book:

“Just remember one thing…when you’re young you bleed easily, but you heal quickly.”

“When a man who's been successful all his life suddenly finds everything going bad that he sets his hand to…Well, after a while, I reckon, something kind of snaps inside him.”

“First I will contemplate the fact that small oblivion can be found in large bottles, and large oblivion in small ones. There must be a philosophical truth involved, somewhere.”