The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley; Or, Diamond X and the Poison Mystery

By Willard F. Baker

"The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley" is a children's Western novel by author Willard F. Baker. Part of "The Boy Ranchers" series, it follows the exploits of young cowboy-cum-detective in the American Old West. An exciting story of mystery and daring-do, "The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley" would make for perfect bedtime reading and is not to be missed by collectors of classic Western fiction. Other novels by this author include: "Bob Dexter And The Beacon Beach Mystery" (1925), "Bob Dexter And The Aeroplane Mystery" (1930), and "The Boy Ranchers On The Trail" (1921). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the history of Western fiction. This book was first published in 1928.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Classic Western Fiction Library
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473345829

Book preview

THE BOY RANCHERS

IN DEATH VALLEY

OR

Diamond X and

the Poison Mystery

By

WILLARD F. BAKER

Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from

the British Library

Contents

The History of Western Fiction

CHAPTER I - BAD NEWS

CHAPTER II - UNDAUNTED BY FEAR

CHAPTER III - ON THE TRAIL

CHAPTER IV - A NIGHT ALARM

CHAPTER V - THE WARNING

CHAPTER VI - AT DOT AND DASH

CHAPTER VII - SAM TARBELL’S STORY

CHAPTER VIII - THE ROUND-UP

CHAPTER IX - THE QUEER OLD MAN

CHAPTER X - DEAD CATTLE

CHAPTER XI - INTO SMUGGLERS’ GLEN

CHAPTER XII - THE ELIXER CAVE

CHAPTER XIII - FRIGHTENED HORSES

CHAPTER XIV - BUD DISAPPEARS

CHAPTER XV - THE SEARCH

CHAPTER XVI - BUD’S STRANGE TALE

CHAPTER XVII - THE AVENGERS

CHAPTER XVIII - DRIVEN BACK

CHAPTER XIX - GAS MASKS

CHAPTER XX - GLITTERING YELLOW

CHAPTER XXI - FALSE SECURITY

CHAPTER XXII - TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER XXIII - TESTING THE GOLD MINE

CHAPTER XXIV - A STRANGE DISCOVERY

CHAPTER XXV - THE END OF DEATH VALLEY

The History of Western Fiction

Western fiction is a genre which focuses on life in the American Old West. It was popularised through novels, films, magazines, radio, and television and included many staple characters, such as the cowboy, the gunslinger, the outlaw, the lawman and the damsel in distress. The genre’s popularity peaked in the early twentieth century due to dime novels and Hollywood adaptations of Western tales, such as The Virginian, The Great Moon Rider and The Great K.A. Train Robbery. Western novels remained popular through the 1960s, however readership began to dwindle during the 1970s.

The term the American Old West (the Wild West) usually refers to the land west of the Mississippi River and the Frontier between the settled and civilised and the open, lawless lands that resulted as the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean. This area was largely unknown and little populated until the period between the 1860s and the 1890s when, after the American Civil War, settlement and the frontier moved west.

The Western novel was a relatively new genre which developed from the adventure and exploration novels that had appeared before it. Two predecessors of popular Western fiction writers were Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clarke (1770-1838). Both men were explorers and were the first to make travel and the frontier a central theme of their work. Perhaps the most popular predecessor of Western fiction was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). His west was idealised and romantic and his popular Leatherstockings series depicted the fight between the citizens of the frontier and the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. His titles included: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). His tales were often set on the American frontier, then in the Appalachian Mountains and in the land to the west of that. His protagonists lived off the land, were loyal, free, skilled with weapons, and avoided civilised society as best they could. His most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans, also idealised the Native American.

During the 1860s and 1870s, a new generation of Western writers appeared, such as Mark Twain (1835-1910) Roughing It (1872) and Bret Harte (1836-1902) The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868). Both writers had spent time living in the west and continued to promote its appeal through their literature. Harte is often credited with developing many of the cult Western’s stock characters, such as the honest and beautiful dance hall girl, the suave conman and the honourable outlaw. These characters went on to be firm favourites in popular, mass produced Western fiction. At the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of people were undergoing the treacherous journey to the west to make a new life for themselves and the fictional stories and legends of heroes and villains who had survived in this wild landscape captured the imagination of the public.

Western novels became popular in England and throughout America through ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ and Dime Novels. These appeared in the late 1800s and were texts that could be bought cheaply (for either a penny or a dime – ten cents) as they were often cheaply printed on a large scale by publishers such as Irwin P. Beadle. Malaeska; the Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) by Ann S Stephens (1810-1886) is considered by many critics to be the first dime novel. These sensationalist dime and penny novels capitalised on stories of outlaws, lawmen, cowboys, and mountain men taming the western frontier. Many were fictional, but some were based on real heroes of the west such as Buffalo Bill (the scout, bison hunter and performer), Jesse James (the American outlaw, robber, gang leader and murderer) and Billy the Kid (the American gunfighter). By 1877, these Western characters were a recurring feature of the dime novel. The hero was often a man of action who saved damsels in distress and righted the wrongs of the villains that he faced. For this hero, honour was the most important thing and it was something that the dime heroes never relinquished.

In the 1900s, Pulp magazines helped relay these tales over to Europe where non-Americans also picked up the genre, such as the German writer, Karl May (1842-1912). Pulp magazines were a descendent of the dime novel and their content was largely aimed at a mass market. As their popularity grew, they were able to specialise and there were Pulp magazines devoted specifically to Westerns, such as Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, and Star Western. The popularity for these magazines and for Western films in the 1920s made the genre a popular phenomenon.

The status of the genre in the early twentieth century was also enhanced by particular novels by different writers. One of the most influential Western novels was The Virginians (1902) by Owen Wister (1860-1938) which was considered to be a ground breaking literary Western. Wister dismissed the traditional idea of the solitary pioneer conquering new lands and making a new life for himself, and replaced this traditional character with the cowboy. The cowboy was a mix of cultural ideals, such as southern chivalry, western primitivism and stout independence. These were characteristics that many Americans cherished. Wister contrasted the lawlessness of the West to the order and civilisation of the East. He introduced new characters, such as savages and bandits who attacked the more civilised Eastern characters. His cowboy heroes shared many features with the medieval knights – they rode horses, carried weapons, fought duals and valued their honour above all other attributes. Zane Grey’s (1872-1939) Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was also a popular Western novel. Grey was a prolific writer and wrote over ninety books which helped shape Western fiction. He changed Wister’s cowboy into a gunslinger who was feared by criminals and held in awe by other civilians. Other popular Western writers in this period include Andy Adams (1859-1935) whose titles include The Outlet (1905) and A Texas Matchmaker (1904), Edward S Ellis (1840-1916) who wrote Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier (1860) and The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), and Bertha Muzzy Bower (1871-1940) who wrote Chip of the Flying U (1906) and The Dry Ridge Gang (1935).

The Western hero lived in an environment where climate, natives and the terrain could be his enemies, and it was his job to tame the wilderness around him, but in doing so he determined his own extinction. In bringing forward civilisation and settlement, they brought about their own demise and their reason for existing. Western heroes could only exist on the frontier. Rebels were popular heroes in the Western novel and these heroes were often compassionate to those less fortunate than themselves and fought for the downtrodden. They were loyal, idealistic, independent, and knew the difference between right and wrong. They fought for the good and made personal sacrifices in order that good would triumph. The hostile setting of the Wild West transformed the characters into survivors as they were forced to alter themselves in order to live in this new setting. The Old Wild West captured the attention of many as it exemplified the spirit of freedom, individualism, adventure and unspoiled nature. It depicted a world that was separate from organised, urban society and showed the life of the wilderness, frontier and its inhabitants. The Western romanticised American history and the treacherous, mysterious and otherworldly Old West.

CHAPTER I

BAD NEWS

Excited shouts, mingled with laughter, floated on the sunlit and dust-laden air to the ranch house of Diamond X. Now and then, above the yells, could be heard the thudding of the feet of running horses on the dry ground.

What do you reckon those boys are doing, Ma? asked Nell Merkel as she paused in the act of laying the top crust on a raisin pie.

Land knows, answered the girl’s mother with half a sigh and half a chuckle. They’re always up to something. And, now that your Pa is away——

Mrs. Merkel’s remarks were interrupted by louder shouts from the corral, and Nell heard cries of:

Try it again, Bud!

You missed him clean, that time!

How’d you like that mouthful of dust?

Git up an’ ride ‘im, cowboy!

Like an echo to these sarcastic exclamations, Nell heard the voice of her brother Burton, commonly known as Bud, answer:

I’ll do it yet! Just you wait!

I wonder what Bud’s trying to do? murmured Nell.

Oh, run along and look if you want to, suggested Mrs. Merkel, with a kind regard for Nell’s curiosity. I’ll finish the pie.

Thanks! And Nell, not even pausing to clap a hat over her curls, hastened out into the yard, across the stretch of grass that separated the main house from the other buildings of Diamond X and was soon approaching the corral where were kept the cow ponies needed for immediate use by the owner, his family or the various hands on the big estate.

Nell saw several cowboys perched on the corral fence, some with their legs picturesquely wound around the posts, others astraddle of the rails. Among them she sighted Dick and Nort Shannon, her two city cousins, who had come west to learn to be cowboys. And in passing it may be said that their education was almost completed now.

Why, I wonder where Bud is? asked Nell, as she made her way to the fenced-in place.

A moment later she received an answer to her question, for her brother arose from the dust of the corral and started for the fence. He seemed to have been rolling in the dirt.

That’s a queer way to have fun! mused Nell.

Without making her presence known, she stood off a little way and watched what was going on. She saw Bud mount the fence near where the two Shannon boys were sitting, though hardly able to maintain their seats because of their laughter.

Going to try it again, Bud? asked Dick.

Surest thing you know! snapped back the boy rancher.

Wait till I go in and get you a bit of fly paper! suggested Nort.

Fly paper! What for? demanded Bud.

So you can stick on!

Ho! Ho! That’s pretty good! shouted such a loud voice that Nell would have covered her ears only she knew, from past experience, that Yellin’ Kid did not keep up his strident tones long. But this time he went on, like an announcer at a hog-calling contest, with: Fly paper! Ho! Ho! So Bud can stick! That’s pretty good!

Go ahead! Be nasty! commented Bud good-naturedly as he climbed up the top rail and perched himself there in standing position while he looked over the dusty corral that was now a conglomeration of restless cow ponies. But I’ll do it yet!

I wonder what in the world Bud is trying to do? asked Nell of herself.

She learned a moment later. For Bud, after balancing himself on the top rail, looked across the corral to where Old Billee Dobb was holding a restless pony, and the lad called:

Turn him loose, Billee!

Here he comes! All a-lather! shouted the veteran cow puncher, as he slapped his hat on the flank of the pony and sent it galloping around the inside fence toward the waiting youth. It’s now or never, Bud!

It’s going to be now! shouted Nell’s brother.

Fascinated, as any true girl of the west would be, by the spirited scene, Nell saw Bud poise himself for a leap. Then she understood what was about to take place.

He’s going to jump from the top rail of the fence and try to land on the back of the pony when it gallops past him! murmured Nell. Regular circus trick that is! I wonder if he can do it? But from the looks of him I should say he’d already fallen two or three times. Billee gave him a fast one this round.

Nell referred to the horse. And it was characteristic of her that she was not in the least afraid of what might be the consequences of her brother attempting the aforesaid circus trick. Nell was as eager to see what would happen, as were any of the cowboys perched on the corral fence, and in furtherance of her desire she drew nearer.

By this time the pony, started on its way by the slapping from Billee Dobb’s hat, was