Devil’s Gulch is our forthcoming Weird Western anthology, and to make it even more fun, a shared world. Edited by G. W. Thomas, it has a cover and four illustrations by M. D. Jackson. As you will see in this post, the idea of telling ghost stories in the Old West is not new, but it does require a certain balance between Western setting and chills and thrills. The mix doesn’t always get the applause you might think. (More on that below.) This collection has four novellas, including “The Ghost Gun”, a 25,000 worder with Deputy Sheriff Brett Hope who had appeared in four tales in Strange Adventures. Hope is back in the deputy role in the town of Devil’s Gulch, a place where the unusual is always lurking just out of sight. He acquires the ghost gun, an eldritch weapon that actually uses monsters for bullets. You follow him as he acquires the necessary ammunition to face a terrible black stranger who comes to claim all of Devil’s Gulch.
Otis Adelbert Kline will always be a hallowed member of the Weird Tales writers’ circle. He began as a sub-editor under Edwin Baird, the first editor. He penned the famous “Why Weird Tales?” editorial for the final Baird issue in May/June/July 1924. Kline was also a good friend of Farnsworth Wright’s, the second and legendary editor. Kline, Wright, E. Hoffman Price and Bill Sprenger, WT’s business manager, partied together, drinking wine, eating exotic foods and admiring Price’s rare Persian rugs. Even though Kline is best remembered for his Edgar Rice Burroughs space clones and jungle lords over at Argosy, he was equally a part of Weird Tales history. Later, when he became a literary agent, he shopped work from WT writers like Robert E. Howard.
“The Demon of Tlaxpam” (Weird Tales, January 1929) begins with Two-Gun Bart Leslie “The Demon-Killer”, of the U. S. Secret Service going to Mexico to speak with Hernandez. The man wants Bart to deal with a demon that cuts off people’s heads then leaves their headless bodies behind. Leslie gets permission from his government and decides to go immediately. He and Hernandez travel by train then car to Tlaxpam, the town near the haunted woods where the demon is supposed to live. Bart knows his arrival is known by certain people when a man tries to cut off his head with a machete outside his hotel room. Bart takes him out with a chair.
Bart, Hernandez and a gang of men go out to the location of the killings. There they meet an old hermit or anciano named Tio Luis who lives in an old church. Guards are killed, even in the pond next to the church, as the men begin to think of deserting. Every man has had his head taken and his body left behind. Bart comes up with a plan where he will have Hernandez lead a horse with a dummy that looks like Leslie. It is usually the last man in a group who gets attacked. Bart will follow above the trail wearing moccasins for stealth. The plan works with some success for he sees the culprit, who appears to be a hunched backed shadow but fails to catch him.
Bart goes back to the church to speak with the anciano and discovers smoke coming from his chimney but no fire in his fireplace. There is a hidden room, which he finds behind a false wall. In the weird chamber dug into the side of the hill, he sees the villain dressed in a Satan outfit. Leslie draws his guns and confronts him. It is Ti Luis, who is not so old and frail. The man explains why he has been cutting off men’s heads and boiling them. He has sworn to gather one hundred heads for his people, the Yaquis who were treated so poorly by the whites. While giving this speech, Ti Luis throws the device that cuts off the heads, a boxy steel trap with blades inside it–over Bart’s head. The cowboy must fend off the blades and can’t draw his guns, which he holstered. There is a brief struggle but Leslie throws off the head-cutter and captures the bad guy. Mystery solved and no real monster need apply.
The ending of this tale really smells of the Shudder Pulp market, which I suspect Kline was originally writing for. Magazines like Terror Tales and Dime Mystery paid three cents a word on acceptance instead of Weird Tales‘ half-a-cent on publication. The Western elements may have been included to add a new spice that editors may have rejected. Either way, the story ended up with Farnsworth Wright as will a sequel seven years later. The letter writers in “The Eyrie” failed to make any comment on the story.
“The Cyclops of Xoatl” (Weird Tales, December 1936) was written with E. Hoffman Price. It should be no surprise to see the sequel sporting Price’s name as collaborator. Kline and Hoffman wrote several pieces, many for Weird Tales, together. The plot is almost identical with the prequel, with Hernandez buying a hacienda that turns out to be haunted. Bart is brought in to play “Demon-Killer” again. As before, an attempt is made on Leslie’s life before arriving. Again, he goes to the place where the murders have been taking place. This time the victims have had their throats torn out and all their blood drank. The local peons, on the verge of fleeing, have seen an eleven foot, one-eyed cyclops. Huge footprints also give evidence.
This time around the cast is much larger with the scientist Braunvelt joining the hunt in the hopes of making a scientific discovery. He believes the recent earthquakes have released the monster from underground prison. There is also the housekeeper, the once beautiful Lizeta, now grown old. There is Pacheco, the former owner who suddenly wants to buy the ranch back at double the price. There is the lovely Dona Maria, Hernandez’s sister and Leslie’s love interest.
As before peons are getting eaten left, right and center, and about to run away except Bart’s bravery and perfect shooting raises their spirits. The men hunt for the monster but fail to find its lair, even after it attempts to kidnap Dona Maria. Bart finds a small bundle of flowers tied to the young woman’s hair. He also had someone in his party try to back-shoot him, though it gets passed off as over-excited gunplay. Bart blames Pacheco but finds him dead, his throat torn out.
In the end, Bart and Branvault trail the monster to a cave. About to enter the cave, someone slugs Bart over the head with a gun from behind. The stunned man loses his guns then meets the eleven foot beast in the cave. Only ducking into crevice saves Bart. He find some of the strange flowers in his pocket, placed there after the slug in the head. He throws the catnip like bundle to the creature, who loves it. The monster tries to dig its way into the opening. Leslie takes the batteries from his flashlight, breaks him and throws the corrosive powder into the cyclops’ eye, blinding it like Ulysses in the old story. Making a run for it, he gets his pistols back and shoots the fiend until it dies.
Bart creeps out to find Branvault and Lizeta plotting. Leslie steps out and challenges Branvault to a shootout cowboy style. Lizeta intervenes but Bart still shoots the scientist dead. Branvault’s gun wounds Lizeta. Bart makes it sound like she is dying to get a confession out of her. She admits she had a deal with Branvault. He got the silver mine, recently enriched by the earthquake. She got the hacienda, where she could keep her son safe. The monster proves to be a human being afflicted with terrible birth defects.
I liked the second version of essentially the same story better. The mosnter, while human, was at least a monster, not a guy with a Doc Savage level machine. The Gothic trappings were similar but the pace was faster with more Western gun fights and such. (Not to everyone’s taste as you will see below.) This to me is good Weird Western while the first story was less so.
Unlike “The Demon of Tlaxpam”, which got no mention in “The Eyrie”, the sequel garnered several comments, most not complimentary. There was no third Two-Gun-Bart tale and it isn’t hard to see why. (Though to be honest, Kline-Price had stiff competition in this issue with both Robert E. Howard’s “The Fires of Asshurbanipal” and H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark”, as well as good Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Manly Wade Wellman and Henry Kuttner stories. You got your quarter’s worth that month!)
Richard F. Jamison, of St. Louis, writes: “…The Cyclops of Xoatl was not weird, and neither was it interesting. Two-Gun Bart was the counterpart of many a cheap western film hero. But enough of this; the Lovecraft story alone was worth the price of the issue.”
Bruce Bryan, of Washington D.C., writes: “…The Cyclops of Xoatl was written around a fine idea–but it was written all around it! The hero is too unconvincing and unsympathetic and his exclamations and epithets somehow seemed too picturesque. And in addition, the old Mexican Hernandez turned out to be quite a character. In one paragraph he spoke in broken English or fractured Spanish. But a paragraph or two later he’d be spouting English with the diction of a litterateur.”
Bryan would write three stories for Weird Tales after this story, beginning in 1937. He had written one for Oriental Stories back in 1932. He was an archaeologist and anthropologist who was curator of the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles. Which I guess is my way of saying, his opinion is perhaps better informed than some.
E. M Stubbs, of Detroit, writes: “…The Cyclops of Xoatl would have been much better without Two-Gun Bart. The weirdness of the story was destroyed by too much western flavor.”
Conclusion
The Weird Western is both a new and an old thing. Stories like these two novellas by Otis Adelbert Kline or Manly Banister’s Werewolf Western “Satan’s Bondage” (Weird Tales, September 1942) or the ghostly stories of Lee Winters by Lon Williams are actual Pulp tales that bring a Gothic feel to a Western yarn. The new brand of the Old West Weird comes from writers like Joe R. Lansdale’s The Magic Wagon (1986) which mixed weird fantasy and cowboys in a uniquely different Western. Lansdale and Pat LoBrutto’s 1989 anthology Razored Saddles offers a modern take with far less Pulpiness. While Kline and Banister’s stories appeared in Weird Tales, they feel like Westerns first and Horror second. Newer Weird Westerns don’t have to follow that recipe. The stories in Devil’s Gulch try for an equal balance but I think I can admit they are Horror pieces first in the more modern trend.
And if you think this is all a Pulp magazine thing, think again. The Double Bill Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter/Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) shows us every so often somebody tries it. John Carradine played Dracula for his third of four times in this one. Is there any wonder why Cowboy Horror pics are a long time in coming?
Mythos Horror & Ghostbreakers at RAGE m a c h i n e
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