REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


WILL JENKINS / MURRAY LEINSTER – Mexican Trail. Alfred H. King, hardcover, 1933. A. L. Burt, hardcover reprint.

   Several years ago on this site I reviewed — panned, rather — a film called Border Devils (Supreme, 1932) and was richly rewarded when Steve unearthed the fact that the Murray Leinster story it was based on was in fact a serial in West magazine “Dead Man’s Shoes,” and was eventually published under his Will Jenkins by-line (given the plot, it’s interesting that this appeared under both names — read on!) as Mexican Trail. It wasn’t hard to unearth a copy and I was soon enjoying a fine read, thanks mostly to Steve.

   The story is a bit rushed at first, with Ranger Pete Gray in search of an elusive Mexican drug-smuggler known only as The General, abruptly drugged, framed for murder, jailed and quickly sprung by his friends Neil Denham and Neil’s wife Ethel. Scant pages later, en route to a rendezvous with his friend to sort all this out, Pete finds Neil’s body trailside, his personal effects replaced by those of a wanted criminal — dry-gulched no doubt by the same ornery varmints what framed Pete.

   Pete decides to ride Neil’s horse into town and look around for anyone trying to pass as Neil, and here the Leinster style kicks in as Pete himself is mistaken for Neil and has to assume his murdered friend’s identity. Just as quickly, he’s launched into the midst of a roiling range war fomented (as usual in westerns of this ilk) by persons unknown trying to create confusion and profit from chaos.

   From this point on, Mexican Trail becomes very enjoyable indeed as Pete/Neil does some canny sleuthing, hard riding and tricky gun-fighting, pitted against a clever and unseen foe, surrounded by cowboys who distrust Neil and suspect Pete — and, as you might expect, by a doughty young range-heiress who loves him no matter who he is.

   Leinster does his usual slick job of juggling identities (the plot teems with characters pretending to be other characters) getting Pete in and out of trouble, and wrapping things up with an epic gun-battle in approved Western Fashion.

   After reading this, I went back and watched Border Devils again, and now that I understood the plot, it seemed like a much better film to me. There’s some clever by-play between Harry Carey and Gabby Hayes, and the whole thing is fast-moving and fairly faithful to Leinster/Jenkins’ book.