No Quarter!

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #127

We continue our journey through the may 1927 issue of Frontier Stories with another visit to the Wild West.

"No Quarter" was the first of 6 short stories and one novella by William Crump Rush that would be published in Frontier Stories during 1927 & 1928. That seems to be the entirety of his writing career, at least in the pulps. 

There's nothing special about "No Quarter." It's a fun story to read, but both plot and characters are pretty generic. Crump does do a nice job of introducing us to the main characters--ranch hand Zeno "Zee" Carter and his sidekick Gib Stewart--effectively telling us what we need to know about them in a few short, pithy paragraphs. 

We then learn that the ranch for which they work is threatened by rustlers and their boss's daughter might be in love with one of those outlaws. The rustlers start a prairie fire. Zee and Gib find themselves trapped in a ravine, fighting a Last Stand against the rustlers while defending the girl. There's a last-minute rescue and, of course, we find out the girl actually loves Zee.

It's all good and Crump's pithy style is effective. A discussion that Zee and Gib had about knights in the days of chivalry sort of ties in thematically with their own rescue of the girl. The gun fight at the ravine is short but exciting and well-described. 

But the plot might have been better served had the story been novella-length, with a bit more time to flesh out the characters, bringing them out of the stereotypes they inhabit. Also, we never actually meet the main bad guy (the one the girl was supposed to be in love with). All the villains, in fact, are just faceless Red Shirts. 

So after three fun stories in this issue of Frontier Stories, we hit a snag with a merely "okay" tale. The next story takes us far north to the gold fields. We'll see how that works out. 

Click HERE to read this issue online