Rattlesnake Mesa

by Peter Dawson

Book Overview

A DEADLY WARNING Luke Barron, riding at night beyond Rattlesnake Mesa on his way to the Eagle Ca on mining camp, sees an old woman cutting down a body hanging from a tree. A sign is attached to the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843951176
• ISBN13: 9780843951172
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 3.9" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

A tangled web

Never before published in paperback, this is apparently one of Dawson's earliest efforts at writing a full-length novel (it was serialized in a pulp magazine in 1940). Transitioning from short stories and novellas, he produced something I found oddly unsatisfying, yet his future greatness does shine through in spots. Perhaps his problem is that he tried too hard for a complex plot. At the heart of the novel is the Temple of the Redeemed, a prohibitionist sect led by the fanatical Dr. Royal Logan and the former Catholic priest Father Matthew, which virtually owns the mining camp of Eagle Canyon and has managed--thanks to Sheriff Sam Ingalls and his deputies, the Avenging Angels--to keep it peaceful. The only fly in the ointment is a gang of robbers said to be led by Luke Barron (though no one has ever seen him), which has so regularly raided the outgoing shipments of gold that the miners no longer dare to send their dust out. Then Luke Barron himself--a one-time Colorado prospector who was driven off his claim and onto the outlaw trail 10 years ago by a crooked syndicate--arrives in the district to find that someone is misusing his name. At first he plans to make a big raid of his own--enough to get out of the outlaw business forever--but he soon finds himself caught up in the troubles of the miners and the doubts of some of the Redeemed, including Father Matthew himself. Dawson has imagined a Christian sect that could almost seamlessly be inserted into the current fundamentalist culture, and so skilfully interweaves the various threads of its membership--Logan, who genuinely believes in what he preaches; Father Matthew, who has his doubts; and Ingalls, who's using everyone--that at first it's hard to figure out who's genuine and who isn't. His protagonist, though an outlaw, is neither vicious nor a killer, and in fact is a better man than those hiding behind his name, even though at first he doesn't understand why he's changing his mind about his plans. The lesser characters, including the Chinese Lee Hop and the black liveryman Timothy Kamu, are also well-drawn, though the villains tend somewhat to the one-dimensional. While not by any means his best, this novel does hint at the skill he later developed, and for that reason alone is worth a fan's look.