Books: Heroes Ride On Forever

THE MAVERICK QUEEN (246 pp.)—Zane Grey—Harper ($2.50).

“Gun” Haskel, killer for hire, was a mighty surprised man. He had been paid to ride up to South Pass, Wyo. and plug a troublesome cowboy named Lincoln Bradway. But when the two men drew and fired, Gunman Haskel “uttered a loud yell of pain and dismay . . . Clapping his hands to his big paunch he sank to his knees, swayed and slowly collapsed a few yards from the sidewalk.”

Firmly fixed among the few comfortable absolutes of the 20th Century are such situations, all grown from the plots and protagonists of Zane Grey’s novels. For some’ 45 years Author Grey has been demonstrating that yellow-bellied villains die violently and that silent, clean-livin’ cowboy heroes ride on forever with the virtuous western (or reformed eastern) girls of their choice.

Novel No. 51 on Author Grey’s production line, The Maverick Queen, follows traditionally slim, traditionally grey-eyed Nebraska Cowboy Line Bradway on an errand of justice to South Pass, tangles him up with the lady leader (“the Maverick Queen”) of a gang of cattle rustlers whom he suspects of his pard’s murder. Ultimately it thrusts him into the arms of the queen’s innocent niece (“blue eyes set wide apart, dark with excitement, red lips, sweet and tragic, a small bare head covered with golden curls”). Before Line and bride can turn “to face the dark patch against the distant hills which marked the valley that one day would be their home,” straight-shootin’ Line calls the bluff of just about every shifty-eyed little skunk in South Pass.

With the appearance of Author Grey’s eighth novel since his death in 1939, the mystery of where all the new books are coming from will puzzle many readers more than the maverick queen’s bloody secret. Mrs. Zane Grey’s answer: her in defatigable husband, who sometimes polished off a novel in two or three months of fast scribbling, was 15 to 20 manuscripts ahead of Harper’s schedule. That could well mean another decade of easy readin’ and hard ridin’ before Zane Grey’s zealous fans reach the end of the trail.

*At 64, of a heart attack. Sportsman Grey kept a swivel, deep-sea fishing chair on the upstairs porch of his Altadena, Calif, home. His daily practice with a weighted rod proved too great a strain on his heart.