The Dark Brand

by H.A. DeRosso

When Driscoll is imprisoned for rustling, his fellow inmate divulges that he had robbed a bank and hidden the money but neglects to tell Driscoll where the money is before he is hanged, and the local townsfolk believe that Driscoll knows where the money is, and soon Driscoll find himself running for his life. Original.

Genres: Westerns

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

About the author

H(enry) A(ndrew) DeRosso was born on July 15, 1917 in Carey, Wisconsin. This area, in the northeast corner of the state near the Michigan border, is rich in its own pioneer history. Carey and its neighboring community of Hurley in which DeRosso made his home for many years were once rough-and-tumble iron-ore mining towns not unlike the gold, silver, and copper camps of the Far West frontier. This rural milieu, with its harsh winters and its proximity to the vast North Woods, may explain DeRosso's early interest in adventure and Western fiction and his lifelong fascination with the southwestern desert country, a wildness and a climate exactly opposite of the one in which he lived. He began producing Western short stories while a high-school student, making his first professional sale to Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine in 1941. Health problems kept him out of military service during World War II, and and thus he was able to continue writing on a daily basis and to begin piling up sales to Western Story and other pulps during this period, supplementing his income with farm work and as a mail carrier. By the end of the war he had established himself to the point where he was able to devote his full time to writing. Nearly all his tales are set in the stark, desolate wastes of the Southwest. In the decades between 1940 and 1960 he published approximately two hundred Western short stories and short novels in various pulp magazines that became known for their dark and compelling visions of the night side of life and their austere realism. He was also the author of six Western novels, perhaps the most notable of which are .44 (1953) and End of the Gun (1955). He died on October 14, 1960.

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This taut, well-written Western follows the usual genre formula of hard landscapes and harder men. I liked the muscular prose style and the brisk pace. The ending is satisfying. It reminds me of Elmore Leonard's Westerns before he went into writing crime novels. I could see Randolph Scott playing the cowboy lead in this Western. Recommended for genre fans.

[BMK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as The Gun Trail but still pretty damn good.

[Van Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

H.A. DeRosso's western novel THE DARK BRAND (1963) reminded me a lot of Davis Grubb's West Virginia noir classic THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. In DARK BRAND, our hero Dave Driscoll is a cattle rustler who is captured by a villainous lawman named Longstreet. Longstreet loves to torture his inmates to find out what he can, but Driscoll refuses to tell him anything. Later, despite his oath to Longstreet that he rustled cattle all by himself, he had conspirators. Meantime, he is thrown into Longstreet's cell, and eventually he received a three-year prison sentence. No sooner is our hero locked up than he meets another inmate named Tenant, a cattleman who robbed a bank because he desperately needed money that he had no way of ever getting. When he robbed the bank, Tenant killed a cashier. The judge sentences Tenant to swing. The night before the hanging, Dave meets Tenant, and they share tobacco. When Tenant's wife and young son show up to see him, Tenant has worked out a story to tell his son. Instead of Tenant getting hanged, Tenant and Driscoll have decided to tell Tenant's son that Driscoll will swing. Three years later, Driscoll shows up in Santa Loma, and people recognize him. Longstreet decides that Driscoll had all along known where the $10-thousand dollars that Tenant had stolen was hid, and he wants Driscoll to cough up the location. Longstreet isn't the only man gunning for our hero. One of Driscoll's old cronies is on his trail, too. Driscoll searches for Tenant's wife and son, but when he offers to work for them, the widow sends him packing. About three-quarters of the way through this splendidly written western, he learn that Tenant confided in his son the location of the ill-gotten gains, but he didn't trust his wife. All of this lines up nicely with what happened in THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. The bank robber in HUNTER hid the money that he had robbed from a bank, and the little boy is extremely reluctant to reveal the whereabouts of the loot. The maddening thing about THE DARK BRAND is that every time Driscoll lowers his guard, Longstreet or another villain gets the drop on him. There are several surprises in this western for our hero, and he is never given an easy way out.

[Tim Deforest · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read a review (I think in Paperback Warrior) that the plot of this book could have been transfered from the Wild West to a modern city without changing anything significant--it's very much a hard-boiled crime novel.

It does work quite well as a Western (Westerns and hard-boiled crime stories are at least first cousins anyways), but that remark is true. This is a very hard-boiled tale.

The protagonist is Driscoll, who begins the novel in jail for rustling. His cell mate is a man about to hang after killing a man during a bank robbery. Driscoll finds himself feeling deep sympathy for the man's wife and young son.

The cell mate hangs and Driscoll does his time in prison. When he gets out, he wants to go straight and returns to the town he'd been jailed in with a desire to see if he can help the widow and son. But his return makes many people (including the corrupt sheriff) think Driscoll was told where the never-recovered bank loot is hidden. Soon, he's dodging bullets and--at one point--is staked out on the ground to be tortured into revealing something he really doesn't know.

He also has a hard time getting the widow to trust him, leaving him with no reason to stick around. But he's stubborn, deciding to help her whether she wants him to or not.

There are some killer plot twists involving the motivations of several characters and a tense climax as Driscoll has a final stand-off with the corrupt sheriff.

[Van Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Night of the Hunter Goes West

Whether he realized it or not, H.A. DeRosso’s western THE DARK BRAND shares some plot similarities with Davis Grubbs classic noir novel THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Nevertheless, this tidy little horse opera generates a lot of suspense and violence. The hero Dave Driscoll is a very sympathetic protagonist, while the slimy Sheriff Longstreet is a sadist. Plenty of surprises.