After an all-too-brief sampling of sports and war stories, The Pulps delivers a larger collection of of westerns. As is proper, it opens with a big name, Max Brand, whom editor Tony Goodstone credits for the western genre’s transition from more realistic to more fantastic, larger-than-life stories. Brand (real name Frederick Faust) is one of those curious writers who disdain their own careers, wanting recognition for “serious” literary work but instead finding success in popular fiction. Brand wanted to be a poet but was instead a successful, prolific, and popular author of cowboy adventures.
“The Ghost” is an early example of Brand’s work, published in 1919 in All-Story Weekly and again in Adventure in 1929. According to Goodstone, Brand was a great lover of classical mythology and based the story’s titular antihero on the god Pan, though I admit I would not have guessed that without Goodstone’s guidance. The “Ghost” is a brilliant thief plaguing a gold-rush town. Although he never kills his victims, he robs them blind and then disappears into a box canyon. The townsmen hire Silver Pete, a gunslinger with a shady past, to track the Ghost to his lair.
Playfulness and trickery follows, with the Ghost finding devious means to get the upper hand. Most remarkable about his character, and causing the reader to root for him despite his thievery, is his insistence on never taking a life. This is particularly notable because the story takes place in a setting where authors usually depict life as cheap. Though the story’s resolution is enjoyable, it is marred by its requirement that one of the major characters carry the idiot ball.
The story certainly illustrates Goodstone’s claim that Brand heralded a transition from realistic to mythical western adventures. The setting is nowhere in particular, and the characters and events have a markedly unreal quality to them. Brand had not yet personally visited the West when he wrote this story, and he does not appear even slightly interested in verisimilitude or realistic details.
