Montana Ride

by Max Brand

He didn't even have a name. In his own words, he was a tramp. They called him "Kid," "Montana," "Mexico" or "Punch." But manacled in the sheriff's office he wanted to be called Montana, because "it's farther away right now." The one thing Montana did have was a reputation. He said he was only crooked with crooks. The sheriff thinks different, but can't prove it. He lets Montana go, but it isn't long before a local cattle baron's long-lost son shows up to claim his inheritance--looking amazingly like Montana! "Classical Western excitement at its very best by a master of the genre." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1986

About the author

Frederick Schiller Faust (see also Frederick Faust), aka Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evin Evan, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, Lee Bolt, Peter Dawson, Martin Dexter, Dennis Lawson, M.B., Hugh Owen, Nicholas Silver

Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Montana Rides!" follows the adventures of a man with no name, who's called the Montana Kid, or Montana, or The Kid most of the time. He closely resembles the rich Lavery family, whose four-year-old son was kidnapped twenty years earlier, and The Kid agrees to impersonate that son with the help of a distinctive birthmark he gets tattooed on his shoulder. The plan is to get accepted as part of the family and then steal everything he can get his hands on. He's supposed to share his loot with the guys who came up with the plan in the first place. It's a get-rich-quick con game set in the west.

The only hitch is, the Lavery family is awesome. The dad is tough-as-nails but as honest and fair as can be. The mom is fragile, half living in the past as she waits for her stolen son to return. And the daughter is a fantastic mix of beauty, brains, and stubbornness. And while The Kid snarls and snaps his way into their midst, once they accept him, he realizes he can't possibly go through with the swindle because he wants to live up to their expectations, not ruin them. So he smashes their happily reunited family all to bits by telling dad and sister who he really is, then setting off for Mexico, where he's convinced he's seen their actual son. Who has been raised by a notorious and really horrible bandit chief.

The one thing that keeps me from giving this five stars is how the Mexican characters are portrayed. This was first published in 1933, and the casual bigotry of that era is in full view. The Mexican characters are constantly described as cruel, vicious, dirty, mean, foul -- it definitely bothered me. Not enough to keep me from enjoying the book overall, but enough that I wanted to mention that here so future readers are warned about that aspect of its content.

[Ronald · Rating 3 out of 5]

read some time in 1988