Book page: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79595
Before author Erle Stanley Gardner created Perry Mason, he was writing fast, ridiculous, violent pulp stories for Black Mask, and this story is a great example of just how wild his early stuff could get.
Black Barr is an infamous gunfighter dressed head to toe in black, riding a black horse, because apparently subtlety wasn't much of a concern in 1928. He takes the wrong fork in a trail and rides straight into a mess of crooked ranchers, hired killers, stolen land, and a woman trapped in a vicious scheme.
Barr could probably just turn around and continue on his way. But nah, that's not the pulp way. Instead, his solution involves six-shooters, night riding, getting shot, shooting other people, shooting still more people, and generally leaving the town of Caliente Flats with a smaller population than when he arrived.
And then there's Wing Lee, the mysterious stranger who calls himself the Devil's Deputy.
It's decent pulp, but it's very much 1928 pulp. Gardner knows how to keep a story moving. Some pretty good action and fun storytelling. Some of it's aged really badly though. Uses some pretty bad racial stereotypes and slurs that were common in fiction of the period.
Sample of writing style:
A white signboard hung at an angle from a small tree, fastened by a rusty nail, bleached by sun and wind, cracked and checked, and yet it still bore its message “Caliente Flats 10 M.” It was a sign such as is used by the Forestry Service to mark mountain fire trails. Yet the printing was not that of a government stencil. It was crude hand-lettering.
Another mile and a rider approached, coming up the trail, pressing his horse.
I stopped, swung to one side, and waited, hands ready, poised over my pistols. In the mountains of the West, particularly in those communities where the main means of communication are over horseback trails, it is well to be prepared for trouble when one meets another on the trail.
He saw me, scowled, averted his glance and passed in sullen silence. That, of itself, was unusual. The code of the West calls for a brief exchange of courtesies when two riders meet. More, there was a blood-stained bandage on his shoulder, and the blood was a bright scarlet, not the rusty red of dried blood. The man had been wounded, and the wound was bleeding even as he urged his mount up that trail, away from Caliente Flats.
I shrugged my shoulders and rode on.