THE HAWKS OF NOON

This attempts to be a big, many-charactered Western, but while its main plot situation has epic simplicity, its people are paper-thin. The son of an Apache chief is murdered and robbed of $5,000 in gold coin while he is transporting it to his village. Their treaty broken, the Apaches go on the warpath against the whites. A band of whites are trapped for 24 hours in a relay station, during which time their backgrounds are revealed while they resist the Indians. The coincidences which have drawn them together, however, strain credulity. Dix Reardon, for one, has been trailed there by Sheriff Ames and two deputies because Dix was standing over the murdered Indian. Actually, Dix himself had just come upon the real murderer and started to ride after him. There is a gamut of types on hand for every reader to identify from an orphan boy to a grizzled old stagecoach driver, and they are all straight out of TVland.