For centuries, the Lost Santiago Mine in the Dead Horse Mountains of Texas was one of the great mysteries of the Southwest. Chisos Owens is hired by Anse Hawkman to protect his extensive holdings, and he not only finds the mine, but he also discovers Elgera Douglas, who rides a magnificent Morgan palomino and is known as Senorita Scorpion, the scourge of crooked Texas ranchers. When Owens learns the story of the Douglas family and their quest to protect the Lost Santiago Mine, he joins forces with Senorita Scorpion against Anse Hawkman. But the danger to the Douglas’s and Senorita Scorpion may come from an unforeseen foe…
“Senorita Scorpion” by Les Savage, Jr. exists in an uneasy combination between spicy pulp, masked hero pulp, Westerns, and romance. Written after the cleaning up of Spicy Western Stories into a more presentable Speed Western Stories, Senorita Scorpion was part of an effort to cash in on the absence of Westerns that sizzle. By the standards of a more modest time, at least. The cover art might have been provocative for the time, but the story is standard Western romance between two extremely proud and stubborn leads.
The cover art also shines light on the story. To make a 1940s spicier Western cover, take a normal, action-packed pulp cover, shrink it into the background, and slap a beautiful woman in skintight clothes and/or revealed décolletage prominently in the foreground. And that is what happens, story-wise in “Senorita Scorpion”. The story is Chisos Owens’ two-fisted Texas adventure, with a fiery, spirited heroine draped over it.
Sex sells. And human nature never changes.
Honestly, it helps. Chisos Owens does not quite stand out from pulp heroes or Western heroes. He is a competent lead with little of the flamboyances that set apart the pulp heroes from the crowd—and each other. In many ways, Chisos is closer to one of the agents to the Shadow or Doc Savage—an everyman in service to a greater personage.
But where the Shadow and Doc are firmly in control with set goals and ideals, Senorita Scorpion is out to protect her family’s interest—even if her efforts are somewhat misaimed. She makes for a feminine counterpart to Zorro, just replacing justice with the love for her family. And Senorita Scorpion leaves behind a trail of bodies and stampeded cattle in her wake as she seeks to ruin Anse Hawkman for trying to squeeze her family off their land. As Kipling says, the female of the species is deadlier than the male.
It takes a key discovery by Chisos to aim Senorita Scorpion at the right target, and their combined efforts prove to be more formidable together than either is alone. However at the end, both prove to be too stubborn and proud to leave their lives for each other, despite the magnetic attraction between the two. But “Senorita Scorpion” is the first in a long series of short stories, and Chisos Owens and Elgera Douglas will cross paths again.