The Seven Silver Mountains is a 1964 Allan Vaughan Elston Western/Mystery novel. In 1878, Matt Stacey and his employee Brad Meredith herd fifty mules to the mineral-rich community of Georgetown, Colorado. Stacey is robbed and murdered, and Brad is framed for the crime and narrowly proves reasonable doubt at the preliminary hearing. However, with the case still open, he is confined to a town where almost no one will trusts or will hire him, leaving him to search for odd jobs and fight back against greedy kidnappers while trying to prove his innocence with the help of old friend Bud Savery.
In the meantime, waitress Jennifer Hale has come to town in search of a con man who bankrupted several members of her St. Louis community and disgraced her Unwitting Pawn father over a decade ago, with her suspicions centering on one of the town's leading citizens, banker Matt Garland, and his mysterious Saloon Owner associate Irene Valloy. Jennifer also finds herself being romanced by both Brad and smelter superintendent Vance Rogerson, unaware that Rogerson is the killer who framed Brad and is also seeking to use her to blackmail Garland.
Tropes:
- 11th-Hour Ranger: Deputy Dave Waples plays a crucial role in the climax but takes until over two hundred pages, just a few chapters before the end, to join up with Brad and his sidekick Bud.
- Ambiguously Gay: Louis is one of the best-dressed people in town and it is offhandedly mentioned that he doesn’t seem attracted to women.
- Badass in Distress: As formidable a fighter as Brad is, he spends much of the book as a prisoner of Harry Garland's henchmen.
- Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Done realistically in the last act when Brad shoots a gun out of Lance Rogerson's hand and severs two of his opponent's fingers in the process.
- Chummy Commies: Louis Dupuy is a card-carrying socialist who appreciates the working man more than the local tycoons, although he also lives fairly opulently and is willing to serve fancy luxuries to some (but not all) of the rich people who come to his hotel. He is also one of the only people not to consider Mark Convicted by Public Opinion and provides multiple insightful tips on how to catch the real criminals.
- Convicted by Public Opinion: Even the judge who agrees that there is reasonable doubt toward Brad's guilt at the preliminary hearing does so very reluctantly, and he has to pay his hotel bill in advance and is unable to get a job even mucking stables as people keep making it clear they believe the frame job. Even one employer who thinks Brad probably is innocent still won't hire him because his other employees would quit in protest if he did.
- Crime After Crime: Vance Rogerson embezzles from the smelter's office to speculate on mining stocks, then becomes desperate to replace the money before an audit. He starts swapping shipments of ore from a mine with a rich vein with deposits from a poorly-performing mine he owns once they arrive at the smelter and decides to mug Matt Stacey for his bankroll. He is shocked to realize he hit Stacey too hard and killed him but then cold-bloodedly plants evidence on Brad Meredith to frame him for the crime and goes on to remorselessly kill his assistant at the smelter for uncovering his thefts there.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Matt Garland is an honest, hard-working banker who spends the last act trying to save an innocent man's life, while his brother Harry is a con man turned killer, kidnapper, and hold-up man who is always quick to ruthlessly exploit his brother's softness or concern for the family name.
- Leg Focus: Brad repeatedly thinks of Jennifer's fellow waitress as having a "hippy" physique.
- The Meddling Kids Are Useless: Jennifer is in town pursuing the conman who exploited her father and his friends seven years ago while using the alias Charles Sweet. Brad and Bud help her with this investigation and also conduct another query into who framed Brad for murder and killed mine worker Grady (suspecting Vance Rogerson of both crimes but being unable to prove it). Both cases are solved when Matt Garland confesses to being Sweet's brother and reveals Rogerson thought he was Sweet and tried to blackmail him (with this proven bad character leading to a warrant being issued for Rogerson's arrest). He is partially spurned to do this by his brother nearly killing Brad, but it is implied that he would have reached the breaking point and exposed his exploitative brother sooner or later anyway. Jennifer ending up as one of the "meddling kids" in the trope was even triggered by Garland's ally Irene tipping her off to come to the town to try and scare Sweet away without a scandal. It also turns out that, the day before his murder, Grady mailed his nephew back East a letter about how he had learned Rogerson was a thief and was about to confront him, meaning Rogerson at least would have been exposed no matter what Garland or Brad did. Brad does hunt down and capture all of the villains once they are exposed, but even then he needs some insight from Louis Dupuy (who probably would have told someone else eventually) to figure out where to look for "Sweet" and his companions.
- Not What It Looks Like: After Irene Valloy hires tough Bud Savery (who is fifteen years younger than her) as a bodyguard without being able to explain the extralegal situation where she needs a bodyguard, Bud gets annoyed by the constant snickers from people suspecting she hired him as a gigolo.
- Propping Up Their Patsy: Zigzagged. After framing Brad Meredith for murder, Vance Rogerson speaks up approvingly about how Brad defended himself in court and makes a good case for his innocence (which keeps Brad from suspecting him for the next several chapters) in public, but he is mean and accusatory toward Brad in private.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Sheriff Easerly is quick to arrest and mistrust Brad, but he has good reason to suspect him, and is an open-minded (especially compared to several other local lawmen) and hard-working diligent investigator and peacekeeper.
- Local D.A. Ed Wolcott is a sharp prosecutor who nonetheless accepts that Brad may be innocent, congratulates him for his good A Fool for a Client defense, and is hard at work behind the scenes to resolve a destructive feud between the employees of two rival mines (ultimately succeeding).
- Refuge in Audacity: Barfly Kokomo Kelly of the Morgan Croy gang is frequently bursting into bars and telling the most obnoxious and over-the-top stories about his supposed outlaw exploits, causing people to dismiss him as a drunken wannabe rather than an actual outlaw deliberately exaggerating his tales so no sheriff will take him seriously.
- Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Banker Matt Garland and Saloon Owner Irene Valloy are beloved in Georgetown for their ingenious entrepreneurship, fairness in business dealings even when being accused of wrongdoing, calm tempers, and generosity, but Jennifer thinks Garland resembles the man who cheated her father and friends seven years ago and he and Irene have secret meetings to talk worriedly about her investigation. Unlike almost every similar pair of characters in an Elston Western, they are just as kind and honest as everyone else thinks they are: the last act reveals that Garland's brother Harry is the con man (who has since become the outlaw Morgan Croy) and Garland and Irene (Harry's ex-wife) aren't guilty of anything worse than halfheartedly giving him a horse and sone money when he was on the run years ago and withholding information from Jennifer and the authorities out of fear of ruining their business reputations and breaking the hearts of Garland's parents. And eventually they can no longer bring themselves to even do that and decide to go to the sheriff (which costs Irene her life) and spend a small fortune paying Morgan/Harry to release the kidnapped Brad.
- You Have Failed Me: When the kidnapped Brad takes the henchman guarding him hostage and uses him as a Human Shield, Croy recaptures Brad after shooting the hostage for letting himself get taken prisoner and for repeatedly forgetting not to call Croy by his real name (which could get past crimes traced back to him).