Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Top Western Fiction Annual, 1954

You have to look close to see it, but there's a bullet going through this cowboy's hat, so this qualifies as an Injury to a Hat cover. Who's the artist? I don't know. The art reminds me a little of both H.W. Scott and A. Leslie Ross and might easily be neither of them. TOP WESTERN FICTION ANNUAL was a reprint pulp, as you might guess, and the 1954 edition has some fine authors in it: Allan R. Bosworth, William Hopson, J. Edward Leithead, Leslie Ernenwein, Larry A. Harris, W.F. Bragg, and the ubiquitous house-name Sam Brant. The stories come from a variety of Thrilling Group Western pulps published in the Thirties and Forties. Maybe not the very top Western fiction . . . but PRETTY DARNED GOOD WESTERN FICTION ANNUAL probably wouldn't have sold as well.