Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, Fall 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who did the cover painting. Sam Cherry and Kirk Wilson both did a lot of covers for Thrilling Group Western pulps during this era, but to me that doesn’t quite look like the work of either of them. But I could certainly be wrong about that. What’s a little unusual is that the cover actually illustrates a scene from the lead novella, “Sundown Basin” by Ray Townsend. That could just be a coincidence, since a hanging is a pretty generic scene for a Western. But maybe not. Either way, it worked out well.

I don’t know anything about Ray Townsend except that he wrote almost 80 stories for various Western pulps in a career that lasted only six years from 1948 to 1954. He also published half a dozen Western novels, all from Popular Library (also owned by Ned Pines, who owned the Thrilling Group pulps), including SUNDOWN BASIN (1955), expanded from the novella of the same name in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN.

The protagonist of this yarn is Will Roman, a transplanted Texan who’s the foreman of a Montana ranch started by an old rancher from the Lone Star State. Will and his two best friends have a Three Musketeers (or Mesquiteers) sort of friendship until one of them up and gets engaged to the old rancher’s beautiful adopted daughter, who Will intended to marry when the time came. Adding to that tension is the fact that rustlers have been scavenging the range, and the leading suspect, who almost gets strung up at the beginning of the story, is married to a beautiful blonde Will also has feelings for. Townsend does an excellent job with this romantic rectangle, although at times it does seem to make this story more of a candidate for RANCH ROMANCES. “Sundown Basin” is a little light on action, but it’s suspenseful, the characterizations are very good, and Will Roman is a likable protagonist. I enjoyed this one a lot.

I don’t know anything about Fred Delano except that he published eight short stories in various Western pulps in 1952 and ’53. “The Fears and Albie North” is a coming-of-age story about a down-on-his-luck young man who falls in with bad company. It’s pretty lightweight but certainly a readable yarn.

I’ve seen Rod Patterson’s name on many Western pulp TOCs and on several Ace Double Western novels. Between the late Thirties and the late Fifties, he published a couple of hundred stories in the pulps, nearly all of them Westerns, the early stories in collaboration with longtime pulpster Kenneth Fowler. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. “Tiger on the Range” is listed as a novelette, but it’s almost as long as Townsend’s “full-length novel”, so it’s actually more of a novella. The plot is a pretty common one for both Westerns and hardboiled novels: an ex-con, sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit (in this case, gunning down his own brother, his rival for the girl both loved) returns home determined to stir up trouble and find out who really killed his brother. In something of a rarity for a Western pulp, at least in my experience, Patterson includes a lengthy flashback giving the details of this back-story. There’s also some rustling going on. Isn’t there always? This story sags a little in the middle as the protagonist spends a lot of time just riding around, chasing and being chased, but then there’s a nice plot twist and a satisfactory ending. Patterson has a nice terse style, and I think I probably need to dig out one of the Ace Doubles by him that I have around here somewhere.

Ben Smith is another writer who did a few Ace Double Western novels, but other than that I don’t know anything about him. His short-short “The Trail to Rocca Flat” is about some outlaws who have a falling out over the loot from their last job. It’s okay, readable but nothing special.

Finally we have “Lawman Without a Badge” by an obscure author named Vic Whitman. According to the Fictionmags Index, Vic Whitman wrote more than sixty sports and detective yarns, many of them in the pulp TOP-NOTCH, between the mid-Twenties and the mid-Thirties. Then there are no more Vic Whitman stories until two Westerns in the mid-Fifties. Same guy? I don’t know. But this story, about a young man who becomes a temporary deputy and takes the job more seriously than anybody expects, is pretty darned good.

There are also a few features and articles I didn’t read. I usually glance at them to see if there’s anything particularly interesting, but really, I’m just there for the fiction. And it’s worth reading in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN, not a bad story in the bunch. Not a great one, either, but that’s okay. Still fun to read.