Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, October 1944

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by George Rozen, and it accurately illustrates a scene from the lead novella in this issue of EXCITING WESTERN.

That lead novella, “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow”, is by one of my favorite Western authors, W.C. Tuttle. Most of Tuttle’s career was spent writing novels and stories in the several different series he created, but he wrote a fair number of stand-alone yarns, too. This is one of them, and it finds former convict Tex Colton returning to his hometown after spending several years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Everybody believes Tex has returned so he can get the loot he stashed, but he can’t do that since he didn’t pull the robbery in the first place. However, his brother, who has taken over his ranch in the meantime, did. (Not a spoiler—this is revealed very early on.) To add injury to insult, or vice versa, Tex’s brother has also married his old sweetheart.

As usual in a Tuttle story, there are some broadly comic characters and situations to go along with a solid Western mystery and some good action. It’s a winning formula with variations from story to story regarding which element is stressed the most and never fails to entertain me. The balance is very good in this one, with the added bonus of a nice twist in the end that I probably should have seen coming but didn’t. “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow” isn’t the equal of Tuttle’s Hashknife Hartley series, but it’s a solidly enjoyable yarn.

T.W. Ford was a pulp editor as well as an author, and he turned out hundreds of Western, detective, and sports stories for just about every publisher in the business. I’ve found him to be an inconsistent but mostly very good author. His short story in this issue, “Law in His Blood”, about a rancher who’s mistaken for a notorious outlaw, has a pretty predictable main twist to it, but the writing is excellent and Ford sneaks in another twist at the end that’s very effective. I liked this one as well.

Ralph J. Smith’s short story “Gunned From the Grave” is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index. It’s about an old gunsmith’s encounter with the man who killed his son in a shootout. A poignant, reasonably well-written story that is okay but doesn’t leave much of an impression.

The novelette “Boothill Beller Box” is a notable one. It’s part of a long series starring Arizona Ranger “Navajo” Tom Raine, and this story features Raine teaming up with Wayne Morgan, the Masked Rider, and Morgan’s sidekick, the Yaqui Indian Blue Hawk. As far as I know, this is one of only two such crossover stories between Thrilling Group Western characters. Steve Reese from RANGE RIDERS WESTERN appears in an earlier Navajo Raine story, “Rawhide Ranger”, in the April 1944 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The title “Boothill Beller Box” refers to a telephone line being strung from a cowtown to a nearby logging camp. This is a loggers vs. cattlemen story in which Wayne Morgan is framed for murder. Just like in 1960s Marvel Comics, the two heroes meet and fight at first before realizing they’re on the same side, after which they team up to defeat the bad guy. The author of this one packs quite a bit into it and it’s a really good yarn. Unfortunately, a proofreading and/or typesetting error almost ruins the story by completely invalidating the big twist in the plot. I salvaged it by editing it in my head back to what it should have been. The author’s identity is also a mystery, since the Navajo Raine stories were published under the house-name Jackson Cole. I suspect this one may be by Chuck Martin. It reads like his work to me, and he’s known to have written Navajo Raine stories as well as contributing several Masked Rider novels to that pulp under his own name. But that’s just an educated guess on my part and may be totally wrong.

I also suspect that the next story in this issue, “Cheyenne Death Trap”, is by Chuck Martin. It’s part of the long-running series featuring Pony Express Rider Alamo Paige that was published under the house-name Reeve Walker. Paige is a good character, compact in stature as most of the Pony Express Riders were but tough, smart, and handy with a gun. In this yarn, another rider is robbed and murdered, and Paige sets out to track down the killer. In the process, he faces a death trap unlike any I’ve ever encountered in a Western pulp. This is a clever story and also a very good one.

Mel Pitzer published about 50 stories in various Western pulps between the mid-Thirties and the late Forties. His story “Killer on the Range” wraps up this issue. He uses present tense to tell this story, a technique I hardly ever see in a Western pulp and one that I don’t really care for. It works okay in this case, as an old wrangler tells the story about a stallion accused of killing a rancher. What really happened is pretty obvious, but the story reads okay and is entertaining, although still the weakest in the issue.

This is an above average issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN, which was usually pretty good to start with. W.C. Tuttle, T.W. Ford, Navajo Tom Raine, and Alamo Paige are all dependable Western pulp enjoyment. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s worth reading.