Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, January 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my well-worn copy in the scan, featuring a fine dramatic cover by Sam Cherry.

I bought this issue mostly for the Leslie Scott novel, of course. It’s a bit unusual that he’s billed under his real name here and not Bradford Scott, A. Leslie, or even A. Leslie Scott. “The City of Silver”, which is long enough to be considered a novel even in this pulp version, was rewritten and expanded into the hardcover novel SILVER CITY, published by Arcadia House in 1953 and also appeared in paperback from Harlequin. The protagonist is Jim Vane, who is working as a stagecoach station agent in Nevada when the story opens but soon finds himself in the mining boomtown of Virginia City working for Adolph Sutro, one of several historical characters who figure in this novel, much like a Rio Kid yarn. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve read a Rio Kid novel that takes place in Virginia City and features some of the same characters and historical developments.

In this one by Scott, we get ambushes and stagecoach robberies, Jim Vane and some other men are trapped underground by a disaster, and there’s a big shootout at the end in which Vane uncovers the identities of the men who are behind all the villainy in this story. Those are all standard plot elements for a Scott novel, but he mixes them together with such skill that I always enjoy the story he tells. In addition, the ending of this one is a little different from most I’ve encountered in his work, which is a nice bonus. “The City of Silver” is a good novel and a fine example of Scott writing at the top of his game, with plenty of action and some nice turns of phrase.

“Cow Country Jury” is one of ten Western and detective stories that John Di Silvestro wrote for various pulps in the late Forties. That’s all I know about the author. This short-short is about a young cowboy who decides to become an outlaw, only to encounter several unexpected obstacles to his plan. It’s a fairly light-hearted yarn and has a definite oddball quality to it. For one thing, all the characters have unusual names. The young cowboy is Sorne Dangler, the stagecoach driver he tried to hold up is Brad Nunoon, and the local lawman is Sheriff Lork. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. This is a story with some promise, but it doesn’t really deliver.

Steuart Emery started writing romance and mainstream stories for the general fiction pulps in the early 1920s and then wrote hundreds of air war stories (with a few detective yarns mixed in) from the late Twenties to the late Forties. In the late Forties he began writing for the Western pulps and was a fairly prolific contributor to them throughout the Fifties. Most of his Westerns were cavalry yarns, but his novelette “Wall of Silence” in this issue doesn’t feature the cavalry, although it does have some Indian fighting in it. Instead of some young officer, Emery’s protagonist is a stagecoach driver in Arizona who used to drive a fire wagon in New York. He had to go on the run after killing a man in a barroom brawl, but a police detective from New York has tracked him down and offers him a choice: go to prison for the killing—or go back to New York testify against an Irish mobster. Unusual characters, an offbeat plot, and plenty of excellent action make this a terrific story with a very satisfying ending. I really enjoyed this one, and it made me even more of a Steuart Emery fan than I already was.

Larry A. Harris wrote hundreds of stories for the Western pulps. I’ve read a number of them and always enjoyed them, finding them competently written and dependably entertaining. That’s a good description of his short story “Killer Bait” in this issue. An old rancher sets a trap for the outlaws responsible for his son’s death. The writing has a nice hardboiled tone and the story moves right along. Maybe nothing special overall, but I had a good time reading it.

The same can’t be said for “No Decisions” by Francis H. Ames. I’d read several stories by Ames before and liked them okay, but this one is just awful. It’s a present-tense, burlesque comedy with characters named Highpockets and Knothole, and it’s about a boxing match between the champions of the settlements of Sandstone and Gumbo Flats. I made it through three pages before saying nope, not for me.

Johnston McCulley wrote more than 50 stories featuring his iconic creation Zorro for WEST between 1944 and 1949. These short adventures play much like episodes of the famous Zorro TV series, although that series was still some years in the future when these stories were written and published. “Zorro Starts the New Year” in this issue has Don Diego Vega and his famous alter-ego clashing with another aristocrat during a New Year’s party at the Vega rancho. The plot is pretty thin, but McCulley’s writing is so smooth and entertaining that the story is quite enjoyable anyway. All of McCulley’s Zorro stories, from his debut in the novel THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO to his final pulp yarns, are available in six beautiful reprint volumes from Bold Venture Press.

Despite the presence of the one story I disliked, this is a very good issue of WEST. The Steuart Emery novelette is my favorite, but Scott’s novel “The City of Silver” is very solid and entertaining, too. The presence of McCulley and Harris is just a bonus. If you have this one, or happen to stumble across a copy, it’s well worth reading.