Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a little scribbling on a dramatic Sam Cherry cover that I like. EXCITING WESTERN has become one of my favorite Western pulps because I really enjoy two of the series that ran regularly in its pages.

One of those series is, of course, the Tombstone and Speedy stories by W.C. Tuttle. The lead novella in this issue, “Trail of the Flame”, finds our intrepid heroes, range detective Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith, enjoying some unexpected and newfound wealth in the form of a reward they received for capturing a notorious outlaw. Despite that, they run smack-dab into trouble—literally—when there’s a collision between the buggy they’ve bought and a fella on horseback fleeing from some pursuers. This lands the duo in the middle of a case involving a fabulously valuable gem, a herd of stolen polo ponies, a wealthy eastern dude who has come west, a town south of the border that’s a bandit stronghold, and a sinister Chinese smuggler. As you can tell, Tuttle crams a lot of plot into this yarn, and to be honest, it doesn’t hold together quite as well as some of the other stories in the series. But there’s plenty of action, the story races along at a fast clip, the banter is genuinely amusing, and Tombstone and Speedy are as likable as ever. As always, I really enjoyed reading it.

The other long-running series in EXCITING WESTERN that I like a lot is that featuring Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine, the son of a famous lawman who was raised by the Navajo after his father was murdered in a range war. This series was started by Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole, and C. William Harrison is known to have written many of the stories, too. I have a pretty strong hunch that the novelette “Loot of the Lobo Legion” in this issue is by Harrison. He’s a more polished and less formulaic writer than Bond. (Don’t get wrong, I enjoy Bond’s work, too.) In this story, Raine is sent to investigate the mysterious lynchings of three men, but when he arrives on the scene, he discovers that they were actually murdered before they were strung up. It appears that the local cattle baron is making a land grab and trying to get rid of the smaller ranchers in the area, but everything may not be exactly as it seems at first. Harrison’s Navajo Tom Raine stories usually have some sort of mystery angle to them, which is another thing that makes me believe he wrote this one. It’s a well-plotted tale, not much action until the end, but still very entertaining. Every time I read one of these, I find myself wanting to write a Navajo Tom Raine story myself. He’s a fine character.

I read another story by Barry Scobee not long ago and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I was predisposed to like his story in this issue, a novelette called “Hated Wire”. It has an intriguing premise: a cattle baron fences off his entire spread with barbed wire and has only one gate into the place. Any outsiders who venture onto the wrong side of the fence are never seen or heard from again. A neighboring rancher sets out to find out what happened to one of the men who disappeared. There’s a bizarre late twist which kind of comes out of left field, but it’s the sort of thing I generally like. However, in this case, I just didn’t care for the story. Something about the style rubbed me the wrong way, and none of the characters are likable, even the protagonist. This one might strike some other readers completely differently, but for me it’s a misfire.

Stephen Payne’s short story “Old Timer” is an unacknowledged reprint from the April 7, 1934 issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE. It’s a well-written, low-key, poignant tale about an old range rider who gives up cowboying to become a farmer in partnership with an old friend. There’s no action and the entire story is character-driven, but I liked it anyway. I need to read more of Payne’s work.

Gunnison Steele was really Bennie Gardner. He was a top-notch writer who did some fine novels for the Western character pulps, but he was great with short stories, too, like this issue’s “The Meanest Man”. In this one, a rancher robs the local bank, kills the banker, and gets away with it, but then his partner turns him in. But is that what actually happened? Gardner throws in a clever way of getting to this story’s resolution and I enjoyed this one.

Sam Brant was a house-name, so we don’t know who wrote “Manhunters Ain’t Human”, the short story that wraps up this issue. The plot seems pretty simple: a merciless lawman tracks down a killer, but again there are some twists waiting for the reader that lead to a very satisfying conclusion. This story has a very similar feel to the Gunnison Steele story, which makes me suspect that Bennie Gardner might have been the author here, too, but again, it’s impossible to say for sure.

This is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN. Not an outstanding one due to the Scobee story I didn’t like and the slightly below average Tombstone and Speedy yarn. But the Navajo Tom Raine novelette is excellent and the short stories are all solid. I’m already looking forward to the next issue of EXCITING WESTERN that I read.