This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my slightly ragged copy in the scan. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but I’m not absolutely sure about that. “15 Action-Packed Stories”, the cover proclaims, but what it doesn’t tell you is that eight of those are actually Special Features, Fact Features, and Departments—filler, in other words—leaving only seven pieces of actual fiction in this issue.
The lead story is “Judge Bates’ Boothill Court” by Lee Floren, the next to last entry in his Judge Bates series that started in 1940 and lasted for 26 stories, the last one being published in 1955. The stories appeared at first in various Popular Publications pulps and then moved over to various Columbia Publications pulps, where the majority of them appeared. After that, Floren used Judge Lemanuel Bates and his sidekick Tobacco Jones in several novels. Bates is the judge in a Wyoming cowtown and Jones is the local postmaster, and together they also own a ranch. They wind up involved in assorted mysteries.
Since Lee Floren was a very inconsistent writer, I always go into one of his stories with fairly low expectations. That way, if it turns out to be a good one, I’m pleasantly surprised. “Judge Bates’ Boothill Court” is one of the good ones, I’m glad to say. Bates and Jones travel to a different town for once as Bates is called on to replace another judge who’s been wounded in an ambush. As it happens, the young man accused of trying to kill the other judge is well-known to Bates and Jones, and they don’t believe he’s guilty. Not surprisingly, somebody tries to kill both of them soon after they arrive, and they’re off on a case that involves danger, a few pretty girls, and a villain who’s so obvious that he might as well be wearing a sign on his back. While there aren’t any surprises in this yarn, Floren spins it with skill and enthusiasm, and there are only a few instances of the clumsy writing he’s prone to at times. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.
The long-running series by Lon Williams featuring Deputy Marshal Lee Winters is well-regarded, and it’s unusual because many of the stories feature supernatural elements. I’ve read several of them, though, and so far, I’m not a fan. “Misfortune’s Darling” in this issue is the first one I’ve read that doesn’t have anything supernatural in it. Instead, Winters investigates a series of murders and robberies plaguing travelers in his area. There’s a side plot that serves no real purpose. I realize this is damning with faint praise, but this is the best of these stories I’ve read so far. I’m willing to read more, but my patience with them is getting stretched kind of thin.
Richard Brister is a fairly dependable Western writer. His story in this issue, “Big Man in This Town”, is about a banker who turns to murder to save his failing institution. But of course things don’t play out the way he hopes. This isn’t a bad story and is decently written, but there’s not much to it.
The same can be said of John T. Lynch’s short-short “Hassayampa Hassle”, a tall tale about a whiskey drummer who drinks from a magical river that’s supposed to prevent people from telling the truth. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s not really funny and just sort of ends without making any kind of point.
I’ve read a few stories by A.A. Baker that were okay, but “Death at the China Mine” in this issue isn’t one of them. It’s about a mine cave-in and a stagecoach carrying a lot of cash, I think. The plot is so muddled and the writing so poor that I just skimmed through it.
“The Golden Spike” by Gene Rodgers is a little better. A golden spike is used to complete the last link in a railroad in Oregon, and a couple of outlaws decide to steal it out of the ground. Again, things don’t play out according to plan. This short-short is somewhat entertaining, and at least it has a beginning, middle, and end.
Finally, we come to Seven Anderton’s novelette “Peaceful Pilgrim”. Thank goodness for Seven Anderton, I say. This story is about a hired gun who’s tried of fighting in senseless range wars, so he decides to go back to where he came from, the Pecos country in West Texas. So what happens as soon as he gets there? He gets mixed up in a range war, of course, as the local cattle baron decides to force all the small ranchers and sodbusters out of the valley any way he has to, including burning them out and killing them. But standing in his way is the protagonist Hank Sawyer, who finally has something worth fighting for besides pay.
You can tell from that description that this is a very traditional plot we’ve all read and seen many times before. But Anderton’s writing is top-notch as always, Hank Sawyer is a good protagonist, and there are some well-done action scenes. The only flaw in this story is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it could have been, a tendency that I’ve discovered is common in Anderton’s Westerns. He seems to prefer not to give the reader the kind of action-packed showdowns that I like in my Western reading. That’s his choice, and I’ll still read his stories because his prose is very good, but that keeps him from becoming a real favorite of mine.
This is a very typical issue of a Columbia Western pulp edited by Robert W. Lowndes: a couple of good but not great stories by Floren and Anderton and the rest poor to mediocre. I’ll keep reading them because from time to time Lowndes got his hands on a real gem despite not being able to pay much. But I’ve learned not to expect a great deal from them. The covers are usually pretty nice, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment