This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, and it’s in halfway decent shape for a change. The cover art is by Sam Cherry. Most of his covers aren’t signed, but you can see his signature in the lower right corner of this one, although it’s backwards, meaning the art was flipped.
Edwin Booth is a familiar name to me because he wrote at least a dozen Western novels, many of them published in the Ace Doubles line. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. He’s the author of this issue’s lead novella, “Once a Killer”, which finds the protagonist, Fred Irwin, returning to the hometown he left ten years earlier after killing a man in a gunfight. Everybody figured that meant he had turned into an outlaw, but in reality, he’s become a hard-working cowboy and finally saved up enough money to buy a ranch of his own. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of trouble orchestrated by a crooked saloon owner who wants to take over the town and all the surrounding ranches. Naturally, Irwin comes to the aid of an old rancher and the man’s beautiful daughter, and more trouble ensues. This is a very standard plot, but Booth provides some nice action scenes and a few well-developed characters. Overall, though, his style is definitely on the bland side, and that keeps this story from having the impact it might have had otherwise. It’s not bad, and I would read Booth’s work again, but I’m not going to be on the lookout for it.
Frank C. Robertson was a long-time, very prolific Western pulpster and novelist. His short story in this issue, “Practical Woman”, is a contemporary Western set in the Fifties, a domestic drama about the marriage of a spinster schoolteacher and a hard-headed rancher. It’s well-written, as all of Robertson’s work that I’ve read is, but it’s very low-key and unexciting and really peters out in the end. Robertson was a good author, but this isn’t a very good story.
Thankfully, old reliable Walker A. Tompkins comes along next with the novelette “The Deputy’s Daughter”. In this one, a young cowboy who buys a ranch finds himself framed for murder by the local cattle baron who wants to take over his spread. His only hope is the deputy sheriff’s beautiful blond daughter, who takes a likin’ to him and believes he’s innocent. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining yarn that suffers a little from the fact that it’s not a novella or even an actual novel. I felt like it could have used some room to develop the plot and characters more, and because of that, the ending feels a little rushed. I still liked it quite a bit, though.
“Heritage of Wrath” by M.E. Bradshaw (Marjory Bradshaw) is a Mountie story about a young RCMP officer who has to arrest the father of the girl he loves for murder, which makes her break off their engagement because she refuses to believe he’s guilty. Our Mountie hero has to dig deeper into the case to find out what really happened. This is an okay tale with a somewhat disappointing ending. Bradshaw published two dozen stories during the Fifties, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES.
Stephen Payne was very prolific, turning out several hundred stories for various Western pulps and digests between 1925 and 1970, along with a handful of novels. “Killer’s Conscience” in this issue is narrated by a 14-year-old ranch kid whose father was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sent to prison. The narrator’s encounter with an outlaw may hold the key to clearing his father’s name. This is a solid, well-written story that I enjoyed.
There’s also an installment of a serialized novel, Philip Ketchum’s THE STALKERS, that I didn’t read. I may have the book version of that one. I’ll have to check my shelves.
I should mention, as well, that there are several excellent interior illustrations by Everett Raymond Kinstler. I don’t talk about interior illustrations much, and I probably should. Kinstler was one of the very best at those.
Overall, considering how highly I rate many of the 1950s issues of RANCH ROMANCES, this one is probably a little below average. All of the stories kept me reading, but none of them really stood out as being top-notch, either. The ones by Tompkins and Payne are easily the best of the bunch, and the one by Booth is worth reading. Maybe don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy, though.
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