This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with tape around the edges placed there by a previous owner. I know that tape on pulps gives most collectors the fantods, but it doesn’t bother me as long as it’s not too heavy-handed, probably because I’m more of a reader than a collector. A case like this one is okay. The cover is by Emery Clark, who, if I recall correctly, did some DOC SAVAGE covers for Street & Smith as well. (I know I could look it up on the FMI, but I’m too lazy right now.) I like this cover okay, although I think the best WILD WEST WEEKLY covers are by H.W. Scott and R.G. Harris.
The lead story in this issue is the novelette “Comanche”, published under the house-name Andrew A. Griffin and attributed to Lee Bond, an attribution I agree with. It reads like Bond’s work. The title character is a young troubleshooter for a wealthy ranch owner who has spreads across the West. Comanche’s background is a mystery. He’s white, but he was raised by a band of Comanche Indians until he was ten years old, when he was taken in by the rancher he now works for. Where he came from, nobody knows. But he’s smart, tough, and gun-swift, making him perfect to get to the bottom of the rustling that’s plaguing one of his mentor’s spreads in New Mexico Territory. Of course, the situation turns out to be more complicated than it appears at first. Bond piles on the action and includes a case of mistaken identity to complicate things. Bond’s work tends toward the formulaic at times, but at his best, he was a top-notch Western pulpster, and I really enjoyed this yarn.
Except . . . what I didn’t realize until I got to the end of it is that it’s just the first of a series of six linked novelettes featuring Comanche, so it really doesn’t have much resolution to it. Usually in a case like this, the novelettes would then be put together into a novel published as a hardback. I don’t find any evidence of that being true with these stories, so it’s likely I’ll never know what happens with Comanche after this. (The next week’s issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY with the second Comanche story is available on the Internet Archive. I may read it or I may not, I haven’t decided yet.)
Young Texas Rangers Hungry Hawkins and Rusty Bolivar starred in scores of stories by Samuel H. Nickels, including this issue’s “Prospectin’ fer Gun Trouble”. In this one, Hungry and Rusty help an old prospector protect his claim from a bunch of outlaws. That’s the entire plot. Nickels does an excellent job with the action and Hungry and Rusty are very likable protagonists, but the thin plot kind of works against the story. Also, one of the henchmen wonders why the boss outlaw wants to take over the mine in the first place, since it’s not very productive. That’s a darned good question, and it’s one that Nickels fails to answer. I don’t know if he just forgot and none of the editors at Street & Smith called him on it, but that plot hole is left wide open.
George C. Henderson was a pretty solid Western writer during the pulp era. “War on the Broken Wheel” is a stand-alone story featuring a good pair of protagonists, a couple of deputy U.S. marshals working undercover as surveyors as they try to find out who’s stirring up trouble between the cattlemen and the sodbusters. Again, nice action and characters, but not much plot keeps this story from being as strong as it might have been. I wouldn’t have minded seeing these protagonists again, but it seems this was their only appearance.
Under his pseudonym Ward M. Stevens, Paul S. Powers wrote approximately 150 stories about Kid Wolf, a wandering adventurer and self-styled Soldier of Misfortune. I prefer Powers’ other main series character, good-guy outlaw Sonny Tabor, but I really enjoy the Kid Wolf stories, too. In the novelette “Kid Wolf on Wild Hog Range”, the Kid comes across an injured young prospector who has been attacked by outlaws and left to die at the tusks of a herd of wild javelinas. The Kid saves the fellow from that grisly fate, of course, and learns from him that the outlaws have kidnapped the young man’s partners in order to torture the location of their valuable mine from them. Naturally, Kid Wolf isn’t going to stand for that, so he and the young man set off to right that wrong. Powers was really good at dishing out fast-moving, action-packed prose, and this yarn races along in a very entertaining fashion, ending with an epic fistfight and a suitable comeuppance for the bad guys. An excellent story and my favorite of the Kid Wolf series I’ve read so far.
I’m also a fan of the Shorty Masters series by Allan R. Bosworth, who wrote some really fine Western novels in addition to his hundreds of top-notch pulp yarns. Shorty is a muleskinner and wagon driver who operates a freight line along with his partner, gunslinger Willie Weatherbee, also known as the Sonora Kid. Naturally, the jobs they take on usually result in trouble, as in “The Calaboose at Caliente”, which finds the intrepid due thrown in jail, accused of killing a steer and stealing its hide. Bosworth also works in a jail break, a bank robbery, and a rodeo. Although there’s usually some humor to be found in these stories, they aren’t really comedies, and they include some unusual touches like the mules in Shorty’s team being named after famous musical composers. This story has plenty of action and is very well-written. I’d say that somebody ought to collect the Shorty Masters stories, but there are more than 130 of them, so it would be a pretty big project.
Flash Moran was the hero of about 40 novelettes by William F. Bragg in WILD WEST WEEKLY. A young deputy sheriff in the cattle town of Piute, Wyoming, Flash got his nickname more for his hot temper than for his red hair. In “Ridin’ the Rustler Special”, he’s a long way from his home range on the trail of a murderer when he gets mixed up in a fight defending a hapless tramp who’s caught stealing a ride on a train. Not long after that, Flash himself is the target of a murder attempt. Naturally, everything ties together, with some rustling and a series of train robberies thrown in, to boot. This is a great story. Bragg provides plenty of well-written action with a lot of it taking place on a train thundering through the night on a rendezvous with disaster, and I love that kind of stuff. Flash Moran is likable enough, and the other characters are interesting as well. As far as I recall, this is the first Flash Moran story I’ve read and the first thing by William F. Bragg, as well. I need to read more by him, because I really enjoyed this yarn.
This is a fine issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. The first three stories are all good, despite my having a few quibbles about them, but the last three by Powers, Bosworth, and Bragg are all top-of-the-line Western pulp stories as far as I’m concerned and elevate this to an above average issue of a consistently good pulp. Definitely worth reading if you have a copy on your shelf, as long as you don’t mind that you’re getting only the first part of what’s basically a serial in “Comanche”.
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