Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, September 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The hat brim and the sketchiness of the background have me convinced that this cover is the work of A. Leslie Ross. He must have been knocking out these pulp covers pretty quickly, but I don’t care, I still like them. I think this one is quite effective.

The first story in this issue is “No White Sheep”, a novella by Burt Thomas. That title is a little odd, but it refers to a family of outlaws—a grizzled old owlhoot and his four or five sons (I lost track). The youngest son decides to give up the life of crime after a deputy is killed right in front of him during a robbery, so he runs away and establishes a new identity and a respectable life for himself in a small town. There’s even a girl he falls for . . . But then his past comes back to haunt him, as you knew all along it would. This is a fairly standard plot, but Thomas does an excellent job with it. The story is well-written, has some good action, and a few nice poignant moments as well. Burt Thomas wrote about three dozen stories published in various Western pulps from the late Forties to the mid-Fifties, but that seems to be the extent of his work. I couldn’t find any record that he ever published a novel. I suspected at first that the name might be a pseudonym for Lee Floren, who also wrote at Lee Thomas, but this story doesn’t read like Floren’s work to me. It could be that Burt Thomas was just a reasonably talented writer who never published much and is now forgotten.

The short story “Black Shemwell” is about a man who takes up the mantle of a gunfighter even though he’s not suited to it in order to avenge the death of his brother. Like the other story by Ben Smith that I read recently, this one is well-written and engaging, with a fairly traditional plot that still manages to be a little offbeat. I don’t know if Smith will ever be a favorite of mine, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read by him so far.

J.J. Mathews published more than 100 Western, detective, and sports stories from 1950 to 1960, all of them in Columbia pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes. That makes me suspect very strongly that the name is a house pseudonym, and so does another fact I’ll get to momentarily. The long novella under the Mathews name in this issue is a real oddity. The protagonist of this story is Ace Champion, “wandering town-tamer”, as the author puts it. The tale opens with action, as Ace comes across a rancher’s daughter (a beautiful blonde, of course) being pursued by three gunmen. He steps in and rescues the girl, of course, and we’re off on another save-the-ranch-from-rustlers yarn. The villain of the piece is the notorious Mexican bandit leader Don Pesco . . . or is it? There’s some sort of connection between our hero Ace and the mysterious bandido. A love/hate relationship quickly develops between Ace and the blonde as he sticks around to help her and her father out of their dilemma, but a neighboring rancher is the third side of that romantic triangle.

This is a very schizophrenic story and leads me to wonder if there were two authors involved. The action is fast and furious and for the most part pretty well done. Ace and Judy nearly get caught in a stampede. Ace is captured by the bad guy, buried up to his neck, and left for the sun and the buzzards to finish off. Ace is ambushed numerous times and wounded more than once (said wounds being forgotten almost right away). But despite the very traditional plot and the hero’s eyeroll-inducing name, the writing is actually pretty good for the most part and the story moves along at a nice pace.

But then there are the scenes that are just terrible, and those are because everybody suddenly lapses into almost incomprehensible pseudo-cowboy dialect. I’m used to what I call “yuh mangy varmint” dialect, I’ve been guilty of it myself, but whoever wrote this story takes it to another level. The word “ter” substitutes for both “the” and “to”. “Yer” is both “you” and “your”. Then there are the things that make me think the author must have been British, like when the hero tells his horse “Away with you now, old fellow.” But it’s not always like that. Some of the dialogue reads normally.

I was curious enough to hunt up a couple of on-line scans of other Western pulps that have J.J. Mathews stories in them, and there’s no sign of such odd stuff in them. That’s the other thing I mentioned that makes me think it’s a house-name. I’m sure the truth is buried in the mists of time, but it’s the sort of thing I like to ponder. At any rate, for all its weirdness, “Through Ticket to Boothill” is kind of an enjoyable story. Whoever wrote it, there was some talent involved. Unpolished, maybe, but still there.

Lon Williams is best remembered for his long series of Weird Western pulp stories starring Deputy Lee Winters, but he wrote quite a few stand-alone yarns, too, such as “Stranger at the Gates”, which wraps up this issue. It’s about a couple of corrupt deputies whose crooked schemes run afoul of an unexpected visitor in town. It’s a short, unmemorable story.

So this is a very mixed issue, with one really good story by Burt Thomas, one good story by Ben Smith, one weird but somehow entertaining story by J.J. Mathews, and one weak story by Lon Williams. If you have this issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN on your shelves, the first three stories are worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who did the cover. There’s a signature in the lower left corner that seems to match the signature of an obscure artist named J.G. Hame, whose only credit in the Fictionmags Index is the cover on the November 10, 1950 issue of RANCH ROMANCES. I can’t find anything online about Hame. Maybe some of you know more.

The lead novella in this issue is almost long enough to be considered an actual novel. “Boom-Town Bonanza” (no hyphen on the cover, but it’s there in the TOC and the text) is by Ray Townsend, a dependably entertaining Western pulp author. As you’d expect from the title, it’s a mining yarn. In the early days after the Civil War, ex-Confederate Jim Sheldon comes to Nevada in answer to a summons from his old friend who has found a profitable silver claim. But no sooner does Jim arrive than his friend is gunned down and he finds himself involved in a war between the two big mine owners (one of whom is a beautiful woman) and the owners of the smaller mines (one of whom has a beautiful daughter). It’s basically a range war story, only with mines instead of cattle, and not surprisingly, Townsend does a good job with it. His characters are well-drawn, as is the setting, and the action scenes are excellent. My only complaint is that some aspects of the plot seem to be glossed over rather quickly, as if Townsend had trouble fitting everything into 35,000 words. Townsend’s career was short, only about eight years, but in that time he produced nearly 100 pulp stories and four novels. I plan to read more by him.

I don’t know anything about Don Peterson except that he published two Western stories and had one story in WEIRD TALES, all in the early Fifties. His story in this issue, “Cradled in Hell”, is a really bleak yarn about a stagecoach shotgun guard captured by a gang of Mexican bandits. It’s fairly well-written and it doesn’t end the way I expected it to (always a plus), but it’s so dark I found it more admirable than enjoyable.

“Land of No Surrender” is the only credit for Ray Conley in the Fictionmags Index. I don’t know if that name is a pseudonym or if this is the only story he ever sold. It’s about a crippled Pawnee warrior who seeks redemption and acceptance in a battle against the Sioux. A little on the predictable side, but not a bad story.

Ben Smith’s name is familiar to me mostly from the Western novels he wrote for Ace and Bantam, but he also wrote several dozen stories for the Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties. His novelette in this issue, “Bridge of the Eagle”, is the first thing by him that I’ve read, as far as I remember. In it, drifting cowpoke Johnny Quinn is in Arizona Territory when he gets his horse stolen from him and then a short time later is arrested for holding up a stagecoach and killing the guard. He winds up escaping from jail with a hardened killer who’s on his way to join a gang holed up in an isolated stronghold in the mountains along the border. It’s a colorful, fast-moving yarn, and Smith manages to tie up the various threads of the plot in a way that makes sense. I enjoyed it enough that it made me want to dig out more of Smith’s work. I know I have an Ace Double around here somewhere with half of it by him . . .

“Mama Rides the Norther” is by one of my favorite Western authors, Lewis B. Patten, but it’s not a typical Patten story with noir elements. Instead it’s more of a homespun frontier drama about a married couple and their two young children who leave a life in the city to establish a homestead on the Great Plains. It’s well-written and somewhat suspenseful when a blizzard blows in, but overall a pretty minor entry considering the author.

The issue wraps up with “Turn Home Again”, a short story by J.L. Bouma about a dissatisfied young farm boy who wants to leave home . . . until he has an encounter with an outlaw on the run and a posse. Bouma had a long, prolific career writing for the pulps and as a Western paperbacker, as well as writing other types of novels. I’ve always found his work to be dependably good without being outstanding. That’s the case with this story, which is enjoyable to read and comes to a satisfactory conclusion. I doubt if it’ll be very memorable, though.

Overall, this is about as middle-of-the-road an issue of a Western pulp as you’ll ever find, good but not great stories, but no stinkers, either. It’s worth reading if you have a copy, especially the Townsend and Smith stories.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, Fall 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who did the cover painting. Sam Cherry and Kirk Wilson both did a lot of covers for Thrilling Group Western pulps during this era, but to me that doesn’t quite look like the work of either of them. But I could certainly be wrong about that. What’s a little unusual is that the cover actually illustrates a scene from the lead novella, “Sundown Basin” by Ray Townsend. That could just be a coincidence, since a hanging is a pretty generic scene for a Western. But maybe not. Either way, it worked out well.

I don’t know anything about Ray Townsend except that he wrote almost 80 stories for various Western pulps in a career that lasted only six years from 1948 to 1954. He also published half a dozen Western novels, all from Popular Library (also owned by Ned Pines, who owned the Thrilling Group pulps), including SUNDOWN BASIN (1955), expanded from the novella of the same name in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN.

The protagonist of this yarn is Will Roman, a transplanted Texan who’s the foreman of a Montana ranch started by an old rancher from the Lone Star State. Will and his two best friends have a Three Musketeers (or Mesquiteers) sort of friendship until one of them up and gets engaged to the old rancher’s beautiful adopted daughter, who Will intended to marry when the time came. Adding to that tension is the fact that rustlers have been scavenging the range, and the leading suspect, who almost gets strung up at the beginning of the story, is married to a beautiful blonde Will also has feelings for. Townsend does an excellent job with this romantic rectangle, although at times it does seem to make this story more of a candidate for RANCH ROMANCES. “Sundown Basin” is a little light on action, but it’s suspenseful, the characterizations are very good, and Will Roman is a likable protagonist. I enjoyed this one a lot.

I don’t know anything about Fred Delano except that he published eight short stories in various Western pulps in 1952 and ’53. “The Fears and Albie North” is a coming-of-age story about a down-on-his-luck young man who falls in with bad company. It’s pretty lightweight but certainly a readable yarn.

I’ve seen Rod Patterson’s name on many Western pulp TOCs and on several Ace Double Western novels. Between the late Thirties and the late Fifties, he published a couple of hundred stories in the pulps, nearly all of them Westerns, the early stories in collaboration with longtime pulpster Kenneth Fowler. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. “Tiger on the Range” is listed as a novelette, but it’s almost as long as Townsend’s “full-length novel”, so it’s actually more of a novella. The plot is a pretty common one for both Westerns and hardboiled novels: an ex-con, sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit (in this case, gunning down his own brother, his rival for the girl both loved) returns home determined to stir up trouble and find out who really killed his brother. In something of a rarity for a Western pulp, at least in my experience, Patterson includes a lengthy flashback giving the details of this back-story. There’s also some rustling going on. Isn’t there always? This story sags a little in the middle as the protagonist spends a lot of time just riding around, chasing and being chased, but then there’s a nice plot twist and a satisfactory ending. Patterson has a nice terse style, and I think I probably need to dig out one of the Ace Doubles by him that I have around here somewhere.

Ben Smith is another writer who did a few Ace Double Western novels, but other than that I don’t know anything about him. His short-short “The Trail to Rocca Flat” is about some outlaws who have a falling out over the loot from their last job. It’s okay, readable but nothing special.

Finally we have “Lawman Without a Badge” by an obscure author named Vic Whitman. According to the Fictionmags Index, Vic Whitman wrote more than sixty sports and detective yarns, many of them in the pulp TOP-NOTCH, between the mid-Twenties and the mid-Thirties. Then there are no more Vic Whitman stories until two Westerns in the mid-Fifties. Same guy? I don’t know. But this story, about a young man who becomes a temporary deputy and takes the job more seriously than anybody expects, is pretty darned good.

There are also a few features and articles I didn’t read. I usually glance at them to see if there’s anything particularly interesting, but really, I’m just there for the fiction. And it’s worth reading in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN, not a bad story in the bunch. Not a great one, either, but that’s okay. Still fun to read.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Action, August 1952

A nice colorful, dynamic cover on this issue of WESTERN ACTION. I don't know who the artist is. Most of the issue is taken up by a novel by an author whose name I've seen many times but never read, as far as I recall, Allan K. Echols. Back-up stories are by a couple of prolific but little-known pulpsters, Rex Whitechurch and Ben Smith. So as far as the contents go, who knows, might be good, might not.