Okay, who painted this cover, H.W. Scott or A. Leslie Ross? I can't make up my mind. I don't own this pulp, but I do have a paperback copy of the novel featured in this issue of WESTERN ACTION, "The Lost Buckaroo" by Bliss Lomax, who, of course, was really Harry Sinclair Drago. I haven't read the novel, but I believe it features his series characters, railroad detectives Rainbow Ripley and Grumpy Gibbs. Also in this issue are stories by Gerry Walker (his only credit in the FMI), the prolific Harry Van Demark, and Harold Preece, who I know mostly as a friend and correspondent of Robert E. Howard. I don't think I've ever read any of his fiction.
To start off the year in this series, a pulp that I own and
read recently. The scan is from my copy. The cover is by A. Leslie Ross, far
from his best work, I think, but reasonably eye-catching. And as the cover copy
proclaims, the featured story is “Outlaw River” by Bliss Lomax, who was really
Harry Sinclair Drago, starring his series characters, range detectives Rainbow
Ripley and Grumpy Gibbs. In fact, it’s almost the only story in this issue, since there’s only one back-up yarn, “A
Muleskinner Goes to War” by Lee Floren.
I’d never read any of the Rainbow and Grumpy novels until now, and I have to
say, W.C. Tuttle must have been a tolerant man. If he wasn’t, he would have
sued Drago, since Rainbow Ripley is a pretty blatant copy of Hashknife Hartley,
although Grumpy is more Gabby Hayes-like than swiped from Sleepy Stevens,
Hashknife’s sidekick. But then, there have been plenty of other range detective
characters in Westerns, so best just to take Rainbow and Grumpy for what they
are and move on.
In this yarn, they’ve come to Idaho to take the side of a couple of miners who
leased a failed gold mine from the corporation that owns it and then struck an
unexpected bonanza. Once the owners of the corporation realize the mine is
valuable after all, they want to run off the men who leased it and hire an old
enemy of Rainbow and Grumpy to do so.
In addition to this, the local cattle baron is up to his neck in an irrigation
scheme that may have something fishy about it, and that’s tied in with the job
that brought Rainbow and Grumpy to Idaho, too. Throw in a romance between a
crusading newspaper editor and the cattle baron’s beautiful granddaughter, and
you’ve got plenty of elements for Drago to work with. In fact, the whole thing
gets maybe a little too complicated at times.
As a mystery, “Outlaw River” isn’t much, but there are some nice action scenes
and Rainbow and Grumpy are a likable pair of heroes. One stylistic touch that
annoyed me was Drago’s habit of switching back and forth constantly in the way
he refers to Rainbow Ripley. Sometimes he’s Rainbow, sometimes he’s Rip,
sometimes he’s Ripley. I’ve come across that technique in work from other
authors, and it never works very well for me.
“Outlaw River” was reprinted several years later as a paperback of the same
title, as half of an Ace Double with SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE by Jim Mayo, who
was Louis L’Amour, of course. I don’t know if Drago expanded it for book
publication, but if he did it probably wasn’t by much. At 75 pages of
double-columned fairly small print, this is one of the few “book-length novels”
published in the pulps that actually fit that description.
Lee Floren’s “A Muleskinner Goes to War” is also a pretty good story about a
muleskinner who works delivering loads of gold from a mine to the nearby town
and his efforts to corral a gang of outlaws who keep stealing the shipments.
This one has some nice touches, such as the protagonist being married and also
worrying about his wife cheating on him, and Floren keeps things moving along
well.
With only two stories on which to rise or fall, the June 1945 issue of REAL
WESTERN still manages to come down pretty much smack in the middle. Both
stories are okay but not great, and that describes this issue as well.
