This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy
in the scan, complete with tape around the edges applied by some previous owner.
The cover art is by Albin Henning, who appears to have done more interior
illustrations for the pulps and the slicks than he did covers. I think this one
is okay, but I don’t like it as well as the covers by R.G. Harris and H.W.
Scott, who did most of the WILD WEST WEEKLY covers during the Thirties and
Forties.
The lead novelette in this issue is “Long-rider’s Loot” by William A. Todd, a
house-name used on the Risky McKee series by Norman W. Hay. Hay wrote hundreds
of stories for WILD WEST WEEKLY under half a dozen pseudonyms and house-names,
including approximately three dozen about a young rancher in Arizona named Risky
McKee, who raises and trains horses. This is the first Risky McKee story I’ve
read. In it, a drug-addicted outlaw named Hypo Crawley (great name) escapes
from prison and tries to recover the loot from a bank robbery he hid several
years earlier. Crawley double-crossed his gang and stole the money from them,
so they’re after it, too, and hope he’ll lead them to it. Risky finds himself
in the middle of all this, assisted by his sidekick Sufferin’ Joe, a hypochondriac
old codger always complaining about one ailment or another acting like he has
one foot in the grave. This is a pretty decent, if standard plot, and Hay
throws in a couple of nice twists in before the end. There’s a great line that
put a smile on my face: “He’s so crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew.”
Sufferin’ Joe is a good character, too, definitely comedy relief but also tough
and competent when he needs to be. The only real problem about this story is
Risky himself, who is such a bland and shallow character that he’s barely there
on the page. I don’t know if he comes off better in the other stories—I’d
certainly read more of them because I like Hay’s writing overall—but he keeps
this yarn from being anything more than average.
Hay is also the author of the second story in this issue, a stand-alone called “Six-gun
Wages” published under the house-name Philip F. Deere. This is a much better
story about a young cowboy who discovers a rustling operation along the border
between Arizona and Mexico. It’s a well-written tale and one of the characters
who seems like a villain turns out not to be, which is always a nice twist. I
enjoyed this one quite a bit. As I said, I like Norman W. Hay’s work. As far as
I can tell, he published only a handful of stories under his own name, and
maybe that’s the way he wanted it, but I think that’s kind of a shame. I wish
he’d written some Western novels.
J. Allan Dunn wrote more than 150 stories about Texas Ranger Bud Jones for WILD
WEST WEEKLY. I’ve read only one other one before now, and I liked it fairly
well with a few reservations. The Bud Jones yarn in this issue is called “Hide-out”
and opens with a gang of desperate outlaws fleeing with the loot from a bank
robbery they’ve pulled. Bud is the Ranger who sets out to track them down, but
he seems stymied when their trail mysteriously disappears, until he figures out
the clever trick they’ve pulled. No reservations on this one. It’s a solid,
well-plotted yarn with a great showdown at the end. By the way, has anyone ever tried to figure
out how much Dunn wrote? His total wordage has to be right up there with
Frederick Faust, H. Bedford-Jones, and Erle Stanley Gardner.
Lee Bond wrote two long-running series about good guy outlaws and the lawmen
who dogged pursue them, the Long Sam Littlejohn series that ran for some 50 stories
in TEXAS RANGERS and the Oklahoma Kid series in WILD WEST WEEKLY which was even
more popular, lasting for approximately 70 stories. “Boot Hill Gamble” is the
Oklahoma Kid novelette in this issue, and it finds the Kid (whose real name is
Jack Reese, but that’s hardly ever used) on the trail of some outlaws who held
up a stage, murdered the driver and guard, and got away with $30,000 in gold
bars. The Kid is blamed for this crime, and the only way to clear his name is
to round up the real culprits. This is a very standard plot, as usual for Bond,
but he does a good job with it and includes plenty of well-written action,
which is his strong suit. I like the Long Sam yarns considerably more than the
ones featuring the Oklahoma Kid, but Bond’s work is nearly always worth reading
although it seldom rises to the top rank of Western pulp fiction.
Claude Rister wrote more than a hundred stories for the pulps, mostly Westerns but
with some detective, adventure, and aviation yarns mixed in. He also wrote a
number of Western novels under the pseudonym Buck Billings. His story in this
issue, “Outlaw Option”, is about a cowboy who’s had a bit of a shady past
coming to the aid of an old-timer who’s about to be finagled out of his ranch
by a slick gambler. In order to do that, the protagonist enlists the help of
several other former owlhoots. There’s nothing special about the plot in this
one, but Rister writes well and isn’t as heavy-handed with the dialect as some
Western pulpsters can be. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him and need to
read more.
There’s also a Texas Triggers novelette by Walker A. Tompkins to round out this
issue, but that series was fixed up into a novel called TEXAS TRIGGERS, and
since I happen to own that book, I didn’t read the novelette. I’ll get to it
when I read the book.
Overall, this isn’t a bad issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. All the stories are
readable and fairly entertaining. But it’s not an outstanding issue, either.
It's about as average as you can get with a Western pulp. Fortunately, with
WILD WEST WEEKLY, that means it’s enjoyable enough to be worth reading if you
have a copy.
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