Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, November 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I think the cover is by Sam Cherry. The horse and rider look like his work to me. The Fictionmags Index agrees and attributes the cover to Cherry.

I always enjoy the Tombstone and Speedy stories by W.C. Tuttle, and the lead novella in this issue of EXCITING WESTERN, “Coyote Luck for Tombstone”, is no exception. Our somewhat hapless range detective heroes, Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith, are sent to find out who’s behind the rustling on a ranch in southern Arizona, but in the process they run afoul of a mysterious bandit known as the Red Mask who’s been terrorizing the border country. Could it be that the two cases are connected? What do you think? With some help from a coyote that’s been turned into a pet and a trip across the border to a bandit sanctuary, not to mention a few attempts on their lives, Tombstone and Speedy untangle the mess and expose the villains. It’s another well-plotted, light-hearted, but also action-packed entry in the series.

I’m also a fan of the series about Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine. In this issue’s “Ranger on the Run”, Raine is bushwhacked by a gunman who’s supposed to be locked up behind bars and winds up facing a showdown in an abandoned mine tunnel. These stories were published under the house-name Jackson Cole, and at least two authors contributed yarns to the series, Lee Bond (who created it) and C. William Harrison. I feel certain this is one of Bond’s efforts, since the villains spend a lot of time standing around explaining their schemes to each other and the final shootout features Raine against three bad guys. Both of those things are very common in Bond’s stories. Predictable they may be, but they move along nicely and have plenty of well-written action.

Gunnison Steele was really Bennie Gardner. I was fortunate enough to be friends with his son Barry Gardner for several years before Barry passed away. Bennie Gardner wrote quite a few novels featuring various Western pulp characters, but he was also really prolific when it comes to short-shorts, possessing the ability to pack interesting characters and plenty of plot into three or four pulp pages. His story in this issue, “Smoke on the Mountain”, is one of those, centered around an outlaw’s attempt to force an old-timer to reveal the location of some hidden money. The old-timer’s clever way of dealing justice to his tormentor is very effective. I’ve read a bunch of Gunnison Steele stories and enjoyed every one of them.

Del Rayburn published about two dozen stories in various Western pulps between 1944 and 1950 and also wrote one episode of the TV series DEATH VALLEY DAYS. Some of his stories were reprinted in a Powell Books paperback in the Sixties called TRAIL-BLAZERS WEST. His novelette “Tough Texas Tophand” from this issue was reprinted in the November 1951 issue of THRILLING WESTERN, where I’d read it before. To quote what I said about it then: The story is about the clash between a Texas cowboy and a clan of renegade Mormons in Montana. It’s a little over-the-top (the protagonist’s name is Hondo Uvalde) but the author won me over with plenty of well-written action and some interesting characters. I wouldn’t call “Tough Tophand” a Western classic, but it’s an enjoyable story. That’s still an accurate assessment. Curious about Rayburn, I did a little more digging and came across online claims that he was actually a TV network executive with some connection to STAR TREK. Some posters on a Star Trek bulletin board make a pretty scurrilous charge against him. The whole thing seems highly unlikely to me, but it’s an interesting example of the theory that you never know what you’re going to come across on the Internet.

Another masked bandit, this time known by the name Blue Mask, shows up in “Right Handy With a Rope” by veteran Western pulpster Donald Bayne Hobart. A new ranch hand with a secret shows up to hunt down the outlaw. This is another short-short, only four pages long. Hobart was a dependable writer so it’s fairly entertaining, but it’s a really minor piece of work.

The other long-running series in EXCITING WESTERN featured Pony Express rider Alamo Paige. These were published under the house-name Reeve Walker. “In the Line of Duty” in this issue finds Paige having to helping rescue a cavalry patrol besieged by a Sioux war party. The plot is pretty simple, but the story is very well-written and features more character development than usual for Paige, implying that he used to be a cowboy, or perhaps a cavalryman, or maybe even a reformed outlaw. I’ve seen speculation connecting Tom Curry, Charles N. Heckelmann, Walker A. Tompkins, and Chuck Martin with the Reeve Walker house-name, but really there’s no telling who wrote “In the Line of Duty” and the other Alamo Paige stories. It might be Heckelmann’s work, since his stories often have more fully developed characters, but really, who knows. Whoever wrote this one, it’s really good, probably the best Alamo Paige story I’ve read so far.

This is a really solid issue of EXCITING WESTERN overall. Some of the stories are better than others, of course, but all of them are entertaining and the yarns featuring Tombstone and Speedy and Alamo Paige are top-notch, outstanding entries in those series. If you have a copy of this one on your shelves, it’s very much worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, November 1951

I featured this cover more than ten years ago, but I recently read my copy of this pulp. That’s it in the scan. This is one of my favorite Western pulp covers. It’s by Clarence Doore, which I didn’t know when I posted about it the first time. I also mentioned in the earlier post that I had read the expanded paperback version of Leslie Scott’s novella “The Texan”, which was published by Paperback Library in 1952 under the pseudonym Scott Leslie. I’m pretty sure that was wrong, because when I read the pulp version in this issue, I didn’t remember it at all.

As the cover says, it’s set in Tombstone, and a lot of historical characters appear in it: the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, Johnny Behan, Curly Bill Brocius, Johnny Ringo, the Clantons and McLowreys, Three-Finger Jack Robles, etc. A few historical incidents figure peripherally in the plot. But mostly it’s the story of Jed Slone, the Texan of the title, who has spent the past several years in Mexico living the life of a good-guy outlaw, including leading his band of helpers known as the Dorados, which, according to Scott, means “Golden Men” because they all wear yellow shirts. Now, I don’t know if that’s what it means at all, and I’m too lazy to look it up, but hey, I’m willing to go with that. Sure. It’s a nice dramatic bit, even though the Dorados play no part in this yarn other than being mentioned.

Mostly “The Texan” is about Jed Slone sorting out who’s been rustling cattle from the Cross G ranch owned by old Don Roberto Garcia, who has a beautiful niece named Gypsy. (Scott liked naming heroines Gypsy. I can think of several others.) While he’s doing that, he hangs around with Wyatt Earp, makes a mortal enemy out of Curly Bill, and does a lot of riding and shooting. The identity of the mastermind behind all the trouble is extremely obvious.

But (you’ve heard this before) I don’t care. Scott writes great action scenes, he indulges in some of his patented flowery landscape descriptions that somehow work just fine for me, and the story is paced to keep me flipping the pages. This one shows a few more signs of hurried writing that most of Scott’s stories, but nothing that I can’t overlook. I just like the way the guy tells a tale.

I don’t know anything about William L. Jackson except that he wrote dozens of Western and sports yarns for various pulps in the Forties and Fifties. His story in this issue, “Run Him Out”, is about the clash between a liveryman and a powerful rancher. It’s well-written but not very memorable.

Clay Randall was actually Clifton Adams, and Adams was always good. His novelette in this issue, “Fire Fight”, is no exception. It has a fairly standard plot—a big land and cattle company is trying to run out the smaller ranchers—but the villains use range fires as their primary weapon instead of rustling, which is a bit of an unusual twist. Adams’ writing, as always, is hardboiled and fast-paced and the plot takes some intriguing turns. There’s one plot hole that bothered me some, but overall this is a good yarn, not top-notch Adams but certainly worth reading.

“Never Come Back” is a short story by the prolific and dependable Giff Cheshire. It’s about a rancher who runs off the wild, outlaw brother of the girl he loves, only to have the young man return looking for vengeance, backed by a gunslinger he’s fallen in with. Well-written and with good characterization, it has a nice gunfight and a satisfying conclusion. I don’t think Cheshire will ever be one of my favorite Western writers, but his work is usually entertaining.

The issue wraps up with the novelette “Tough Tophand” by Del Rayburn, billed on the Table of Contents as a Western classic because it’s actually a reprint from the November 1946 issue of EXCITING WESTERN, where it appeared under the title “Tough Texas Tophand”. The story is about the clash between a Texas cowboy and a clan of renegade Mormons in Montana. It’s a little over-the-top (the protagonist’s name is Hondo Uvalde) but the author won me over with plenty of well-written action and some interesting characters. I don’t know anything about Del Rayburn except that he wrote a couple of dozen stories for the Western pulps from the late Forties to the mid-Fifties. I wouldn’t call “Tough Tophand” a Western classic, but it’s an enjoyable story.

This is a solid issue of THRILLING WESTERN with a great cover, a very good story by Leslie Scott, and good stories by the other authors who contributed. I’m glad I finally got around to reading it.