Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1950

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, although I’m not as sure of that as I sometimes am, and I find it pretty interesting. In all the books I’ve written, I don’t recall ever writing a shootout that involves a windmill. It doesn’t strike me as being a very good place to take cover, but maybe this hombre didn’t have any choice.

Range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith are on hand, as usual, as the issue opens with W.C. Tuttle’s novelette “A Mixture of Mavericks”. The boys are assigned to a case where they’re supposed to settle a dispute over unbranded yearlings, but they wind up with another sort of “maverick”: a baby. And that baby is part of a case involving a mine payroll robbery, a kidnapping, and some fistfights and shootouts. Yep, it’s the old “heroes get stuck taking care of a baby” plot. I’ve used it myself. It nearly always works. It does so in this story, which is funny and action-packed, as well as pretty well-plotted. This is a strong entry in a consistently strong series.

Most of the stories by Lee Bond that I’ve read were parts of series, but “The Desert Builds a Noose” in this issue is a stand-alone, which finds a sheriff trying to discover the truth about the murder of an old prospector. This is a good story, and I like the title. The only problem I had with it is that I found the ending a little muddled, but that could always be just me.

I don’t know anything about John C. Ropke except that he published about 30 stories between 1950 and 1955 and nothing after that. A mixture of Westerns, sports stories, and jungle adventure yarns. “Boomerang” in this issue is a rodeo story about brothers who are both bronc riders. The younger brother is jealous of his older brother’s success. This starts out like a YA story in which lessons are learned. Well, lessons are learned, all right, but it turns a lot darker along the way, which was not what I expected. It’s well-written and packs a punch, enough so that it makes me interested in reading something else by Ropke.

“Devil in the Cook Shack” is by Robert J. Hogan, author of the G-8 series. Hogan did quite a few Westerns, too, and I tend to like his work. This one is a more lighthearted yarn about a young man from the East who inherits his grandfather’s ranch. It’s not really a tenderfoot-makes-good story like you might expect, though. Although the protagonist isn’t an experienced cowboy, he’s spent enough time on the ranch in the past that he’s not totally lost, either. The ranch cook has a man-crazy teenage sister who plays all the ranch hands against each other. There’s also a swindling horse buyer and a gunslinging gambler. It’s a mildly amusing blend of romance and action, a minor effort from Hogan but enjoyable enough.

“Sure Sign of Trouble” is by Donald Bayne Hobart, one of my favorites, and finds a young rancher in conflict with his older neighbor. The twist in this story is pretty easy to spot, but it’s interesting because the final shootout takes place with the protagonist on a windmill platform, just as depicted on this issue’s cover. When that happens, I always wonder if the publisher already had the cover painting and the editor asked the author to write a story to fit it. Hobart is a good enough writer that even though there’s not much to this story, it’s still entertaining.

The last novelette by Nels Leroy Jorgensen I read wasn’t very good, so I was a little wary heading into “Gunflame Survey”, which wraps up this issue. It’s not bad, though. The protagonist is a tough, two-gun surveyor who’s blackmailed into carrying out a phony survey for a land-grabbing villain. Things don’t play out exactly as the bad guy intends, though. Some of the writing is pretty rushed and awkward, and since Jorgensen had been in the business since 1923, I can only surmise that his talents deteriorated some with age. I know all too well how that can happen! Anyway, this story has some decent action and an interesting plot, even if the writing is inconsistent.

I was a little disappointed that there’s no Navajo Tom Raine story in this issue, since I’ve grown really fond of that series, but a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy yarn makes up for a lot. None of the other stories are exceptional, but they’re all entertaining. This one’s worth a look if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, November 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a slam-bang cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve said it many times before, but I really like his work.

I also consistently enjoy the adventures of range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith as penned by W.C. Tuttle. This issue’s novelette is called “Lovable Liars”, and as it opens, the pair of them are a-foot, having sold their horses and saddles anticipating that their boss at the Cattleman’s Association will send them to their next assignment via train. The boss expects them to ride horseback to the settlement of Smoke Tree, however, and since they sold their mounts and Tombstone then lost all their money trying out his supposedly foolproof system for blackjack . . . Well, the boys wind up riding the train, but they have to hop an illicit ride on a boxcar to do so. And then what happens? Why, the train gets held up, of course, and through a series of coincidences, Tombstone and Speedy are blamed for the robbery!

Clearing their names and corralling the actual train robbers complicates their original mission, which was to solve a murder for which the son of an old friend of their boss has been arrested. Our intrepid duo manage to accomplish all of that, of course, through a combination of luck, banter, fast action, and detective work that’s more clever than anyone gives them credit for. This is a consistently entertaining entry in a series I really like.

Cliff Walters, a prolific contributor to the Western pulps who’s all but forgotten these days, is next up with a story called “Bone Bonanza”, in which a young rancher who fancies himself an artist goes east in search of a career in fine art, only to have things work out differently than he expected. This is a very mild, lightweight story with a few interesting angles, and it’s an easy read that I don’t think will linger very long in anyone’s mind. But it’s a pleasant enough way to pass 15 minutes.

I sometimes wonder if the readers who bought these pulps realized that A. Leslie, Bradford Scott, and Jackson Cole (part of the time) were all the same guy. Some of them must have suspected. Under the A. Leslie name, Leslie Scott contributes the novelette “Washed in Blood” to this issue. The first part of the tale is fairly standard as young cowboy Jim Wayne clashes with three crooked brothers who run almost everything in the county. A saloon shootout leaves one of the brothers dead and Jim on the run as a fugitive. It’s when he holes up in an abandoned mission still being tended to by an old priest that the story becomes one of ghost pirates and hidden treasure. As always with a Scott story, the action is plentiful and well-written, and the settings are vivid. I really enjoyed this one.

I’ve read a couple of stories by Harold R. Stoakes, another forgotten writer, and enjoyed them. “The Red Stallion” in this issue is a modern-day Western about a horse that can’t be ridden and the relationship between a young man and his stepfather. Honestly, this seems less like a Western pulp story and more like something that would have appeared in a slick or even a literary magazine. It’s got enough angst to it that it could have been mawkish, but Stoakes keeps things pretty low-key and makes it work in a well-written story that reminds me of something Larry McMurtry might have written early in his career.

“One Man Wrecking Crew” is a short (maybe 2000 words, tops) story by the always dependable Donald Bayne Hobart. There’s not much plot to it, just some conflict between a young cowboy and a crooked saloon owner and his henchmen, and that’s just an excuse for a brutal fistfight scene. Hobart probably didn’t spend much time on this and picked up a quick 20 bucks or so, but he was enough of an old pro to make it fun to read.

The Navajo Tom Raine series has become one of my favorites. The novelette in this issue, “Ranger Out of Bounds” drops the reader down in the middle of the action as the Arizona Ranger investigates a land-and-water swindle that also involves the kidnapping of a beautiful young woman. The only break in the action comes when Raine is knocked out cold for a while. It’s a bit more complicated plot than usual for Lee Bond, who wrote this entry under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond’s stories are pretty easy to identify: at least once in the story, the villains will stand around and explain the plot to each other, and the hero will face multiple enemies in a big, final gunfight. I thought this was an excellent story, and as usual, when I finished it I was eager to read more adventures of Navajo Tom Raine.

I don’t know anything about Clark Gray except that he published more than a hundred stories in various Western pulps and that he wrote the two worst Jim Hatfield novels in the whole series, “Lobo Colonel” (TEXAS RANGERS, January 1952) and “Warpath” (TEXAS RANGERS, June 1952). His story in this issue, “Tortilla Tenderfoot”, is about Pedro Gonzales, a reformed rustler who has lived a law-abiding life for years, only to be drawn back into a life of outlawry by the return of his former partner. This is a decent plot, but Gray plays it for laughs and the actual humor to be found in the story is pretty sparse. However, the writing isn’t bad, and although unimpressive, this is a much better story than either of Gray’s Hatfield novels.

All in all, this is a good solid issue of EXCITING WESTERN, due to top-notch series entries by Tuttle and Bond, a very good stand-alone by Scott, and some interesting short stories. It’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat ragged copy in the scan. The cover is by Sam Cherry, as usual, and I like it, also as usual.

Ah, Tombstone and Speedy! A ghost story seems perfect for this pair of bumbling but surprisingly astute range detectives, and the novella “Ghost of the Tumbling K” brings them to the title ranch on their latest assignment for the Cattlemen’s Protective Association. However, they don’t know why they’re there, because the rancher who sent for them lies seriously wounded and unconscious. Tombstone and Speedy fetch help for the injured man and, in the process, discover that the ranch is supposed to be haunted. Since they don’t know why they were summoned, they decide to stay there and keep an eye on the place, which, of course, leads to a ghostly encounter.

Author W.C. Tuttle packs a lot of plot into his yarn, as he always does with the Tombstone and Speedy stories. Most of it revolves around the hidden loot of a mysterious outlaw known as the Yellow Mask, who is believed to have died several years earlier. But is he really dead? If he is, could it be his spirit haunting the Tumbling K? Tombstone and Speedy untangle the whole thing, of course, with plenty of action and humorous banter along the way. These stories are pretty formulaic, but they sure are entertaining.

“Indian Slap” is by Barry Scobee, the only pulp Western author with a mountain named after him. Scobee’s work is hit-or-miss for me but mostly good, and I enjoyed this tale about a white boy who was a captive of the Comanches trying to fit back in among a community of settlers. Scobee does a good job with the Central Texas setting, too.

“West of Windigo” is a novelette by Norrell Gregory. I don’t recall if I’ve read anything by Gregory before, but I liked this story of a railroad detective trying to find out who’s been stealing construction supplies, smuggling whiskey to the Indians, and generally trying to stir up trouble on a spur line that’s being built. Gregory moves things along nicely. This would have made a good B-Western movie in the Forties or Fifties.

“Badmen Are Plumb Foolish” is by Donald Bayne Hobart, a very prolific pulpster whose work I’ve come to enjoy. This story is about a gambler framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and despite its short length, maybe 2500 words, Hobart manages to work in a train robbery and a plot twist, too. This is a nice, enjoyable yarn by a real pro.

“Sheriff” by William O’Sullivan uses the “old lawman whose time has passed” plot, and not surprisingly, the old badge-toter has some life left in him after all, as an election campaign against his young whippersnapper deputy proves. This isn’t a memorable story at all, but it’s well-written and pleasant enough.

I’m convinced that Donald Bayne Hobart is also the author of “Bait for a Range-War Gallows”, even though it was published under the house-name Jackson Cole. The style reads very much like Hobart’s work. This is a range war story, as you probably guessed from the title, but it starts with a very nice twist: the range war is already over when the story begins. And everybody who supported the losing side is now considered an outlaw, including young cowboy Dake Latimer, who is holed up in an old adobe hut trying to fight off a horde of gunmen led by his mortal enemy who hates him because Latimer once stopped the lowdown hombre from raping a young woman. Hobart drops the reader down right in the middle of the action, which is something I always enjoy. Latimer gets out of that scrape but almost immediately finds himself in another one with a wounded youngster’s life on the line. Hobart packs a lot into this story and the action never slows down for more than a few paragraphs. This is just a superb Western yarn, one of the best I’ve read recently.

The protagonist of Nels Leroy Jorgensen’s novelette “Longrider Gun-Law” is also a good-guy owlhoot, the son of an Arizona lawman. He’s been below the border in Mexico rustling cattle and horses as part of a gang of American outlaws, but when the group disbands, he heads home to find the area being plagued by a series of stagecoach robberies. The plot developments in this one are pretty predictable, but Jorgensen’s tough prose makes it entertaining reading. Jorgensen’s career started in the early Twenties with detective and adventure yarns. He was a regular contributor to BLACK MASK during that pulp’s early glory days and eventually became a prolific Western pulpster, as well. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him.

There’s also an animal story by Harold F. Cruickshank in this issue, but I didn’t even try to read it. I loved wildlife yarns when I was a kid, but they just don’t work for me anymore.

Other than that, every story in this issue is good and I think it’s a fine issue overall. Although, as usual when there’s not a Navajo Tom Raine story, I missed that series.

To end on a more serious note that usual, I’ve realized that on several occasions recently, I’ve read and reviewed books and pulps that I previously read and reviewed several years ago, with absolutely no memory of reading and reviewing them before. At my age, this is a mite worrisome. If I have any doubts about a book or a pulp, I try to remember to search the blog and see if I’ve already covered it. But the key phrase there is “try to remember” because that’s where the problem lies, isn’t it? If any rate, if you see such duplication, it’s not intentional, and don’t hesitate to bring it to my attention. It’s helpful for me to know about such things.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate the holiday. As always, I have a great deal to be thankful for, including all of you reading this blog. I appreciate your patience and your continued interest after all these years. That's the First December 1930 issue of TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE, by the way, and it looks like a pretty good issue with stories by Donald Bayne Hobart, John Wilstach, Ben Conlon, and a Kroom, Son of the Sea yarn by house-name Valentine Wood. (I feel confident in saying that no one else will mention Kroom, Son of the Sea to you this Thanksgiving, but feel free to bring him up around the dinner table if you want to.)

Review: Arizona Outlaw - Bayne Hobart

The last thing drifting young cowboy Lance Harvey wants is trouble with the law, but when he rides into the town of Elkhorn, Arizona, he finds him unwillingly mixed up in a bank robbery and then on the run from the law.  Fleeing from this injustice, he winds up in the settlement of Black Rock, where he’s promptly accused of being a mysterious murderer who dubs himself The Avenger. Several prominent citizens have been killed, and the town is gripped by fear and eager to blame the first possible suspect who comes along, namely Lance. He just can’t seem to win for losing.

But since he’s the protagonist of ARIZONA OUTLAW, a novel by Donald Bayne Hobart published by Arcadia House in 1961, you know he’ll untangle all the strands of this dangerous mess eventually and discover not only the true Identity of The Avenger but also the bad guy behind a seemingly unconnected stagecoach robbery and murder. He might even find the bank robbers who got him in trouble with the law in the first place!

After the end of the pulp era during which he wrote dozens of novels and hundreds of shorter pieces of fiction, mostly Westerns but quite a few detective and sports yarns, too, Donald Bayne Hobart continued writing for digest magazines and for library-market publishers such as Arcadia House. On the cover of ARIZONA OUTLAW, he’s by-lined only as Hobart; on the title page and the inside flap of the dust jacket, he’s Bayne Hobart. But we know this is really the prolific pulpster Donald Bayne Hobart. His style had changed slightly from the days he was writing more Masked Rider novels than anyone else, but the later novel is still recognizably his work. It’s a little milder, with more talk and not as much action as in his pulp efforts, but that’s common for an aging author. I see it in my own work. What hasn’t changed is Hobart’s ability to create a likable protagonist and move a story along at a fairly brisk pace. And the action scenes are still well done, if not as prevalent.

I enjoyed ARIZONA OUTLAW and I’m glad I have several more of Hobart’s late-career Western novels from Arcadia House on hand to read. It’s not a great Western, but I had a good time reading it and if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, you certainly might, as well.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Masked Rider Western, January 1944

I enjoyed that Masked Rider novel by Donald Bayne Hobart I read recently enough to read another one. I don’t own the January 1944 issue of MASKED RIDER WESTERN, but I read it on the Internet Archive. (Actually, I read a downloaded PDF on my Kindle Fire. I’m not a fan of reading books or pulps on the computer.) I believe the cover is by George Gross.

The Masked Rider novel in this issue, “The Devil’s Range”, finds the Masked Rider and Blue Hawk in South Dakota, which places the action after November 2, 1889, when Dakota Territory became the states of North and South Dakota. The cattlemen in the area are being plagued by a gang of rustlers known as the Black Band because of the black masks they wear. They’re also having trouble with a price-gouging town boss who controls the flow of supplies in the area. The Masked Rider and Blue Hawk operate separately for the most part in this yarn. Blue Hawk trails the rustlers to locate their hideout and winds up in a heap of trouble. The Masked Rider, in his Wayne Morgan identity, investigates the crooked town boss and winds up infiltrating his gang—and pinning on a badge as the local sheriff. It’s an odd role for the notorious Robin Hood Outlaw to play, but Hobart spins the plot strands of this one very skillfully. While some of it was pretty predictable, there are some twists that actually took me by surprise, and that’s always a very welcome bonus. Hobart’s distinctive style has really grown on me. He’s becoming one of my favorite Western pulp authors, and “The Devil’s Range” is a very solid entry in a good series.

H.A. DeRosso has a well-deserved reputation among Western fans as being one of the finest authors of Western noir stories and novels. His short story in this issue, “Killers Also Die”, doesn’t really fit in that mold, although it does have a hardboiled tone. It’s a more traditional tale about a young man seeking vengeance on the man who murdered his father. However, things don’t turn out as they first appear to be.  What actually happens is very predictable, making this a story in need of a twist that never happens. It’s well-written, though, and an entertaining traditional Western story, but not one you’d give to someone who’s never read DeRosso before as an example of what he’s known for.

I’ve seen Clinton Daingerfield’s name in many Western pulp TOCs, but I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. In his story “Lone Hand for Liberty”, a young cowboy is framed for the murder of his wealthy cattleman uncle. The protagonist stands to inherit the murdered man’s ranch, so he has a good motive for murder and witnesses saw him clash with the older man, too. Even though it’s pretty obvious what’s going on in this story, and one bit of business requires a pretty big suspension of disbelief, Daingerfield keeps things moving at a nice pace and I wound up enjoying the story quite a bit.

I’ve read a few stories by Mel Pitzer and thought they were okay. “Fangs of Freedom” starts out as a humorous animal story, and I had my doubts about it. It becomes more serious as it goes along. There’s a romance angle that would have made it a good fit in RANCH ROMANCES, but it’s secondary to the story of a collie being accused of turning into a cattle killer. Things come to a satisfactory conclusion, making this a minor but reasonably entertaining yarn, which seems to be a good description of everything I’ve read so far by Mel Pitzer.

Stephen Payne was a prolific and widely respected Western pulp author. I have one of his novels and several collections of his stories but haven’t read any of them. I know his reputation, though, which is why I was pretty disappointed in his novelette “Borrowed Hosses” in this issue. It's a slapstick comedy about two cowboys named Bucko and Gumbo, in much the same vein as Syl McDowell’s Swap and Whopper stories. (The illustration that goes with Payne’s story is by the same artist who did the illustrations for McDowell’s series.) I thought this one was just terrible and only made it a few pages before giving up. However, it prompts me to want to read one of Payne’s more serious stories to see if I like it better, or if he’s just one of those popular authors who don’t connect with me for some reason.

Since most of the pages in this issue are given over to a good Masked Rider novel, I have to say that I liked it overall, although none of the other stories are particularly outstanding and there was the one I didn’t finish. I’ll probably read something else by Donald Bayne Hobart in the near future, but maybe not another Masked Rider novel so soon. I make no promises, though.

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: Masked Rider Western Magazine, July 1938

I don’t own a copy of this pulp, but I recently read an e-book reprint of it that’s also available in a paperback edition. I don’t have any idea who did the pulp cover.  The lead novel was also reprinted in paperback around 1970 by Curtis Books with a cover by Vic Prezio. The fellow on the cover of that paperback edition is definitely our old friend Steve Holland. (Thanks to Martin O'Hearn for his helpful info on the paperback edition.)

“Iron Horse Gunsmoke” is the third Masked Rider novel after the series was taken over by Better Publications and became part of the Thrilling Group, after the first dozen or so issues were published by Ranger Publications. It’s the second Masked Rider tale by veteran pulpster Donald Bayne Hobart, who wrote 19 Masked Rider novels, more than any other writer who contributed to the series. (Walker A. Tompkins was second with 18.) For those of you who don’t recall, the Masked Rider was more than likely inspired by/an homage to/ripped off from The Lone Ranger. He’s a good guy outlaw who wears a mask and travels with a faithful Indian companion as they drift around the West, helping folks in need, dispensing justice to owlhoot varmints, and generally adventuring. But as it turns out, the character is a lot more interesting than you might think. Unlike The Lone Ranger, who only occasionally uses disguises, the Masked Rider spends a large portion of each novel pretending to be drifting cowboy Wayne Morgan. The novels make it clear that Morgan is not the character’s true identity; he’s just as fictional as the Masked Rider himself. Somewhere in the mists of the past, the Masked Rider and his family ran afoul of injustice, and that’s why he dons a black cape and mask and sets out to right wrongs. But who he really is or what his actual background might be, we never find out. His Yaqui friend Blue Hawk, like Tonto to The Lone Ranger, is no mere sidekick. He’s an equal partner in the fight against lawlessness and is tough and smart and just as much of a badass as The Masked Rider. They’re a great team.

In “Iron Horse Gunsmoke”, Hobart gives us a nice twist in the plot. In most Western novels featuring the building of a railroad, the cattlemen are all for it since the steel rails will make it easier for them to ship their herds to market. In this novel, however, through a series of misunderstandings, as well as events manipulated by shadowy villains, the railroaders and the ranchers are mortal enemies, and it’s up to the Masked Rider to uncover what’s really going on and expose the true villains behind the violence erupting on the range. It’s a breakneck, full-tilt yarn full of shootouts, ambushes, fistfights, avalanches, and dynamite blasts. I’ve become a fan of Hobart’s work in recent years because of this high-speed pacing and his solidly written action scenes. He has a good handle on the Masked Rider and Blue Hawk, too, and the supporting characters are always colorful and interesting in a Hobart novel. I raced through this story and really enjoyed it.

Tom Gunn was a house-name used by Syl McDowell on the Sheriff Blue Steele series. Frank Gruber has also been linked to that name, but it’s likely that other Thrilling Group regulars also used it. The short story under that by-line in this issue, “Roaring Verdict”, doesn’t strike me as the work of either McDowell or Gruber. There’s really no telling who wrote this short tale of the violent confrontation between an old lawman and a cunning outlaw. It’s almost all action and well-written, but it probably could have used some sort of plot twist. Even so, it’s an entertaining story.

The issue wraps up with “That Bond of Courage”, a short story by George H. Michener, a fairly prolific but forgotten Western pulp author. It’s about the wintry clash between two sodbusters and a local cattle baron. There’s an attempted murder, a trek through a blizzard, and some unexpected redemption. This is a well-written, low-key story that comes to a satisfactory conclusion. Nothing earthshaking here, but I liked it.

Overall, this is a good issue of MASKED RIDER WESTERN MAGAZINE. The Masked Rider novel by Donald Bayne Hobart is a solidly entertaining Western adventure yarn, and it takes up most of the pages. I’m a Hobart fan and I’ve become very interested in his work, so I expect to read something else by him in the near future.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, December 1944

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my rather ragged copy in the scan. The cover art is by Sam Cherry, not one of his best, in my opinion, but still a decent cover.

Despite being called a novel on the cover, the lead story in this issue is more of a novelette. It’s “The Dude Wrangler” by William Polk. This is a contemporary Western, set on a dude ranch in West Texas during World War II. Young cowboy Tom Glenning rides in looking for a job. Tom’s family once owned the spread when it was a working cattle ranch, but when he inherited it, he lost the place because he was such a wastrel. Now he’s reformed and just looking for a job, with no hard feelings. Or so he says. It won’t take readers very long to realize that this is one of those stories where nothing is what it appears to be. And the author does a good job of spinning a highly entertaining yarn.

William Polk has ten stories listed in the Fictionmags Index. The first nine of them appeared in the Twenties and Thirties in various slick and literary magazines. “The Dude Wrangler” is the tenth story in that list, and it’s the only Western and the only pulp story. Which leads me to suspect that “William Polk” is a pseudonym, probably slapped on by a Thrilling Group editor who was unaware of the previous stories published under that byline. However, that’s pure speculation on my part. Maybe the other William Polk actually did have a pulp Western story in him. Chances are we’ll never know, and it’s a good story no matter who wrote it.

Bascom Sturgill appears to have been the real name of an author who published a dozen stories in various Western pulps during the Forties. His short-short in this issue, “Snake-Bite Justice”, is about an old prospector seeking to avenge his partner’s murder. It’s well-written, has a nice little twist in the end, and is a pretty good story.

I’ve always found the series about Alamo Paige, Pony Express rider, to be okay, some stories better than others (which is to be expected in a house-name series) but always readable. The novelette in this issue, “The Pony Express Pays Off”, finds Paige and another Pony Express rider trying to save a fortune in diamonds that will rescue the company from debt. There’s a considerable amount of action, but at the same time the story seems to meander around a lot, filling pages but not in a very compelling fashion. I’d say this is a below average entry in the series. I don’t have any idea who wrote it under the name Reeve Walker, but I did notice a couple of oddities in style that might help me identify him someday: characters have a habit of exclaiming “What in time!” and they carry their guns in “skin-holsters”.

I’ve come to be fond of the work of Archie Joscelyn, who was a prolific pulpster but wrote even more novels under his own name and several pseudonyms, most notable among them Al Cody and Lynn Westland. His story in this issue, “Out of the Horse’s Mouth”, is an entertaining tale about a circus performer who’s framed for a robbery and murder. It’s well-written, moves right along, and has just enough of a clever plot to be interesting. Joscelyn was a consistently good author.

I don’t know anything about Hal White except that he published about fifty stories in the pulps, a mixture of Westerns, air war stories, and detective yarns. His short-short in this issue, “Man on a Horse”, about an outlaw seeking revenge on a lawman, isn’t very good. I had to read the ending twice just to figure out what happened, and I wasn’t impressed when I did understand it.

Donald Bayne Hobart is another writer, like Archie Joscelyn, who was both prolific and consistently good. “Job for the Boss”, his story in this issue, is about a young cowboy trying to bring about peace between a couple of feuding old-timers, one of whom is the owner of the spread the cowboy rides for. It’s okay, reasonably entertaining but nothing more than that, and not one of the better efforts I’ve read from Hobart.

I’ve become quite a fan of the Navajo Tom Raine series, especially the novelettes written by C. William Harrison under the Jackson Cole house-name. I’m pretty sure that “Not By a Dam Site” is by Harrison, and it’s another in a run of top-notch stories that includes “Boothill Beller Box” in the previous issue and “Passport to Perdition” in the issue after this. “Not By a Dam Site”, as you’d probably guess, centers around government efforts to build a dam and flood a valley in Arizona, and the resistance to that plan from the townspeople, ranchers, and homesteaders who live in that valley. A couple of government surveyors have died under mysterious circumstances, and Arizona Ranger Tom Raine is sent in to get to the bottom of things. He does, of course, after some suitable action. However, the plot’s not quite as complex in this one and the action a bit more sparse than usual, so I wouldn’t put it in the top rank of Navajo Raine stories, but it’s still entertaining and well worth reading. Raine is an excellent character.

I’d say this is a pretty average issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN. It begins and ends very well with “The Dude Wrangler” and “Not By a Dam Site”. The stories in between are okay with the one exception, but none of them are outstanding. If you have a copy on hand, it’s worth reading, but I wouldn’t go to a lot of trouble to rustle one up.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Novels Magazine, February 1939

That looks like a Richard Lyons cover to me, but I could certainly be wrong about that. This issue of DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE has stories by some fine authors in it. The lead novella is by the always entertaining E. Hoffmann Price, and there's also a novella by Norman A. Daniels, who's almost as dependable as Price. Three short stories round out the issue. The three authors responsible for those are Donald Bayne Hobart (with an entry from his long-running series about private eye Mugs Kelly); a pulpster I haven't heard of, Avin H. Johnston, who wrote more than two dozen detective, Western, and adventure yarns for various pulps; and John L. Benton, a Thrilling Group house-name who was probably Daniels in this case but might have been Hobart. I don't own a copy of this pulp, but it looks like it would be enjoyable reading if I did.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, Fall 1944

I don’t own a copy of this pulp, but I recently read the e-book version of it published by Radio Archives. I don’t know who painted the cover. Rudolph Belarski did a lot of covers for THRILLING MYSTERY during this era, but I don’t know Belarski’s work well enough to say one way or the other. THRILLING MYSTERY was long past its Weird Menace days by 1944, but this cover looks like it could have graced a Weird Menace pulp.

Instead, by this time THRILLING MYSTERY was more of a regular detective pulp. The lead novella in this issue, “Monarchs of Murder” by C.K.M. Scanlon, is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The protagonist is Rex Parker, ace crime reporter for the New York Comet, who is also known as an amateur sleuth. It just so happens that Rex Parker was also the star of the lead novels in the pulp THE MASKED DETECTIVE, which ran from Fall 1940 through Spring 1943 for a total of twelve quarterly issues. Parker was also known as the Masked Detective in those stories, a secret identity known only to his girlfriend, fellow reporter Winnie Bligh, and his police contact, Detective Sergeant Gleason. Years ago, I read several of those Masked Detective stories that were reprinted by Tom Johnson’s Fading Shadows imprint and enjoyed all of them. I’m convinced “Monarchs of Murder” was written as a Masked Detective story, got orphaned when that pulp was canceled, and was rewritten to remove all the references to Rex Parker’s alter ego, which leads to one particularly goofy scene in which Parker dons a pair of goggles to conceal his identity, when he normally would have been wearing his mask in the original series.

The second thing I find interesting about “Monarchs of Murder” is that its authorship has been attributed to my old editor and mentor Sam Merwin Jr., who wrote at least three of the Masked Detective stories in that magazine’s run. (The main author was Norman Daniels, who wrote at least five of the original novels and probably created the character. The others were split up among Merwin, Robert Sidney Bowen, Laurence Donovan, and G.T. Fleming-Roberts.) Merwin was a consistently good writer, although he’s probably best remembered these days for his stints as the editor of various science fiction and mystery magazines. “Monarchs of Murder” finds Rex Parker battling a gang of Fifth Columnist saboteurs targeting the oil and gas industry, but the more Parker investigates, the more it appears something else may be going on. There’s plenty of action as Parker and Winnie are captured by the bad guys several different times and have to escape almost certain death. The plot moves along nicely, the clues are planted in a fair manner, and overall, this is an entertaining and satisfying wartime mystery yarn.

Next up is a novelette by an author I’ve long admired, Robert Bloch. At first glance, “Death is a Vampire” seems like it could have appeared in a Weird Menace pulp. The narrator/protagonist is a reporter, Dave Kirby, and the plot revolves around a spooky-looking house, a sinister guy with a vaguely European name (Igor Petroff), some art treasures, a beautiful blonde, a lawyer and a doctor who may be up to no good, and a supposed vampire running around killing people. But by the time the narrator makes a reference to the movie The Cat and the Canary, it’s pretty obvious that this is a prose version of a Bob Hope movie, with the wisecracking, somewhat cowardly reporter being written by Bloch with Hope in mind. It’s also a very entertaining story, a minor entry in Bloch’s career but a heck of a lot of fun. It was reprinted in the anthology TOUGH GUYS & DANGEROUS DAMES, used copies of which can be found pretty easily and inexpensively.

I think of Donald Bayne Hobart as a Western pulpster, but he wrote a lot of detective fiction, too, including nearly two dozen stories featuring private eye Mugs Kelly that ran in various Thrilling Group detective pulps. “Murder After Lunch” is a Mugs Kelly short story published in this issue, and it’s about first-person narrator Mugs returning to his office after lunch one day to find a dead guy sitting in his chair. Moments later, another guy appears to accuse him of the murder. The cops arrive, Mugs explains (in a pretty bland fashion) who really killed the victim, the end. This story went down easily enough due to Hobart’s veteran storytelling skills, but it sure wasn’t very filling.

“The Killer Was Careful” is a short-short by a forgotten pulpster named John X. Brown, who did only a few detective and air-war stories. It’s about a mild-mannered accountant who uncharacteristically murders a client and steals a bundle of cash and then has to worry about being caught. It’s the kind of twist ending “biter bit” story that would be popular in ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE a couple of decades later. I’m not a big fan of those unless they’re really well-done, and this one is just okay.

The issue wraps up with “The Spell of Death”, narrated by insurance investigator Dick Ames, who is on the trail of an embezzler when murder literally falls in his lap. It’s not a bad yarn, with what should have been an obvious clue to the murderer’s identity, but I overlooked it anyway. The author is A. Boyd Correll, a forgotten pulpster who wrote a couple of dozen detective stories for various pulps.

I enjoyed this issue. The stories by Merwin and Bloch are the stand-outs, with the others being okay but forgettable, but overall, it’s a nice, easy, entertaining read, just the sort of thing I need sometimes.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, 2nd August Number, 1955

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with an excellent Kirk Wilson cover. I wasn’t familiar with Wilson’s work until the past few years, but I really like his covers, especially the ones he did for RANCH ROMANCES.

Walker A. Tompkins wrote some of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS that were reprinted in paperback by Popular Library during the Sixties. At that point, I had no idea who was behind the house name Jackson Cole or even that it was a house name, but as it turns out, some of the books I liked the most back then were actually written by Tompkins. So I’ve been reading and enjoying his work for close to 60 years now. He leads off this issue of RANCH ROMANCES with the novella “Land-Grabber Law”. Val Shannon, a troubleshooter for a large land and cattle combine, is sent to Arizona to arrest a ranch foreman who’s been rustling from the spread he works for. (Like Steve Reese in RANGE RIDERS, Shannon is also a deputy U.S. marshal, so he can go where he wants to and arrest people.) When he gets there, though, he interrupts some wedding plans and discovers that the situation isn’t as straightforward as he thought. It also involves a romantic triangle and a land grab, hence the title, and Shannon winds up riding deep into Mexico on the trail of a runaway groom and his new bride. There are only a few action scenes in this one, but they’re well-done and the story has a nice, complex plot. Tompkins wrote quite a few of the Steve Reese novels, and I have to wonder if this story is based on an unused outline he wrote for that series. Impossible to know at this late date, and it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that in “Land-Grabber Law”, Tompkins delivers another well-written, entertaining traditional Western yarn.

Kenneth L. Sinclair is a familiar name from Western pulps. I don’t recall if I’ve read any of his work before. His story “Badman From Funnybone” is lightweight, as you’d expect from the title, but it’s not really an out-and-out comedy. A practical-joking cowboy accused of a bank robbery he didn’t commit runs into a beautiful female peddler on a one-way trail and winds up getting caught by the law because of it. The woman sets out to clear his name. As you’d expect, everything works out in the end, but the story flows along at a nice pace and the romance angle is well-handled.

Theodore J. Roemer wrote a couple of hundred Western and sports stories for various pulps from the mid-Thirties through the late Fifties. Despite him being fairly prolific, I don’t think I’ve read anything by him until now. His novelette in this issue, “Three Loves to Oregon” has a sappy title but is an excellent story. It’s about a saloon singer who wants to escape her past and does so by joining a wagon train bound for Oregon. The gambler who got her into that life comes after her, but by the time he catches up, the girl is already in a low-key romantic triangle with the wagonmaster and one of the farmers bound for a new life. With all that romance going on, there’s barely time to worry about the Pawnee war party that attacks the wagon train . . . Roemer does a great job with this setup and keeps things from bogging down in angst, which they easily could have. And not everything plays out the way I expected, which is always a bonus.

It's always nice to run into a story in a pulp by an author I’ve met. Jeanne Williams was still writing highly regarded historical novels in the Eighties and Nineties and I met her at several Western Writers of America conventions. Her story in this issue, “Rails Into Santos”, is about the clash between the construction boss and a female doctor during the construction of a railroad line in South Texas. There’s no real action, but the emotional stakes are high and the story is very well-written and satisfying.

“The Lonely Dusk” is by Donald Bayne Hobart, a long-time stalwart of the Western pulps, especially those in the Thrilling Group. He’s probably best remembered for his Masked Rider novels, a number of which were reprinted in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies. This short tale about a ranch widow and a former suitor who rides back to see her is another one that doesn’t have any real action, but again it’s well-written and the emotions of the characters are handled very well. It’s a little unusual for Hobart, but he does a good job of it.

“Galahad in Levis” is by Will Cotton, who published a couple of dozen Western and detective yarns during the Fifties. That seems to be the extent of his work. This one starts out as a lightweight tale about a hapless cowboy and a mail-order bride mix-up, but then it turns a lot darker and winds up with a surprising and very effective twist.

There’s also an installment of “Longhorn Stampede” by Philip Ketchum, which I didn’t read. This was published as a novel under the same title by Popular Library in 1956 with a cover by A. Leslie Ross. I don’t know if I have this one on my shelves or not, but Ketchum is always worth reading.

Then there are the usual features on pen pals, astrology, and movies, plus a poem and cartoon or two. Also as usual, I just glanced at those.

This issue is heavier on the romance than is common during this era of the magazine's run. Despite the title, many of the stories in RANCH ROMANCES during the Fifties were just traditional Western yarns with little or no romantic element. But romance plays a major part in every story in this issue. It’s also a really top-notch issue with the stories ranging from very good to excellent. This is one of the best pulps I’ve read in a while, and if you happen to own a copy, it’s well worth reading.

Forgotten Books: The Whistling Waddy - Donald Bayne Hobart

Donald Bayne Hobart was one of the more prolific contributors to the Western pulps in the Thrilling Group during the Thirties and Forties, but his writing career actually started with a poem sold to SNAPPY STORIES in 1919, followed by other poems sold mostly to LOVE STORY MAGAZINE during the Twenties. He didn’t publish his first Western until 1928, a short story called “The Whistling Waddy Wades In”, published in the January 14, 1928 issue of ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY. He followed this up with “The Whistling Waddy Warbles On”, in the April 7, 1928 issue of the same pulp, and then tackled a full-length Western serial with “Two-Gun Magic”, published in three consecutive issues of ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY in July 1928.

While I don’t have the actual pulps to confirm this, I’m fairly convinced that the novel THE WHISTLING WADDY, published by Chelsea House in 1928, is a fix-up of those three stories. It opens with two fairly short sections in which drifting cowboy Solitaire Stevens (also known as the Whistling Waddy because he whistles a mournful air as he’s about to go into action) battles outlaw gangs led by mysterious masterminds known as the Eagle and the Ace. Those sections come from the two short stories. Then the rest of the novel concerns Solitaire’s clash with an outlaw gang led by a mysterious mastermind known as the Chief. Clearly, Hobart liked that plot and didn’t want to let go of it.

Those first two sections aren’t particularly good. Their length works against them—the plots barely get started before a big shootout wraps everything up—and they’re full of melodramatic hokum, even by 1928 pulp standards.

But either Hobart was getting better with experience or else he needed the longer length of a serial, because the rest of THE WHISTLING WADDY is pretty good. Still melodramatic and hokey—at one point, a character leans on a bookcase and it opens up, revealing a secret chamber—but Hobart keeps things moving along nicely. There are some well-done gun battles, some creepily atmospheric scenes, some good hardboiled dialogue, a few touches of welcome humor, and a traveling salesman supporting character who functions as comedy relief but also has an impact on the plot and is better developed than most such characters. The obligatory rancher’s beautiful daughter is tougher than most and matches up well with Solitaire.

The ending is a bit of a letdown that seems to be missing one final twist, but overall, THE WHISTLING WADDY is an entertaining traditional Western. It’s very old-fashioned, though, so if you’re not already a fan of Westerns from that era, it’s probably not best to start with it. If you can put yourself in the mindset of a reader from those days, though, as I can, you’ll probably have some fun with it. It’s never been reprinted, as far as I know, but used copies are out there. I’ve owned more than one over the years. The copy I read is the one shown in the cover scan.

Chelsea House, by the way, was the book publishing arm of Street & Smith and did hardback reprints of serials and fix-up novels like this one based on stories that ran originally in various pulps. Lots of good adventure reading if you can find them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, April 1936

This issue of THRILLING WESTERN has a nice dramatic cover, probably by Richard Lyon. I'm not sure about that, but it looks like his work to me. Inside are stories by some prolific pulpsters, including Thrilling Group stalwarts Lee Bond, Syl MacDowell (with a second story under the pseudonym Tom Gunn), Donald Bayne Hobart, and "Jackson Cole" (probably either Bond or Hobart, I'd guess, since they each have a story in this issue). Plus the well-regarded Stephen Payne and a couple of authors I'm not familiar with, James W. Egan and Victor Kaufman. Looks like an entertaining issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1945

Here's an issue of THRILLING WESTERN with an action-packed cover. I don't know the artist. But the table of contents is full of Thrilling Group stalwarts: Leslie Scott with a Walt Slade novella, Syl MacDowell with a Swap and Whopper yarn, Donald Bayne Hobart, Ben Frank, Cliff Walters, and Mel Pitzer, all familiar names if you read the Western pulps published by Standard Publications. I'm not that fond of some of 'em, mind you, but I've found Scott and Hobart to always be worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Smashing Detective Stories, June 1953

Another of the Columbia pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes, and as usual, he's managed to get some good authors to mix in with others you've never heard of, and neither have I. In this issue of SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES, you've got Carroll John Daly with a Race William yarn, the prolific Western pulpster who also wrote mysteries Donald Bayne Hobart, and Hunt Collins, author of the cover story, who was really Evan Hunter. Maybe not great stuff, but I'll bet it was fun. The cover scan is from the Fictionmags Index.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, November 1946

A nice, somewhat unusual cover from Sam Cherry leads off this issue of EXCITING WESTERN, and inside are some stalwart authors, most notably W.C. Tuttle with one of his Tombstone and Speedy stories. There are also yarns by Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner) and Donald Bayne Hobart, dependable and prolific pulpsters, and a couple of house-name stories by Jackson Cole (a Navajo Tom Raine, Arizona Ranger story) and Reeve Walker (a Pony Express story). Looks like a good solid Western pulp.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, July 1947

This guy has quite a dilemma, but he seems to be handling it all right. And inside this issue of WEST you'll find a Zorro story by Johnston McCulley, a Whistling Waddy story by Donald Bayne Hobart (I've never read any of that series), and yarns by Harold Cruikshank, John A. Thompson, William O'Sullivan, and Jim Mayo, better known as Louis L'Amour.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Popular Western, September 1941

A busy but effective cover on this issue of POPULAR WESTERN, and the contents look good, too, with a Sheriff Blue Steele story by Tom Gunn (Syl McDowell), a Buffalo Billy Bates story by Scott Carleton (a house-name, so I don't know who wrote this one, although for some reason I seem to recall that Walker Tompkins wrote the Buffalo Billy Bates series), and yarns by William L. Hopson, Wayne D. Overholser, Donald Bayne Hobart, and Larry A. Harris.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, November 1933

The first issue of a fairly long-running pulp that was inspired by the success of RANCH ROMANCES. The cover is by Rafael De Soto and not surprisingly is a good one, and inside are stories by Robert Dale Denver (who was really Ray Nafziger), Allan K. Echols, Donald Bayne Hobart, Lawrence A. Keating, and Ray Nafziger again, writing under his own name this time. As you can tell by that line-up of authors, the Western romance pulps weren't that much different from the regular Western pulps.