Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, July 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by Sam Cherry and illustrates, although not with complete accuracy, a scene from the Jim Hatfield novel featured in this issue.

The last Hatfield novel by A. Leslie Scott that I read, “The Wasteland Empire”, was a mining story, with barely a mention of ranches and cattle. The one in this issue, “The Spoilers’ Trail”, is also a little unusual because it’s a railroad yarn through and through. Scott put his mining experience to good use in the previous tale, and the time he spent as a railroader gives this one an undeniable air of authenticity.

In “The Spoilers’ Trail”, Jim Hatfield, ace of the Texas Rangers, is sent in to discover who’s behind the sabotage and outright attacks plaguing the construction of a railroad line through West Texas. The C&P Railroad is run by an old friend of Hatfield’s, James G. “Jaggers” Dunn, who appears in numerous stories by Scott, sometimes as the protagonist of stories published in RAILROAD STORIES, often as a supporting character in Jim Hatfield novels. Dunn doesn’t show up until late in this one, but he’s the reason Hatfield is on the case to start with. Hatfield starts out working undercover as a railroad guard but winds up bossing most of the construction project, since in addition to being a Ranger he’s also an expert engineer.

There’s a subgenre of pulp adventure stories centered around construction projects, and this one actually fits more in that category than it does as a Western, although there are some ambushes and shootouts. Much of the plot is concerned with engineering problems, and that culminates in a long, suspenseful scene in which Hatfield and some of the workers battle to save a partially completed bridge during a flood. At one point, Hatfield and some companions are trapped underground by a cave-in (never go to the opera with Ellery Queen, or into a mine or a railroad tunnel with Jim Hatfield) and saves the day with an unusual and dramatic way of breaking out.

Scott is in top form in “The Spoilers’ Trail” even though it’s not very representative of the Hatfield series as a whole. It’s a fast-paced yarn with an interesting background, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first of three back-up short stories in this issue is “A Badman’s Dog” by Dupree Poe. A vicious outlaw murders the lawman who discovers his hideout, but he adopts a puppy that the sheriff had with him at the time of the killing. This isn’t the heart-warming tale you might expect but rather a story of justice and retribution. It also seems to be lacking a plot twist that might have made it more effective. Even so, it’s a fairly entertaining story, and I’ll venture far enough into spoiler territory to say that the dog does not die.

“The Return of Dave Kilbane” is by Walt Morey, an author I don’t recall reading before. Something about his style was a little off-putting to me at first, but I got used to it and wound up enjoying this tale of a young ex-convict returning to his hometown and his lawman father, just in time to help back his dad’s play in a showdown with three killers. The question is, will he, since his father is the one who sent him to prison? It’s an interesting moral dilemma solved by some well-done action. This isn’t a good enough story to make me run out and look for more by the author, but I liked it well enough.

I’ve been a fan of Lee Bond’s Long Sam Littlejohn stories for more than thirty years now. The one in this issue, “Long Sam Jumps the Devil”, finds the good-guy outlaw sticking his nose into someone else’s trouble, as usual, and winding up in a run-in with Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, the dogged lawman who is constantly pursuing Long Sam. In this case, Long Sam battles a notorious outlaw called El Diabolo Blanco, who dresses all in white, including a hood that conceals his identity, and saves the ranch belonging to an old friend. It occurred to me while reading this story that in some ways, the Long Sam Littlejohn series isn’t very well-written. The plots are extremely formulaic, and the characters have a habit of standing around and discussing things they already know, just so the reader will be filled in on what’s going on. Those flaws aside, though, I still really like this series and I’ve never read one that I didn’t enjoy. Long Sam is a great character, and Bond has a sure hand with the action scenes. Every time I read one, I’m tempted to write a Long Sam Littlejohn story of my own. Maybe one of these days.

Overall, this is another very solid issue of TEXAS RANGERS, and I’m glad I took it down from the shelf to read it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, March 1950

Another dramatic cover by Arnold Kohn graces this issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN. The most well-known author inside is probably H.A. DeRosso, although there's also a Richard Brister story. The lead novel, "The Heiress of Copper Butte", was published under the name Guy Archette, normally a pseudonym for Ziff-Davis regular Chester S. Geier, but this one was actually written by Paul W. Fairman, then expanded and reprinted under his name in paperback at least twice, first by Handi-Books (an edition I own but haven't read) and then Lancer. Also in this issue are stories by Dupree Poe, Francis M. Deegan, Bill Kirk, W.P. Brothers, and Clint Young. I've never considered MAMMOTH WESTERN one of the top Western pulps, but there are still some good stories in its pages.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, June 1946

An ominous cover by Sam Cherry graces this issue of WEST, which includes a Zorro story by Johnston McCulley and a novella by Paul Evan Lehman. Other authors on hand are Dupree Poe (writing as Roger Rhodes), Larry Harris, and Hal White, a prolific but little remembered author whose career lasted from the mid-Twenties to the early Fifties and included Westerns, detective stories, and dozens of aviation yarns.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, March 1950

An interesting cover by an unknown artist. The shadow almost makes the guy look like he's wearing a mask. And of course, this cover is further evidence that no poker game in the Old West ever ended peacefully. I also find it curious that a story by Harry C. Rubicam Jr. gets such prominent treatment when ol' Harry, whoever he was, apparently only published one other story in his career, also in WEST a couple of years earlier. He wrote a few non-fiction books and at least one Western novel, but this issue also includes stories by Johnston McCulley, Allen K. Echols, Richard Brister, and Dupree Poe, and if I was the editor I would have put any of them on the cover ahead of Rubicam. Barry Scobee is on the cover and was a top-notch pulpster, so I agree with that editorial decision. Anyway, it's an eye-catching cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 5 Western Novels Magazine, January 1950

See, that's why I don't like to shave. It gives them dern bushwhackers a chance to sneak up on yuh! But I do like this cover painted by Joseph Dreany. 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE was mostly a reprint pulp. All five of the lead novelettes in this issue were publishing originally in THRILLING WESTERN and THRILLING RANCH STORIES during the Thirties. But with a line-up of authors like Ray Nafziger, Lee Bond, T.W. Ford, Larry Harris, and whoever wrote the story as Jackson Cole, I wouldn't mind the reprints. There are also three short stories, evidently new, by Noel Loomis, Dupree Poe, and John C. Ropke.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, September 1950

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is from my copy. I don’t know who the artist is, but if you check the lower right corner, you’ll see that this is an Injury to a Hat cover. I’ve been reading issues of THRILLING WESTERN for years now and always enjoy them, although there are usually one or two stories in each issue I don’t care for.

This issue leads off (as most issues from 1940 to 1950 did) with a Walt Slade, Texas Ranger story by Bradford Scott, who was really the highly prolific and distinctive A. Leslie Scott. “The Sky Riders” is one of the last stories in the pulp series. There would be only two more after it. But a few years later Scott began writing paperback novels for Pyramid Books featuring the Walt Slade character, mostly originals but some expansions from pulp yarns. That paperback series ran even longer, all the way into the early Seventies. There’s a Walt Slade novel from 1968 called THE SKY RIDERS, and while I haven’t read it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s an expansion of this pulp novella.

This one opens with a very evocation scene involving a killing on a high natural bridge running between two sides of a canyon. Scott always wrote good action scenes and good descriptions of the settings, and both of those elements are on display here. Walt Slade, an undercover Texas Ranger who most folks believe to be the notorious outlaw El Halcon (The Hawk), witnesses that shooting, and his investigation plunges him into the hunt for a gang of owlhoots known as the Sky Riders because they’re usually spotted riding along some rimrock, silhouetted against the sky.

Anybody who’s read more than one or two Walt Slade yarns will know exactly what’s going on in this story and will pick out the hidden mastermind of the outlaws with no trouble. The geography of the region plays a big part in the plot, as it often does in Scott’s stories, and he handles it very well, resulting in some vivid scenes. Sure, the whole thing is formulaic, but I always enjoy Scott’s work anyway. It’s pure comfort reading for me.

I have the opposite reaction to the Swap and Whopper series by Syl MacDowell, which ran even longer than the Walt Slade series, starting in 1939 and continuing until 1952. Slapstick Westerns are a hard sell for me to start with. The Swap and Whopper stories feature a couple of saddle tramps, one tall and skinny, the other short and fat, who always wind up in bizarre situations. Part Mutt and Jeff, part Abbott and Costello, and well written enough by old pro Syl MacDowell, but dang, this series just doesn’t work for me. I’ve started dozens of them and finished only a few. The one in this issue, “The Talking Bear”, is not one that I finished.

Nels Leroy Jorgensen wrote scores of stories during a pulp career that lasted approximately thirty years, from the early Twenties to the early Fifties. He turned out detective, aviation, adventure, and war stories in addition to Westerns. I first became aware of him as a Western writer but later discovered that his work appeared frequently in BLACK MASK during the Twenties and Thirties, most notably with a series about a gambler named Black Burton (a series that wound up in BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE during the Forties). Jorgensen’s novelette in this issue, “Gunstorm on the Wagon Trail”, has a good title and the plot, about a couple of guys who own a freight company trying to get a wagon train full of badly needed supplies (including medicine) through a gauntlet of Mexican bandidos and Apache renegades, is interesting as well. I thought the actual writing was pretty bland, though, with lots of long paragraphs of the protagonist thinking about what’s going on. I finished the story, but it never really caught my interest much.

I’ve never read a story by Johnston McCulley that I didn’t like, and “Agency Injun” continues that streak. It’s a minor yarn about a cavalryman trying to prove that a friendly Indian didn’t commit a murder at an army post, but McCulley tells it well. This one has an illustration by the great Nick Eggenhoffer, too, which certainly doesn’t hurt anything.

I read a story by L. Kenneth Brent in an issue of THRILLING WESTERN last year and enjoyed it. His tale in this issue, “Gunsmoke Freeze-Out”, is even better. It’s a “small rancher vs. cattle baron” story, with the added complication that a rustler the small rancher testified against in court has gotten out of prison and is coming back to try to kill him. It’s a standard plot, but Brent’s writing is good and he creates some genuine suspense along the way. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of his stories.

Like Nels Leroy Jorgensen, Harold F. Cruickshank had a pulp career that lasted from the Twenties to the Fifties. During that time he wrote several hundred stories, specializing during the first part of his career in war and air war stories before branching out into Westerns and sports yarns. He was a highly regarded air war writer, but I haven’t read any of those stories. In Westerns, he had a long-running back-up series in RANGE RIDERS WESTERNS about the settlers in Sun Bear Valley. I’ve read some of these (also known as the Pioneer Folk series) but never cared much for them. His novelette in this issue, “Branch Line to Hell”, is a stand-alone about a railroad surveyor who’s trying to survey a spur line over the opposition of a ruthless local cattle baron. It’s a good title, but unfortunately that’s the best thing about this story. Cruickshank’s writing just doesn’t appeal to me, and all the technical details of surveying and railroad construction are just confusing, so I wasn’t quite sure what was going on some of the time. I think maybe I’ve read enough of Cruickshank’s work, although I am still curious about his air war stories.

So far this issue of THRILLING WESTERN is batting .500. I’ve liked three of the stories and disliked the other three. But there are four short stories left.

I don’t know anything about Dupree Poe except that I’ve seen his name in various Western pulps. He sold several dozen stories to the Thrilling Group in the late Forties and early Fifties, along with a few to MAMMOTH WESTERN and the Ace Western pulps, WESTERN ACES and WESTERN TRAILS. His story “Hangman’s Tree” in this issue is a little unusual for the era in that the plot revolves around a rancher’s suspicion that his wife is having an affair with an outlaw who’s hiding out on the ranch and pretending to be a cowhand. This sets off a string of events that include a lynching, a visit by another outlaw, and the rancher’s near death in quicksand. (Quicksand, of course, is one of the things that improve any story, and if the greatly missed Bill Crider was still with us, I have a hunch he would agree.) Anyway, there’s also a good dog in this story, and that helps, too. “Hangman’s Tree” is almost too grim, but I wound up thinking that it’s a decent story.

Ben Frank is the pseudonym of Frank Bennett, an author who wrote under his real name for both the pulps and the slicks in the Forties and Fifties. He was more prolific as Ben Frank and is best remembered for a back-up series that appeared in many issues of TEXAS RANGERS featuring a cagey old-timer known as Doc Swap. He also wrote a comical Western about a deputy named Boo-Boo Bounce. As I mentioned above, with a few exceptions (Robert E. Howard and W.C. Tuttle come to mind), I’m not much of a fan of comedy Westerns. I don’t care for the Boo-Boo Bounce stories at all. The Doc Swap yarns are at least readable because they’re usually well-plotted. Frank’s stand-alone story in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN, “One Man Justice” features another old-timer and his attempt to bring to justice the man who tried to murder his son-in-law. This isn’t a comedy; Frank plays it completely straight and gives the tale a nice hardboiled, suspenseful tone, as well as a twist or two. This one took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting to like it, but I did, quite a bit.

Robert J. Hogan was the author of G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES, of course, along with a lot of other air war stories, but he also wrote a considerable number of Westerns. His story in this issue, “Badge for a Bandit”, uses the old plot of an outlaw trying to go straight. In this case, the young man has even become a deputy, but then his old gang shows up intending to rob the bank. I generally enjoy Hogan’s stories, but I never could work up much interest in this one.

The final story is “Heading Into Trouble”, a short, simple yarn about a bank messenger, a stagecoach driver, and a shotgun guard trying to get a stagecoach carrying a lot of money through a gauntlet of outlaws. It’s almost non-stop action, which is good, and the writing is okay. The by-line is the house-name Jackson Cole, which was often used when an author had more than one story in an issue. In this case, though, the style doesn’t strike me as being similar to any of the other authors in this issue. In fact, it reminded me of the work of Charles S. Strong, an editor at the Thrilling Group who wrote Western fiction under the name Chuck Stanley as well as detective and adventure yarns under his own name. That’s just a guess on my part, however. It could have been someone else who wrote “Heading Into Trouble”. Whoever did, I thought it was an okay story.

Overall, I’d say this is a below average issue of THRILLING WESTERN. The two best stories are the Walt Slade novella and Ben Frank’s story, and there are several I don’t think are very good at all. But considering the sheer number of Western pulps published, they can’t all be great. I’m confident that I’ll have better luck the next time I take one off the shelf.