Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novel and Short Stories, July 1937

On this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES, J.W. Scott gives us his version of the Iconic Trio: the Stalwart Cowboy, the Gun-totin' Redhead, and the Old Geezer. The Old Geezer is tied up instead of wounded, and the Redhead doesn't look particularly angry, but the Cowboy is definitely stalwart and wearing a red shirt, to boot. (Red shirts on Western pulp covers don't have the same meaning as red shirts on STAR TREK, by the way.) A fine bunch of writers can be found inside this issue, too: Eugene Cunningham, Harry Sinclair Drago, Larry A. Harris, Raymond S. Spears, and Ken Jason, a house-name but usually used by one of the top authors. I don't own this one, but it looks like a top-notch Western pulp that's probably well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, January 1928

Now that is one suspicious-looking hombre. Don't reckon I'd trust him at all. But he gives us an eye-catching cover by H.C. Murphy Jr. There are some fine authors in this issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE, led by Eugene Cunningham with two entries, one a short story and the other an installment of a serial, plus Walt Coburn, S. Omar Barker, and Galen C. Colin. I'm not familiar with Jack Smalley, the author of the cover-featured story, or E.L. Marks, U. Stanley Aultman, and Charles Penvir Gordon, who wrote the other stories in this issue. But Cunningham, Coburn, and Barker are more than enough to make me figure this one would be worth reading if I had a copy. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, April 1935

This issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE sports a nice dramatic cover by Emery Clarke (who also did a bunch of Doc Savage covers in the late Thirties and early Forties) and a really strong group of authors inside. There are stories by Walt Coburn, Eugene Cunningham, James P. Olsen, Bennett Foster, Richard Wormser, Ralph Condon, house-name John Starr, and Fred J. Jackson, unknown to me but who wrote hundreds of stories in a career that lasted from 1906 to 1937. That's a good long run! Coburn, Cunningham, and Olsen are favorites of mine and Foster and Wormser were dependable pulpsters, as well. Plenty of good reading in this issue, I'll bet.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, December 1934

I'm not a big fan of artist Fred Craft, but I'll admit that his cover for this early issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE is pretty dynamic. And the line-up of authors in this issue can't be beat: Walt Coburn, Eugene Cunningham, Tom Roan, Richard Wormser, James P. Olsen, C.K. Shaw, Archie Joscelyn, and house-name John Starr. Lots of good reading there, I'll bet.

Forgotten Books: Whistling Lead - Eugene Cunningham

Eugene Cunningham is one of my favorite Western writers, but it had been a while since I read anything by him, so I decided to remedy that. WHISTLING LEAD was publlshed in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin in 1936 and reprinted in paperback by Signet in 1949, the edition I read. (A first printing, by the way.) It’s dedicated to John F. Byrne, an editor at Fiction House during the era when Cunningham was selling a great deal to the pulps they published. Some of his novels are cobbled together from pulp novellas and novelettes, but if that’s the case with WHISTLING LEAD, I haven’t found anything to indicate that. Although it’s pretty episodic, it reads as if it were written as a novel.

The plot is fairly simple: Arthur “Big” Gavity is a drifting cowhand who works for a Texas rancher. He falls in love with the rancher’s beautiful daughter, but the rancher opposes any such match. He’s also ambitious and wants to make his mark as a businessman, so in order to do that, and to get his daughter away from Gavity, he moves to La Fe, a cattletown that’s poised to become a boomtown because a railroad spur is being built to it. The problem is, Gavity quits his job on the ranch and follows them to La Fe.

This is actually back-story. The novel begins with Gavity on his way to La Fe and fills in the background as it goes along. Of course, as soon as Gavity arrives in the settlement, he runs into trouble, but he’s very handy with guns and his fists, and he soon comes to the attention of the mayor, who offers him the job of town marshal since the previous marshal was just shot down by a slick tinhorn gambler. Thinking that being a lawman might win him the favor of the father of the girl he loves, Gavity accepts . . . and not surprisingly, more trouble ensues as the bad element in town tries numerous times to get rid of him and he has to break up a gang of outlaws plaguing the area.

Cunningham has a distinctive—some might say eccentric—style that takes some getting used to, but once you get into the flow of the story, it’s very effective. The tone in this novel switches between breezy, light-hearted romantic comedy to brutal, bloody violence and tragedy with such regularity and swiftness that reading it is almost like watching a tennis match, the reader’s head jerks back and forth so much. With some writers, that would be very jarring, but Cunningham really makes it work. There’s nothing unusual about the plot, but as always, it’s how an author handles a traditional plot that makes it appealing. Cunningham does a fine job of that, and as a bonus, he writes great action scenes.

Although the story is a little fanciful, there’s an undeniable air of authenticity about Cunningham’s work. Like Walt Coburn, he was a working cowboy as a young man, and as you can tell from the photograph of him on the back cover of the paperback edition, he certainly looks the part. I’ve seen Cunningham compared to Dashiell Hammett, and there’s some merit to that theory. He was the first of the really hardboiled Western writers, and WHISTLING LEAD bears some resemblance to RED HARVEST, although I guess to some extent most “town tamer” Westerns do. It’s probably even more appropriate to compare him to Carroll John Daly, although I think Cunningham is a better writer than Daly (and Daly is better than he usually gets credit for).

At any rate, WHISTLING LEAD is an excellent novel, and since it’s not tied in with any of Cunningham’s other novels, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start if you haven’t read his books. I enjoyed it and think it’s well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, June 1934

I think this is a very dramatic and effective cover by Rudolph Belarski on this issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE. "Real Cowboy Stories by Real Cowboys", the cover copy says. I'm not sure that's 100% true of all the authors in this issue. Walt Coburn and Eugene Cunningham certainly did some cowboying when they were young. I think Stephen Payne may have, too. I don't have any idea about James P. Olsen, Bruce Douglas, Hubert Roussel, or Ralph Condon. And John Starr was a house-name, so I'm pretty sure he never forked a bronc. Whoever really wrote the story attributed to him in this issue may have, though. Real cowboys or not, I think this looks like a fine issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, December 1935

That's a pretty dynamic cover by Emery Clarke on this issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE. There are some really excellent writers to be found inside, too: Walt Coburn, Eugene Cunningham, Frederick C. Davis, James P. Olsen, and Theodore A. Tinsley all have stories in this issue, as well as lesser known authors Ralph Condon and Edgar L. Cooper, plus house-name John Starr, who could be any of those guys if you go by the theory that house-names were used when a writer had more than one story in an issue. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that in this case, Starr is probably Olsen or Tinsley, both prolific pulpsters, or possibly Davis. Coburn and Cunningham were big names and an editor wouldn't have wanted to waste a story from either of them by putting a house-name on it. But all that's just speculation on my part. I love the title of Cunningham's yarn, "The Gun-Girl of Murder Mesa".

Forgotten Books: The Ranger Way - Eugene Cunningham

Eugene Cunningham's books are always worth reading, and THE RANGER WAY is no exception. You can see the plot in the back cover copy above, and the style is Cunningham's usual distinctive, hardboiled prose. However, THE RANGER WAY is a little on the mild side for a Cunningham novel. I believe there are only ten deaths in the entire book, and nine of those take place in the second half, two of them off-screen. Cunningham is notorious for the amount of powder burned and blood spilled in his yarns, so if you've never read his work, this one might not be the best place to start. But if you're already a Cunningham fan, it's quite enjoyable, if not in the top rank of his books.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Star Detective, March 1937

Nice cover on this issue of STAR DETECTIVE. I don't know who the artist is. But inside are stories by three very dependable authors--Richard Sale, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham--plus others by authors I'm not familiar with. N.V. Romero, who contributed the featured story "The X-Man", has only that one credit in the Fictionmags Index, which leads me to think it may well have been a pseudonym. John Mallory and Richard Werner are totally unknown to me, and James Hall was a house-name. Still, this looks like a pretty good issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western, November 1937

Did any stagecoaches in the Western pulps ever get where they were going without being attacked by bad guys? Judging by the covers, the answer is no. Here's more evidence on the cover of the November 1937 issue of REAL WESTERN. The art looks like the work of H.W. Scott to me, but I could be 'way off about that. Inside are stories by Eugene Cunningham, William Patterson White, Jack Bertin, and someone named Frank Cox, who published only a handful of stories in the late Thirties. Jack Bertin has an interesting background. According to the Fictionmags Index, his real name was Giovanni Bertignono. He published several dozen Westerns and a few detective and science fiction stories in the decade between 1928 and 1938. I seem to remember that he was also the uncle of the much more prolific Peter Germano, best remembered under the pseudonym Barry Cord, but I could be wrong about that. There's some connection, though, because Germano is credited with writing two science fiction novels in 1970 that were published under the name Jack Bertin, possibly based on outlines written by Bertignono. I have a copy of at least one of those and ought to read it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, July 1935

THRILLING RANCH STORIES always had action-packed covers. It was meant as a competitor to RANCH ROMANCES, but other than the presence of a woman on the covers (usually ridin' or shootin' right alongside the stalwart cowboy hero), it looks more like a regular Western pulp with the emphasis on adventure. I particularly like this cover, but I don't know who the artist is. Inside this issue are stories by some top Western pulpsters: Eugene Cunningham, Leslie Scott writing as A. Leslie, Lee Bond, Stephen Payne, George M. Johnson, and a couple of house-names, Jackson Cole and Sam Brant. There's also a story by a female author, Zaida Packard, but it seems to have been her only Western pulp yarn.

The Wrap Up

This was a rough year personally in a lot of ways, and I’m sure hoping that 2018 will be an improvement, but the reading and the writing rolled on, as they have for decades now. That’s what I’m here to talk about today.

READING

I read 117 books this year, a slight increase from last year. Here are my Top Ten favorites, in the order in which I read them.

RIDERS OF THE NIGHT, Eugene Cunningham

FLASH CASEY—DETECTIVE, George Harmon Cose

LEO MARGULIES: GIANT OF THE PULPS, Philip Sherman

NEVER SAY NO TO A KILLER, Clifton Adams

THE LOST END OF NOWHERE, Gordon MacCreagh

SAY IT WAS MURDER, Stephen Mertz

KISS AND KILL, Richard Deming

AVALANCHE!, E.S. Dellinger

PLAY A COLD HAND, Terence Faherty

THE ART OF THE PULPS, Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse, Robert Weinberg, eds.

If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll note that my blog posts for a couple of these haven’t shown up yet, but they will soon. Also, one of them, SAY IT WAS MURDER by Stephen Mertz, hasn’t been published yet, but it’ll be out next spring from Rough Edges Press. Remember the title (like I’d let you forget!) because it’s a great private eye novel.

The older I get, the more I seem to retreat into the pulp era. Four of the books listed above first appeared in the pulps, and two more are about the pulps, at least partially in the case of the Margulies bio. But four of them are also new books, appearing for the first time in 2017, so I’m not a complete fossil yet. Still, more than a fourth of the books I read this year were either pulps, pulp reprints, or pulp-related. Another fourth were what I would consider vintage paperbacks or hardbacks. So I’m definitely beating ceaselessly into the past, boats against the current.

WRITING

I wrote a million words again this year, for the 13^th straight year. I have a tentative plan to try to hit a million two more times, then semi-retire and write about half a million words a year from then on. (I know, I know, we’ve all heard this before . . .) I spent enough years as a semi-starving freelancer that it’s difficult to turn down work, but I’ve begun to do that now and then. The million words this year included eight solo novels, six collaborations, and sizable chunks of two more novels. No short fiction at all in 2017, and only one of the novels, which probably won’t be out for a while, will have my name on it. But I haven’t worried about that in forty years and don’t intend to start now, as long as I can continue fooling everybody into believing I know what I’m doing and don’t have to take an honest job. I’m ’way too old for that. Many thanks to everyone involved in saving me from that terrible fate, from the editors and agents to the readers to Livia, Shayna, and Joanna, who make it all possible to start with.

I don’t make resolutions, but I have the vague hope that I’ll have more time to read, watch TV and movies, and just generally enjoy life. I plan to attend Robert E. Howard Days in June, I may make it to a science fiction convention or two, and I’ll definitely continue going to hockey games when I can. (I’ve become a big hockey fan and have been known to pontificate about games that I’m watching, based on my vast experience of two whole years as a spectator and never having been on ice skates in my life . . .) The blog will continue, the WesternPulps group will continue (until Yahoo pulls the plug on all the groups, which I remain convinced they will, sooner or later), and I’m sure I’ll still spend too much time on Facebook. To all of you out there who make this stuff fun, my very best wishes and the hope that 2018 is kind to you.

Forgotten Books: Riders of the Night - Eugene Cunningham

RIDERS OF THE NIGHT, from 1932, was Eugene Cunningham's second published novel, although some of the ones that came out later actually predate it since they were fix-ups of linked novellas originally appearing in various pulps. As far as I can tell, RIDERS OF THE NIGHT was written as a novel. It's the story of young Burk Yates, who returns from college in the East to the Texas ranch where he grew up. The ranch was started by Burk's father and his partner Duke Yarborough, both of whom are now dead. Ownership of the ranch is shared between Burk and Yarborough's beautiful daughter Myra, who has fallen for neighboring rancher Lance Gregg. A bunch of outlaws known as the One Gang has been rustling stock from the ranch as well as holding up stagecoaches and trains and generally raising hell throughout the area. In fact, the novel opens with a very sinister and atmospheric scene in which the gang lynches two men, leaving them dangling from a corral gate.

Anyone who's read or watched very many Westerns will have a pretty good idea of everything that's going to happen in this novel, although the final showdown between Burk Yates and the "mysterious" mastermind behind the One Gang plays out differently than I expected. The predictability of the plot does hurt RIDERS OF THE NIGHT a little, but it's still worth reading because of Cunningham's distinctive hardboiled style, the great action scenes, the introduction of Mexican/Navajo gunfighter Chihuahua Joe, a recurring character in Cunningham's work who serves as sidekick to a number of different heroes, and a raft of other colorful characters including, yes, a saloon girl with a heart of gold. I had a fine time reading it.

By the way, someone has tallied the number of killings in this book and come up with 75. I've read that in some of Cunningham's novels there are as many as 300 deaths. His reputation as one of the most violent of the early Western authors appears to be well-deserved.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story, May 1941

An issue of LARIAT STORY with a good cover and stories by a couple of my favorite authors, Walt Coburn and Eugene Cunningham, plus other yarns by prolific and well-respected Western pulpsters Art Lawson and Dee Linford. There's a story by John Starr, too, but that was a house-name so there's no telling who wrote it.

Forgotten Books: Trails West - Eugene Cunningham

That's about as generic a title and bland a cover as you're ever likely to see. Ah, but inside are nine stories by Eugene Cunningham that originally appeared in FRONTIER STORIES in 1927 and '28. Generic they may be, in the technical sense of the word ("characteristic of or relating to a class or group of things"), but not bland by any stretch of the imagination. Instead they're colorful, action-packed, and very entertaining.

The hero of these yarns is a young Texas Ranger named Stephen Ware, often referred to rather awkwardly in the first few stories as "Ware's Kid", since his father Bill Ware was also a Texas Ranger. In the course of these tales, Ware justifies his admission into the Rangers by rescuing the kidnapped daughter of a rancher; tracks down a fugitive killer, then decides the man is innocent and sets out to find the real murderer; tames a couple of wild towns; rounds up some horse thieves; crosses the border into Mexico to capture an outlaw; solves some stagecoach robberies; and even resolves a domestic drama (with bank robbery added). Ware isn't the most nuanced character, but his adventures sure are fun.

For me, the key to Cunningham's appeal (along with his fast-moving prose and hardboiled attitude) is the authenticity of his work. Like Walt Coburn, he was writing about a time and place that was within the memory of people they knew as youngsters. The Wild West was only a generation removed from the early pulp writers, if that. Some of the plots may be exaggerated for dramatic effect; the setting and the attitudes of the characters aren't. I've become a Eugene Cunningham fan late in my pulp-reading career, but I really enjoy his work and TRAILS WEST gets a high recommendation from me.

Here are the stories and their original appearances in FRONTIER STORIES:
"Beginner's Luck", February 1927
"The Hermit of Tigerhead Butte", March 1927
"Wanted—?", May 1927
"The Hammer Thumb", June 1927
"The Trail of a Fool", July 1927
"The Ranger Way", August 1927
"Blotting the Triangle", September 1927
"Ware Calls It a Day", October 1927
"Spiderweb Trail", January 1928

There's also a fine biographical introduction by Cunningham's daughter, Murney Cunningham Call. This is a volume well worth having if you’re a pulp Western fan.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, September 1940

The September 1940 issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE sports a typically great, action-packed cover by Norman Saunders, and the contents are pretty impressive, too: stories by Walt Coburn, Eugene Cunningham, James P. Olsen, Rollin Brown, Foster-Harris, and house-names Bart Cassidy and John Starr. An issue well worth reading, no doubt.

Forgotten Books: Pistol Passport - Eugene Cunningham

Years ago I came across a mention of a series of stories by Eugene Cunningham about a former Texas Ranger forced to turn outlaw when he’s framed for murder. These appeared in FRONTIER STORIES and ACTION STORIES. I thought at the time they sounded like a prime candidate for reprinting, and as it turns out, some of them were, in somewhat different form. At least I think so.

Cunningham’s novel PISTOL PASSPORT was published in 1936. It opens with a former Texas Ranger named Steve Drago being convicted of murder for what was really a fair fight with a member of the opposing clan in one of those famous Texas feuds. Drago escapes from custody and tries to make it across the border into Mexico, but he winds up being sidetracked to the Taunton Basin in West Texas where there’s a range war going on between two factions, both of which are pretty bad. All the other ranchers in the basin are caught in the middle of this violent clash, including a beautiful young blonde who’s trying to run the family ranch with the dubious help of her ne’er-do-well brother. Drago, being a former lawman and a deadly gunfighter, naturally sides with the underdogs and pulls a RED HARVEST by playing the two bunches of bad guys against each other.

This results in a fine Western novel. Cunningham wrote great action scenes that are more graphic and hardboiled than most of what appeared in the Western pulps during the Twenties and Thirties. Having been a Texas cowboy himself, his descriptions of the range and of ranch life have the unmistakable ring of authenticity. The action may be over the top, but at least it’s grounded in reality. He also has a tin ear for dialogue at times, but mostly it’s very good. His style is just offbeat enough that I used to find it a little distracting, but once you get into the flow of his writing, it really sweeps you along.

Now, as for the connection between this novel and the Gip Drago pulp stories . . . In the December 1931 of FRONTIER STORIES, Cunningham published a novella entitled “Pistol Passport”. In the next three issues, more Cunningham novellas appeared. I don’t have a scan of the cover for December '31, but the cover of the next one features Cunningham’s novella “High Stakes” and clearly calls it “Another Gip Drago Novel of the Range”, meaning that it wasn’t the first in the series. I think “Pistol Passport” was, and that the next two stories, “The Leather Slapper” and “Riding Gun” were also part of the series. Then, according to the Fictionmags Index, the Gip Drago series ends until 1935, when it resumes in the pages of ACTION STORIES.

Now, having read the novel PISTOL PASSPORT, it’s a fairly seamless narrative, but the plot is just episodic enough to make me believe that Cunninghan rewrote those first four Gip Drago novellas into this novel featuring the renamed protagonist Steve Drago. (Sort of the way Hammett did with RED HARVEST, to go back to that.) If that’s actually the case, it makes me wonder about those later Gip Drago stories, since the ending of the novel wraps things up pretty neatly and doesn’t leave much room for a sequel. But of course, being an inventive pulp writer, Cunningham could find a way. I still hope somebody will reprint those later stories. I really enjoyed PISTOL PASSPORT and give it a high recommendation for fans of the Western pulps and hardboiled, traditional Western novels.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Magazine, May 15, 1928

This scan comes from David Lee Smith. TOP-NOTCH published some good fiction, although I've never considered it one of the top tier of pulps (despite its name). I don't recognize the names of any of the authors in this issue except Eugene Cunningham, but I'm sure most of the stories are pretty good. And that's a nice, action-packed cover. No idea who the artist was.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, March 1, 1935

The March 1, 1935 issue of ADVENTURE, which I own thanks to Scott Cupp, starts off with one of the magazine’s most iconic covers, the great sailor-and-monkey cover by Walter Baumhofer. The scan, as usual with pulps that own, is from the actual issue I read.

The lead story, which ADVENTURE bills as a novelette but is more like a 40,000 word short novel, is “The Loot of Santana”, a wonderful yarn by one of my favorites, W.C. Tuttle, featuring his best characters, range detectives Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens. They show up right away in this one (often Tuttle holds off on introducing them until later in the story), and no sooner do they ride onto the page than they discover the body of a murdered cowboy in a corral that’s supposed to hold a herd of horses. The horses are gone, of course, no doubt stolen by the same owlhoots who murdered the cowboy. Hashknife can’t pass up a mystery, so he and Sleepy soon find themselves mixed up in a complex plot involving a Romeo-and-Juliet-type of romance, the threat of a sheep empire moving in on a valley full of cattle ranches, a sinister roadhouse below the border, a bank robbery, and several more murders. Nobody can accuse Tuttle of not packing plenty of plot into his stories! When you read enough Hashknife stories they become a little formulaic, but it’s a great formula and nobody ever did it better than Tuttle. I had an absolutely great time reading this one.

Sadly, the quality of this issue takes a bit of a nosedive after that. The next two stories are pretty bland. Perry Adams’ “A Contract in Kabul” is about an American and a Scotsman trying to escape from Afghanistan when the Afghans are on the brink of going to war against the English. Maybe Robert E. Howard’s El Borak stories have spoiled me for stuff like this, but Adams’ story never generated much excitement for me. Edgar Piper’s “Down Hell’s Gullet” has a good title, but its plot about a ship’s captain trying to eliminate the use of snuff among his crew didn’t do much for me. There’s other man-against-the-elements stuff going on, but it didn’t hold my interest.

Next up is Part 2 of a 4-part serial by Hugh Pendexter, “The Woods-Runner”. It’s probably pretty good, but I generally don’t read serial installments unless I have the whole thing, so I skipped this one.

Things take a considerable turn for the better with Eugene Cunningham’s short story “The Red Mare”. Cunningham is best known for his Westerns, of course, but this story is set in 17^th Century England and is about a notorious highwayman, an eloping noblewoman, some schemers, and the magnificent horse of the title. Actually, this one would have worked just as well as a Western, but the setting makes for a refreshing difference.

Rounding out the issue is “Tyrannical and Capricious Conduct” by Roy Churchill, another nautical story about a tough boatswain’s mate and an incompetent young sailor who turns out to have a secret. It’s not the sort of story that immediately grabs my attention, but the ending is okay.

So this issue of ADVENTURE is a bit of a mixed bag: a classic cover, an excellent short novel by Tuttle, a very good story by Cunningham, and the rest of the contents not very impressive (with the caveat that I didn’t read the Pendexter serial installment; it’s probably pretty good, too, given Pendexter’s reputation). It’s certainly an issue worth having for its good points.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Star Adventure Fiction, May 1936

There's almost an all-star line-up of writers to go with that action-packed cover on this issue of ALL STAR ADVENTURE FICTION. Stories by Hugh Pendexter, J. Allan Dunn, Frank Richardson Pierce, Eugene Cunningham, and Anthony M. Rud, among others. Prolific, long-time, well-respected pulpsters, each and every one.