This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy
in the scan, complete with a good Sam Cherry cover as usual for this era.
The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “Panhandle Freight”, is an interesting one
for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, though, it’s a good solid story
that finds Hatfield getting mixed up in a war between two freighting companies
in the Texas Panhandle. Settling that trouble isn’t actually his assignment, as
it usually is when he wades into a case. Instead, he’s on the trail of an
outlaw he’s followed across Texas, and that hardcase has gone to work for the
villainous freight line owner who plans to wipe out his competition. That’s
what draws Hatfield into the trouble, and when he finds out a young woman has
been kidnapped, he’s not going to stop until he puts things right. There’s no
mystery in this one about who the main bad guy is—the reader knows right away.
But that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment as we get a shootout at a
waterhole, assorted bushwhackings and fistfights, a big fire, a stagecoach
holdup, and a final showdown in which Hatfield and a young freighter who serves
as sort of a proxy hero take on the whole gang. It’s traditional stuff, but
done very well.
For a long time, this novel was attributed to D.B. Newton. I forget why Newton’s
name was attached to it, possibly because of payment records from the August
Lenniger Literary Agency. Newton is listed as the author of four Hatfield
novels in the Fictionmags Index, including this one. But the manuscript of it
is known to be in the collection of Tompkins’ papers at the University of
California-Santa Barbara, so it seems pretty safe to say that he wrote it.
Having read it now, I’m even more confident of Tompkins’ authorship. It reads
just like his work with plenty of well-done action scenes and an abundance of
hyphenated words, his most distinctive stylistic tag. Establishing that it is
Tompkins’ work and not Newton’s is one of the reasons I find it interesting.
The other is that I was reading along in it and suddenly Anita Robertson shows
up! Anita Robertson, for those of you not familiar with her, is a beautiful
young woman who lives in Austin with her teenage brother Buck. She was added to
the series in the mid-Forties presumably in response to the numerous letters to
the editor asking that “Jackson Cole” give Hatfield a steady girlfriend. Anita
and Buck appear in a dozen or so novels written by Tom Curry. Usually, Anita is
in the story only very briefly, just there long enough for a quick kiss and a
paragraph about how Hatfield can’t marry her until he gives up his dangerous work
as a Ranger. Then Buck tags along with Hatfield as a sidekick on his latest
case. The readers apparently didn’t like them, although the editors printed a
few letters in support of them, but they vanished after a few years and nobody
seemed to mind.
I’d read that Tom Curry was the only Hatfield author to use the characters,
except for one appearance in a story by D.B. Newton. This must be the story,
except it’s not by Newton. And while Buck is mentioned, he doesn’t appear.
Surprisingly, Anita actually has something to do. She teams up with Hatfield to
help him break the case open, and—this really surprised me—I liked her! Tompkins
handles the character much better and she’s more believable. It’s kind of a
shame she didn’t appear in more of the Hatfield novels by Tompkins, but getting
rid of Buck is an acceptable trade-off.
This issue of TEXAS RANGERS was on the stands in January 1952 (the cover dates on
pulps were off-sale dates), but it has a Christmas story in it, “Double Dick
Follows a Star” by Lee Priestly, who was really Opal Shore Priestly. It’s the
third in a series of four stories about a colorful old prospector named Double
Dick Richards. I read another in the series a while back and found it readable
and mildly amusing. I found this one to be neither of those things. I bailed
after a page or so. Probably more to do with my mood than the story itself,
although I wouldn’t swear to that.
“Dead Man’s Boots” is a novelette also by Walker A. Tompkins, but it has his
name on it, and reading it so soon after “Panhandle Freight” just convinced me
that Tompkins did author that Hatfield novel. The styles are identical. The
novelette is a good one using the “outlaw masquerades as a lawman” plot. In
this case, escaped convict Rand Weston, sent to Yuma Prison for a murder he
didn’t commit, winds up assuming the identity of a murdered range detective who
was supposed to investigate the murder of a beautiful young woman’s rancher
father. That’s a lot of murders there, but Tompkins untangles things with his
usual skill. This one starts off especially well but eventually feels a little
rushed. It probably would have worked better at novella length. But it’s still
a very enjoyable yarn and well worth reading.
“Fiddle and Fight” by Cy Kees is another humorous story, this time about a
fiddling contest. The Devil does not show up, which is kind of a shame because
it might have made this one better. This is another story I didn’t like and
didn’t finish. Man, I really must have been in a grumpy mood when I read this
issue!
On the other hand, I thought “Haggerty’s Valley” by Francis H. Ames was pretty
good. Ames published about 80 stories in various Western pulps in the decade
between the late Forties and the late Fifties. If I’ve ever read anything by
him before, I don’t remember it. This one uses the old amnesia plot, as our
protagonist wakes up wounded and not knowing who he is, being tended to by a
beautiful girl who tells him he’s a deputy and has to rescue her from a gang of
vicious outlaws who are after her. I kept waiting for one more twist in this
story that never materialized, but it's well-written, moves along nicely, and
had plenty of action.
You know anything by Clifton Adams will be well-written. “The First of May”,
his short story in this issue, certainly is. It’s about a young man who wants to
avenge the death of his brother, but he has to wait for his twenty-first birthday
to do so because of a promise he made. This is more of a psychological Western
than anything else, and because of that I found it a little unsatisfying
overall. I don’t think it’s one of Adams’ better stories, but it might hit the
target for other readers.
The issue wraps up with Lee Bond’s “Long Sam Pays a Visit”, and it’s a
momentous entry in the long-running series that debuted in the very first issue
of TEXAS RANGERS along with the Jim Hatfield novels. This is the final Long Sam
Littlejohn story. Appropriately, it finds the heroic outlaw returning to the
small settlement in the Piney Woods of East Texas where he grew up. The visit
doesn’t go as planned, though, because Sam has to deal with an old acquaintance
who has turned into a vicious owlhoot. This is a good story with plenty of drama
and action and a nice plot twist near the end. Long Sam’s constant nemesis,
Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry is mentioned but doesn’t appear, for a change.
While it isn’t exactly a series finale as we think of them now, this story does
end with at least a hint that life may be about to change for the better for
Long Sam Littlejohn. I’ve been reading these stories for so long that Sam seems
like an old friend now, so I hope things worked out for him. And I’m glad there
are still plenty of earlier stories in the series that I haven’t read yet.
Despite the fact that I didn’t finish a couple of the stories and the one by
Clifton Adams was slightly disappointing, I think that overall this is a pretty
issue of TEXAS RANGERS. The Hatfield novel and the novelette by Tompkins are
both very entertaining, the Long Sam yarn is one of the better ones in the
series, and the Ames story was a pleasant surprise since I didn’t know what to
expect from that one. I’m also happy to have confirmed that the Hatfield story is
by Tompkins. If you happen to have a copy of this one, it’s well worth reading,
and who knows, you might enjoy those humorous yarns more than I did.
