Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second August Number, 1957

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, and it’s in halfway decent shape for a change. The cover art is by Sam Cherry. Most of his covers aren’t signed, but you can see his signature in the lower right corner of this one, although it’s backwards, meaning the art was flipped.

Edwin Booth is a familiar name to me because he wrote at least a dozen Western novels, many of them published in the Ace Doubles line. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. He’s the author of this issue’s lead novella, “Once a Killer”, which finds the protagonist, Fred Irwin, returning to the hometown he left ten years earlier after killing a man in a gunfight. Everybody figured that meant he had turned into an outlaw, but in reality, he’s become a hard-working cowboy and finally saved up enough money to buy a ranch of his own. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of trouble orchestrated by a crooked saloon owner who wants to take over the town and all the surrounding ranches. Naturally, Irwin comes to the aid of an old rancher and the man’s beautiful daughter, and more trouble ensues. This is a very standard plot, but Booth provides some nice action scenes and a few well-developed characters. Overall, though, his style is definitely on the bland side, and that keeps this story from having the impact it might have had otherwise. It’s not bad, and I would read Booth’s work again, but I’m not going to be on the lookout for it.

Frank C. Robertson was a long-time, very prolific Western pulpster and novelist. His short story in this issue, “Practical Woman”, is a contemporary Western set in the Fifties, a domestic drama about the marriage of a spinster schoolteacher and a hard-headed rancher. It’s well-written, as all of Robertson’s work that I’ve read is, but it’s very low-key and unexciting and really peters out in the end. Robertson was a good author, but this isn’t a very good story.

Thankfully, old reliable Walker A. Tompkins comes along next with the novelette “The Deputy’s Daughter”. In this one, a young cowboy who buys a ranch finds himself framed for murder by the local cattle baron who wants to take over his spread. His only hope is the deputy sheriff’s beautiful blond daughter, who takes a likin’ to him and believes he’s innocent. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining yarn that suffers a little from the fact that it’s not a novella or even an actual novel. I felt like it could have used some room to develop the plot and characters more, and because of that, the ending feels a little rushed. I still liked it quite a bit, though.

“Heritage of Wrath” by M.E. Bradshaw (Marjory Bradshaw) is a Mountie story about a young RCMP officer who has to arrest the father of the girl he loves for murder, which makes her break off their engagement because she refuses to believe he’s guilty. Our Mountie hero has to dig deeper into the case to find out what really happened. This is an okay tale with a somewhat disappointing ending. Bradshaw published two dozen stories during the Fifties, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES.

Stephen Payne was very prolific, turning out several hundred stories for various Western pulps and digests between 1925 and 1970, along with a handful of novels. “Killer’s Conscience” in this issue is narrated by a 14-year-old ranch kid whose father was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sent to prison. The narrator’s encounter with an outlaw may hold the key to clearing his father’s name. This is a solid, well-written story that I enjoyed.

There’s also an installment of a serialized novel, Philip Ketchum’s THE STALKERS, that I didn’t read. I may have the book version of that one. I’ll have to check my shelves.

I should mention, as well, that there are several excellent interior illustrations by Everett Raymond Kinstler. I don’t talk about interior illustrations much, and I probably should. Kinstler was one of the very best at those.

Overall, considering how highly I rate many of the 1950s issues of RANCH ROMANCES, this one is probably a little below average. All of the stories kept me reading, but none of them really stood out as being top-notch, either. The ones by Tompkins and Payne are easily the best of the bunch, and the one by Booth is worth reading. Maybe don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy, though.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, January 1935

This is the second issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. I don't own this issue, but I like the action-packed cover. I don't know the artist. There's a really fine group of writers in this issue: W.C. Tuttle (with a Happy Hay story, a series about which I know nothing except that it ran for eight stories in NEW WESTERN), Tom Roan, Frank C. Robertson, and house-name Wes Fargo, who was sometimes E.B. Mann, sometimes Roy de S. Horn, and undoubtedly sometimes other authors, as well. No clue who wrote the novella under that name in this issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Romances, July 1931

WESTERN ROMANCES was Dell's answer to RANCH ROMANCES, and this somewhat awkward cover certainly looks like it could have come off an issue of RANCH ROMANCES from that era. I don't know the artist. I can't complain about the quality of the authors inside: L.P. Holmes, Leslie Scott (as A. Leslie), Frank Robertson, Lawrence A. Keating, Eric Howard, Wilton West, and a couple of forgotten pulpsters, John A. Chase and William Wills Bradford. I don't own this issue, but with Holmes, Scott, and Robertson inside, I would read it if I did.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, September 1944

I always think of Sam Cherry as doing covers for the various Thrilling Group Western pulps, but he did quite a few for Popular Publications as well, including this one on the September 1944 issue of .44 WESTERN MAGAZINE featuring a dynamic action scene. This particular issue doesn't have an abundance of familiar names inside. Barry Cord (Peter Germano), Frank C. Robertson, and John A. Saxon are the best known. The other authors, who had decent careers but are pretty much forgotten, are James Shaffer, Le Roy Boyd, Stuart Friedman, and Melvin W. Holt.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, August 1949

I don't know the cover artist on this issue, but it's a pretty good one, and given that LEADING WESTERN was published by Trojan, no surprise that there's a pretty girl on it. Frank C. Robertson is easily the biggest name among the authors. The others are a mixture of lesser known real authors (Cliff Walters, Spencer Frost, Art Kercheval), house-names (Paul Hanna, Stan Warner), and one interesting pseudonym: Mark Mallory, who was actually science fiction writer Mack Reynolds.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, March 1942

The cover on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE is more proof, as if we needed it, that the barber shop was one of the most dangerous places in the Old West. I don't know who painted this one, but I like it quite a bit. There's the usual fine bunch of writers inside the magazine, too: Tom W. Blackburn, Frank C. Robertson, Tom Roan, Leslie Ernenwein, Art Lawson, Glenn Wichman, Dabney Otis Collins, and James C. Lynch. No Olmsted or Coburn, surprisingly. But solid pulpsters, for sure.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western, April 1937

I feel like I ought to know who did the artwork on the cover of this issue of REAL WESTERN, but I don't. The artist's style is familiar, though. Inside are stories by well-known Western pulpsters Frank C. Robertson, Oscar Schisgall, Clem Yore, and Will F. Jenkins (a reprint of a story originally published in BLACK MASK under Jenkins' pseudonym Murray Leinster). There's also a story by Fred Fincerer, a name that's totally unknown to me, probably because this may well be the only story he ever published.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, 2nd December Number, 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. Since it’s a Christmas issue, it’s appropriate to the season, and anyway, the little kid on the cover reminds me very much of, well, me. I frequently asked Santa to bring me toy guns and cowboy outfits for Christmas. The scan is from the copy I read.

The featured novella is “Cowtown Cavalier” by Paul Evan Lehman. The protagonist, Ken Mason, is searching for the crooked banker who ruined his father when he winds up involved in a range war between a beautiful young woman and a greedy cattle baron, an express company robbery, and several murders. I’ve always thought of Lehman as one of those competent, reasonably entertaining writers whose work doesn’t leave much of an impression. This novella is a little above that level, because it’s actually a well-structured mystery in addition to being a good action Western yarn. There are a number of suspects, the hero does some decent detective work, and it winds up being a pretty satisfying mix. This may be the best thing I’ve ever read by Lehman.

Frank C. Robertson had a long, very successful career as a Western writer, both as a pulpster and a novelist. His short story, “Taming of Cat McCoy”, is a slight yarn about a bitter, ex-con bronco buster who finds love and redemption. But it’s very well-written and goes down easy. I just wish there had been a little more to it. I need to read more by Robertson.

Elsa Barker has an actual Christmas story in this issue, “Sheriff for Christmas”, which is about a schoolteacher who turns down a marriage proposal from the local sheriff because her father was a lawman and she’s afraid she’ll worry herself to death like her mother did. And sure enough, before the story is over, the sheriff who proposes to her does wind up in danger. I don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything else by her. She was a prolific contributor to RANCH ROMANCES, and her career goes all the way back to THE SMART SET in 1901! This is a pretty good yarn, predictable but well-written, and it has some nice Christmas spirit to it.

I haven’t been impressed by the science fiction and fantasy I’ve read by Robert Moore Williams (the genres for which he’s best known), but his short story in this issue, “The Trail Home”, isn’t bad. It uses the old plot of the outlaw who has gone straight and is trying to cover up his past, only to be forced by circumstances to buckle on his guns again, but Williams does a pretty good job with it and produced an enjoyable yarn.

“Duchess of the Salty Dog” is by an author I hadn’t heard of, Pat Johns. That’s probably because Johns (don’t know if that name is male or female) published only a few stories in RANCH ROMANCES and nowhere else. This one has an intriguing protagonist, a former saloon singer who gets involved in rustling and a dangerous ambush, but in the end I didn’t think it amounted to much.

There are two serial installments in this issue. I normally don’t read serials unless I know I have all the parts, so I skipped the first installment of “Desert Quest” by Dorothy L. Bonar. However, if it’s the final part, I’ll sometimes go ahead and read it, and since “Roll, Bright Wagons” by Isabel Stewart Way is a story about a traveling circus in the Old West (a subject that interests me) and wraps up in this issue, I started to read it. However, the character names got the best of me: Blaise Aregood (the hero), Twonnet Juvenal (the heroine), Gus Snavely (the villain—I guess Snidely Whiplash was out of town). Plus the circus is traveling through sheep country, and I don’t read Western pulps to read about a bunch o’ dang sheepherders! And the writing didn’t seem that good to me (despite Way having a long, prolific career as a contributor to RANCH ROMANCES and the other Western romance pulps, as well as an author of nurse novels), so I didn’t finish this one.

Rounding out the issue are the usual features and departments, which I skimmed except for a two-page poem by S. Omar Barker, “Cowboy’s Christmas Bride”, which like all of Barker’s work is humorous and well-written.

Most of the RANCH ROMANCES I’ve read are from the Fifties, when the magazine was part of the Thrilling Group, but in 1948 it was still published by Warner and edited by long-time editor Fanny Ellsworth, so the tone is slightly different, a little more emphasis on the romance part of the title than there would be later. However, the lead story, Lehman’s “Cowtown Cavalier”, could have appeared in any of the regular Western pulps of the era. It’s the best story in this issue, but the ones by Robertson, Barker, and Williams are well worth reading, too. All in all, I enjoyed this issue of RANCH ROMANCES quite a bit and am glad I read it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western, January 1948

Nice cover by the great H.W. Scott on this issue of SPEED WESTERN, and inside there's a very strong group of writers including Wayne D. Overholser, Walker A. Tompkins, Giles A. Lutz, Frank C. Robertson, and John Jo Carpenter (John Reese). If that's a salvage market pulp, I'll take it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First May Number, 1952

I really like the Fifties issues of RANCH ROMANCES. Generally great covers, of which this is another one, and top-notch authors. This issue includes stories by Frank C. Robertson, Joseph Chadwick, S. Omar Barker, Bryce Walton, Chandler Whipple, and Cy Kees.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Action Novels Magazine, September 1937

Is that a giant cactus the girl is tied to on this cover? That's gotta hurt! And the cowboy is handcuffed. There's got to be an interesting story behind this one. Whether it's actually in this issue of WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE, I don't know, but I'm sure there's some good reading since the authors include prolific and popular Western writers Frank C. Robertson and E.B. Mann, as well as the house-name Cliff Campbell and some lesser known names.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, February 1950

LEADING WESTERN was one of the Trojan Publications pulps (as if you couldn't tell that from the cover). Another bottom-rung market, according to conventional wisdom, it featured stories by some decent authors despite that, including in this issue Frank C. Robertson, who had been around forever by 1950 (I love that title, "Crossfire in Skull City"), Robert Moore Williams, and Gardner Fox. I'm sure they were pretty entertaining yarns, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, July-August 1936

This cover has the stalwart hero and the angry, gun-totin' redhead, but the other guy's not an old geezer. I guess the old-timer was busy back at the ranch that day and missed the shootout. There's a good collection of stories in this issue of NEW WESTERN by top-notch pulp authors Frank C. Robertson, W.T. Ballard, J.E. Grinstead, James P. Olsen, and Jack Bechdolt.