Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, January 15, 1938

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with tape around the edges placed there by a previous owner. I know that tape on pulps gives most collectors the fantods, but it doesn’t bother me as long as it’s not too heavy-handed, probably because I’m more of a reader than a collector. A case like this one is okay. The cover is by Emery Clark, who, if I recall correctly, did some DOC SAVAGE covers for Street & Smith as well. (I know I could look it up on the FMI, but I’m too lazy right now.) I like this cover okay, although I think the best WILD WEST WEEKLY covers are by H.W. Scott and R.G. Harris.

The lead story in this issue is the novelette “Comanche”, published under the house-name Andrew A. Griffin and attributed to Lee Bond, an attribution I agree with. It reads like Bond’s work. The title character is a young troubleshooter for a wealthy ranch owner who has spreads across the West. Comanche’s background is a mystery. He’s white, but he was raised by a band of Comanche Indians until he was ten years old, when he was taken in by the rancher he now works for. Where he came from, nobody knows. But he’s smart, tough, and gun-swift, making him perfect to get to the bottom of the rustling that’s plaguing one of his mentor’s spreads in New Mexico Territory. Of course, the situation turns out to be more complicated than it appears at first. Bond piles on the action and includes a case of mistaken identity to complicate things. Bond’s work tends toward the formulaic at times, but at his best, he was a top-notch Western pulpster, and I really enjoyed this yarn.

Except . . . what I didn’t realize until I got to the end of it is that it’s just the first of a series of six linked novelettes featuring Comanche, so it really doesn’t have much resolution to it. Usually in a case like this, the novelettes would then be put together into a novel published as a hardback. I don’t find any evidence of that being true with these stories, so it’s likely I’ll never know what happens with Comanche after this. (The next week’s issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY with the second Comanche story is available on the Internet Archive. I may read it or I may not, I haven’t decided yet.)

Young Texas Rangers Hungry Hawkins and Rusty Bolivar starred in scores of stories by Samuel H. Nickels, including this issue’s “Prospectin’ fer Gun Trouble”. In this one, Hungry and Rusty help an old prospector protect his claim from a bunch of outlaws. That’s the entire plot. Nickels does an excellent job with the action and Hungry and Rusty are very likable protagonists, but the thin plot kind of works against the story. Also, one of the henchmen wonders why the boss outlaw wants to take over the mine in the first place, since it’s not very productive. That’s a darned good question, and it’s one that Nickels fails to answer. I don’t know if he just forgot and none of the editors at Street & Smith called him on it, but that plot hole is left wide open.

George C. Henderson was a pretty solid Western writer during the pulp era. “War on the Broken Wheel” is a stand-alone story featuring a good pair of protagonists, a couple of deputy U.S. marshals working undercover as surveyors as they try to find out who’s stirring up trouble between the cattlemen and the sodbusters. Again, nice action and characters, but not much plot keeps this story from being as strong as it might have been. I wouldn’t have minded seeing these protagonists again, but it seems this was their only appearance.

Under his pseudonym Ward M. Stevens, Paul S. Powers wrote approximately 150 stories about Kid Wolf, a wandering adventurer and self-styled Soldier of Misfortune. I prefer Powers’ other main series character, good-guy outlaw Sonny Tabor, but I really enjoy the Kid Wolf stories, too. In the novelette “Kid Wolf on Wild Hog Range”, the Kid comes across an injured young prospector who has been attacked by outlaws and left to die at the tusks of a herd of wild javelinas. The Kid saves the fellow from that grisly fate, of course, and learns from him that the outlaws have kidnapped the young man’s partners in order to torture the location of their valuable mine from them. Naturally, Kid Wolf isn’t going to stand for that, so he and the young man set off to right that wrong. Powers was really good at dishing out fast-moving, action-packed prose, and this yarn races along in a very entertaining fashion, ending with an epic fistfight and a suitable comeuppance for the bad guys. An excellent story and my favorite of the Kid Wolf series I’ve read so far.

I’m also a fan of the Shorty Masters series by Allan R. Bosworth, who wrote some really fine Western novels in addition to his hundreds of top-notch pulp yarns. Shorty is a muleskinner and wagon driver who operates a freight line along with his partner, gunslinger Willie Weatherbee, also known as the Sonora Kid. Naturally, the jobs they take on usually result in trouble, as in “The Calaboose at Caliente”, which finds the intrepid due thrown in jail, accused of killing a steer and stealing its hide. Bosworth also works in a jail break, a bank robbery, and a rodeo. Although there’s usually some humor to be found in these stories, they aren’t really comedies, and they include some unusual touches like the mules in Shorty’s team being named after famous musical composers. This story has plenty of action and is very well-written. I’d say that somebody ought to collect the Shorty Masters stories, but there are more than 130 of them, so it would be a pretty big project.

Flash Moran was the hero of about 40 novelettes by William F. Bragg in WILD WEST WEEKLY. A young deputy sheriff in the cattle town of Piute, Wyoming, Flash got his nickname more for his hot temper than for his red hair. In “Ridin’ the Rustler Special”, he’s a long way from his home range on the trail of a murderer when he gets mixed up in a fight defending a hapless tramp who’s caught stealing a ride on a train. Not long after that, Flash himself is the target of a murder attempt. Naturally, everything ties together, with some rustling and a series of train robberies thrown in, to boot. This is a great story. Bragg provides plenty of well-written action with a lot of it taking place on a train thundering through the night on a rendezvous with disaster, and I love that kind of stuff. Flash Moran is likable enough, and the other characters are interesting as well. As far as I recall, this is the first Flash Moran story I’ve read and the first thing by William F. Bragg, as well. I need to read more by him, because I really enjoyed this yarn.

This is a fine issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. The first three stories are all good, despite my having a few quibbles about them, but the last three by Powers, Bosworth, and Bragg are all top-of-the-line Western pulp stories as far as I’m concerned and elevate this to an above average issue of a consistently good pulp. Definitely worth reading if you have a copy on your shelf, as long as you don’t mind that you’re getting only the first part of what’s basically a serial in “Comanche”. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, November 28, 1936

I came across this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY, one of my favorite Western pulps, on the Internet Archive, and since the lead novella is a Thanksgiving-themed story, I read it immediately so I could post about it on Thanksgiving Day. You can read my thoughts about it here. Now I’ve read the rest of the issue, or most of it, anyway. The cover is by R.G. Harris, who did a lot of excellent covers for WILD WEST WEEKLY. I don’t think this is one of his better ones, but it’s okay.

George C. Henderson is almost completely forgotten today, but I’ve read several of his stories and think he was a good Western pulpster. “Double Cross at the Double Crescent” uses the old plot of the protagonist, in this case a drifting cowboy, being mistaken for someone else, leading to a bunch of action including an attempted lynching. It’s a well-written story and Henderson includes a nice twist in the plot, so I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Allan R. Bosworth was an even better writer. For WILD WEST WEEKLY, he did a long-running series about muleskinner Shorty Masters and his sidekick, a gunfighter known as the Sonora Kid. In “Mix-Up in Mescalero”, Shorty’s freight outfit gets drafted into an effort to move a gold shipment in secret so that outlaws won’t be able to steal it, but of course, things go wrong and Shorty and the Kid have to burn plenty of powder to set things right. One nice touch about this series is that Shorty is a fan of classical music and has named his mules after famous composers. I’ve read a couple of stories in this series and liked them.

The stories about good-guy outlaw Sonny Tabor, written by Paul S. Powers under the name Ward M. Stevens, were some of the most popular in WILD WEST WEEKLY and numbered among their fans none other than Elmer Kelton. In “Sonny Tabor at Broken Gun Ranch”, Sonny protects a ranching family from rustlers and discovers who’s really behind all the trouble. That’s it as far as the plot goes, but Powers provides plenty of well-written action scenes and Sonny Tabor is a very likable protagonist. I can see why it was a popular series. I’ve read two of the stories and enjoyed both of them.

Claude Rister wrote a lot for the Western pulps under his own name and was also one of several authors to use the pseudonym Buck Billings from time to time. I haven’t read much by him, but I’ve liked what I’ve read. His short story in this issue, “Dynamite and Water”, has two young cattlemen trying to keep the local range hog from running them off. Rister writes well and this is a pretty good yarn, but it suffers from a rather limp ending that could have been a lot more dramatic. Still good enough that I’d be happy to give anything else by Claude Rister a try.

This issue wraps up with the novelette “Texas Triggers Sling Lead” by Walker A. Tompkins. Tompkins was the most prolific contributor of linked novelettes that could then be fixed up into novels. I’m pretty sure he did that with the Texas Triggers stories, but at this point, I don’t know which novel they became. And since this story falls right in the middle of the series, I decided not to read it. I figure that sooner or later I’ll come across the whole thing in novel form. If any of you know the title of the book cobbled together from the Texas Triggers stories, please let me know.

Overall, this is a good solid issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. Not what I would consider above average, but entertaining and easy to read. The stories are action-packed and full of colorful “yuh mangy polecat” dialogue, and sometimes that’s just what a dagnabbed ol’ pelican like me wants to pass the time.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, July 18, 1936

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The excellent cover by R.G. Harris illustrates a scene from the lead novelette by Walker A. Tompkins, “Tommy Rockford’s Coffin Clew”.

In this installment of Tompkins’ long-running series about the young railroad detective who carries a pair of gold-plated handcuffs, Rockford arrives in an isolated Arizona settlement on a stormy night in pursuit of a notorious train robber. However, when he gets there he discovers that his quarry has already been brought to justice, drilled in a gunfight with the local sheriff. Then the sheriff himself turns up dead, and Tommy has to solve his murder. This is one of those stories where the big plot twist is pretty obvious, but that doesn’t stop Tompkins from spinning it into a very entertaining yarn with his usual skill. I was a little disappointed in the last Tommy Rockford story I read, but not this one. It’s well-written, atmospheric, and suspenseful. Also, I didn’t figure out the “coffin clew” of the title, so that’s one final surprise Tompkins saves for the story’s last paragraph. Fine work in this one.

Hal Davenport wrote a lot of stories under the various WILD WEST WEEKLY house-names, including more than 20 novelettes in the Billy West and Circle J series as Cleve Endicott. His story in this issue, “Six-guns Say No”, is a stand-alone published under his own name. It’s a range war yarn as a young rancher fights to defend the waterhole on which his spread depends from a bunch of no-good crooks trying to steal it. This story is almost all action, and while there’s nothing in it we haven’t seen many, many times before, Davenport does a good job of storytelling and comes up with an entertaining tale.

Samuel H. Nickels also wrote prolifically under house-names for WILD WEST WEEKLY, but under his own name he authored almost 140 short stories about a pair of young Texas Rangers named “Hungry” Hawkins and “Rusty” Bolivar. In this issue’s Hungry and Rusty yarn, “Rangers’ Rescue”, our intrepid pair set out to find a rancher’s son who’s been kidnapped by outlaws. This is another tale that’s almost all action. This is the first Hungry and Rusty story I’ve read. I enjoyed it and found them a very likable pair of protagonists. Definitely wouldn’t mind reading more of these.

Guy L. Maynard was another regular house-name scribe but also wrote several popular series under his own name, the longest-running of which featured a character called Señor Red Mask. He wrote a dozen stories featuring a redheaded cowboy, trail driver, and adventurer known as Flame Burns. Some legendary historical Old West characters appeared in these as well, much like the Rio Kid series. In this issue’s novelette, “Death Riders of Dodge”, Flame is in Dodge City, having just delivered a herd of cattle he brought up the trail from Texas. He’s set upon by outlaws and robbed of the payoff for that herd, and the rest of the story concerns his efforts to get the money back and avenge the death of a friend in a shootout. He gets some help in this from none other than Calamity Jane, who bears only a passing resemblance to the historical Calamity Jane. There’s one mention of her nursing the sick during an epidemic, and other than that she’s strictly the fictional version that’s shown up in so many movies, TV shows, and novels. This is the first thing I’ve read by Maynard, as far as I know, and when I read it, I wasn’t very impressed by it. It seemed a little too simple and juvenile. It’s sticking with me more than I expected, though. I’ll have to read more by Maynard to form a worthwhile opinion of his work.

“King of Colts” is by Charles M. Martin, who sometimes wrote as Chuck Martin. It’s a vengeance yarn, as a young rancher sets out after the three outlaws responsible for the death of the grandfather who raised him. That’s all there is to it, but Martin writes in a terse style that I enjoy, and since he was an actual cowboy, like Walt Coburn, his work has a strong sense of authenticity. Also like Coburn, Martin wound up taking his own life by hanging, which is a shame. He was a pretty darned good writer.

There are some assorted features and one other piece of fiction in this issue, the novelette “Whizz Fargo Springs a Murder Trap” by George C. Henderson. This is one of six linked novelettes about Whizz Fargo that were fixed up into the novel WHIZZ FARGO, GUNFIGHTER. I happen to own a copy of that novel, so I skipped the story in this issue, preferring to read it in the novel version. Which I’ll get around to soon, I hope. I’ve read some stories by Henderson in the past and enjoyed them, as far as I recall.

Overall, this is a good but not great issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. Tompkins’ Tommy Rockford story is definitely the highlight. The other stories are all perfectly readable and entertaining, but they didn’t really make a strong impression on me. Having said that, I’m glad I read it and believe it’s worth your time if you happen to own a copy of it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, May 26, 1934

This is a dandy, very dynamic cover by Walter Baumhofer. The action seems to almost leap off the page, to use a cliché that happens to be accurate in this case. This issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY features the usual assortment of series and stand-alone stories, heavy on the series. In this case, The Whistlin' Kid by Emery Jackson (J. Allan Dunn), Sonny Tabor by Ward M. Stevens (Paul S. Powers), Shorty Master by Allan R. Bosworth, Hungry and Rusty by Samuel H. Nickels, and the Bar U Twins by Charles E. Barnes. The stand-alones are by Lee Bond, George C. Henderson, and Kent Bennett (who was actually Samuel H. Nickels, his second story in this issue).

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, July 4, 1936

Although it doesn't have a patriotic-themed cover, this is the issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY dated July 4, 1936. Behind that cover by H.W. Scott, which I like quite a bit, are the usual assortment of series characters readers found in this pulp: a Silver Kid story by T.W. Ford, a Johnny Forty-five story by Paul S. Powers writing as Andrew A. Griffin, a Pete Rice story by Ben Conlon writing as Austin Gridley, a Risky McKee story by Norman W. Hay writing as William A. Todd, and (Wait a minute! How'd they get in here?) stand-alone stories by Lee Bond writing as Nelse Anderson and George C. Henderson. A person could get exhausted just trying to keep up with all the series characters in WILD WEST WEEKLY, but the readers seemed to have loved it for a long time. I've enjoyed all the issues I've read.