Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, July 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The scan is from my copy, and the cover art is by Sam Cherry.

W.C. Tuttle’s series about range detectives Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens is justifiably more famous and successful than his series about another Mutt-and-Jeff pair of range detectives, Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith, which ran for more than three dozen novelettes and novellas during the Forties and early Fifties, mostly in EXCITING WESTERN. I’ve always found the Tombstone and Speedy yarns reliably entertaining, though. Unlike Hashknife and Sleepy, Tombstone and Speedy are not, shall we say, the sharpest rowels on the spur. But while they may not be smart, they’re top-notch when it comes to fighting with gun or fist, and they solve plenty of complicated cases with a combination of luck, instinct, and cow country savvy. In “Six-Gun Cyclone”, the novelette in this issue, they’ve been fired by the Cattleman’s Association that usually employs them, but despite that they wind up in the middle of a case involving rustling, brand blotting, and a bank robbery, and of course they win their jobs back by bringing the bad guys to justice after a fast-paced blend of action and broad humor. Some of Tuttle’s stories are better than others, but I don’t think he’s ever let me down and this one is great fun.

Noel Loomis is best remembered these days as a science fiction author, but he wrote a considerable number of Westerns, too. His story in this issue, “Pitchfork Country”, is about a young couple trying to establish a farm in Colorado and clashing with their brutal cattleman neighbor. The history is a little shaky in this one, but it’s well-written and there’s an unusually violent fight at the end.

The novelette “No Peace for a Prodigal” is by Leslie Ernenwein, one of the old pros in the Western genre, and is a reprint from the First July Number, 1945 issue of RANCH ROMANCES. Like a lot of stories from RANCH ROMANCES, there’s not much actual romance in this one but plenty of action. A small rancher gets caught between the two sides in a range war, is framed for a murder, and has to fight his way out of trouble and expose the actual bad guys. This is a good, hardboiled Western action yarn by an author who knew how to keep a story moving along.

The next story, “Belled Cunning”, is by an author I don’t really care for, Harold F. Cruickshank, and is an animal story, with no human characters, and I’m not fond of those, either. So . . . I passed on this one.

“Jerk Line” by Willard Luce is a railroad yarn, and I do like those, so I enjoyed this tale of bank robbers trying to use a train for their getaway. This is a reprint and originally appeared in the January 1946 issue of RIO KID WESTERN.

Samuel Mines is best remembered, if at all, for being the editor of STARTLING STORIES and THRILLING WONDER STORIES for a while, but he also wrote a good number of Western stories, including a few of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS. His novelette in this issue, “Run, Sheep, Run”, is also a reprint, originally appearing in the May, 1944 issue of POPULAR WESTERN. It’s a very traditional cattlemen vs. sheepherders yarn, with the protagonist being the government man caught between the two factions, trying to resolve their differences without an all-out range war. The elements may be familiar, but Mines handles them well and the action scenes are very good.

When I started attending the Western Writers of America conventions on the mid-Eighties, Francis L. Fugate was one of the elder statesmen of the organization. He and his wife also wrote a well-regarded book about Erle Stanley Gardner. Unfortunately, his story that wraps up this issue, “Son of a Gun Stew”, about a chuck wagon cook’s encounter with an old enemy, never really caught my interest and I didn’t finish it.

Overall, I’d say this is an average, or maybe even slightly below average, issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The stories by Tuttle, Loomis, Ernenwein, and Mines are good but not outstanding, and the others range from just okay to didn’t-finish level. As always, though, I’m glad I read it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western, October 1947

.44 WESTERN MAGAZINE was another solidly dependable Western pulp from Popular Publications, and this issue has a nice action-packed cover. The lead novella is by Max Kesler. I don't know anything about him, but I've seen several oil field stories by him and this appears to be another one, judging by its title. Other authors in this issue are Walker A. Tompkins (one of my favorite Western writers), Will C. Brown (actually C.S. Boyles, Jr., the other writer from Cross Plains, Texas, who was a few years older than Robert E. Howard), Lee E. Wells, Harold F. Cruickshank, and Harrison Colt, a name that's always struck me as a pseudonym or house-name, but I don't have any confirmation of that. This looks like a pretty good issue.

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, October 1945

Another good cover by Sam Cherry starts off this issue of the long-running Western pulp WEST, which started out at Doubleday but by this time was part of the Thrilling Group. The lead story is "The California Ranger" by A. Leslie, who was really A. Leslie Scott, who wrote about Texas Rangers and Arizona Rangers, so why not California Rangers, too? Also in this issue is one of the late Zorro stories by Johnston McCulley, plus stories by Harold Cruickshank, Cliff Walters, and Tom Parsons, a Thrilling Group house-name.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, August 1949

Like all the other Popular Publications Western pulps, .44 WESTERN had good covers, evocative story titles, and top-notch authors. The biggest names in this issue are Giff Cheshire and Tom Roan, but Max Kesler, Harold F. Cruickshank, and Rolland Lynch were all prolific, well-regarded pulpsters. Kesler wrote quite a few oil field stories, which I nearly always like. This looks like a good solid issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, October 1934

Caveman fiction shows up now and then in the pulps, as in this issue of TOP-NOTCH with a cover by Gayle Hoskins illustrating the lead novel, "Man of the Dawn" by Charles Willard Diffin. Now, I can't tell you much about Diffin except that he wrote quite a bit for the early ASTOUNDING and published sporadically in other pulps including TOP-NOTCH during the first half of the Thirties. I can tell you, however, that this issue contains "Sword of Shahrazar", a Kirby O'Donnell yarn by Robert E. Howard, which is its main claim to fame these days. It also includes stories by Carl Jacobi, William Merriam Rouse, Harold F. Cruickshank (known to me from many Western pulps), and a few authors I'm not familiar with. I don't own a copy of this issue, so the Howard story is the only one I've read, but the Diffin yarn sounds interesting and Jacobi was always worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1952

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is from my copy. EXCITING WESTERN is one of the Thrilling Group, and I tend to like those pulps.

Wilbur S. Peacock was a fairly prolific pulpster, writing dozens of mysteries, Westerns, science fiction, sports yarns, and jungle adventures for a variety of pulps during a career that lasted from the late Thirties on into the Fifties. He’s probably best remembered, though, as an editor at Fiction House on such titles as PLANET STORIES and JUNGLE STORIES. His novella “Riders of Rebel Range” in the September 1952 issue of EXCITING WESTERN is the first fiction by him that I’ve read, as far as I recall. It’s an excellent story, too, about a group of masked vigilantes in Texas battling carpetbaggers during Reconstruction. However, there’s a hidden mastermind using the vigilantes for his own nefarious purposes, and it’s up to the local sheriff to uncover the real plot . . . assuming, that is, that the lawman isn’t the actual bad guy himself.

Peacock really packs a lot into this novella. In addition to the main plot concerning the vigilantes, we get overlapping romantic triangles, sibling rivalry, bushwhacking, brutal fistfights, and an apocalyptic ending that threatens to destroy the whole town. The mystery angle is handled well enough that I really wasn’t sure what was going to happen or who would turn out to be the hidden mastermind. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. If Peacock had written any novels, I’d be on the lookout for them, but it appears he only published in the pulps. I’ll certainly watch for his name in the future.

Unfortunately, the next story, “Wine, Women, and—Who Cares?” by Al Storm, is an example of how difficult it is to write a comedy Western that works, at least as far as I’m concerned. Humor is highly subjective, of course. But this tale of gold miners with colorful names like Shammy and Zinger-Dip, doing colorful things, just never amused or interested me. I did not find it a “Rib-Tickler” as the cover claims.

Max Kesler is another author whose name I’ve seen in many pulps but have never read until now. His novelette “A Doctor Kills a Wolf” is a timber camp story, not a favorite theme of mine but one that can be okay if done well. The protagonist, a disgraced doctor, lands in the middle of a timber war and not surprisingly winds up being forced to use the medical skills he has tried to give up, as well brawling and shooting his way through to victory. This yarn has a nice hardboiled tone but suffers from the fact that the villain is pretty much a cipher and barely appears in the story. It’s hard to have a good hero without an effective bad guy. Kesler writes well enough that I would certainly read more by him, though.

I think “The Half-Mule Sodbuster” is the second story I’ve read by Seven Anderton. It’s a well-written cattlemen vs. sodbusters story, only in this case there’s only one sodbuster, a stubborn man who doesn’t carry a gun but is determined to homestead a farm even though everyone else in the valley wants to run him out . . . except maybe the beautiful daughter of one of the cattle baron. There’s some humor, some action, and even some surprisingly sexy stuff (for the time period) in this story, but I thought the ending could have packed a little more punch.

I don’t care much for stories about animals (we had a discussion about this on the WesternPulps group recently), but “Underdog” by Harold F. Cruickshank isn’t bad. The animals don’t talk, and the terrier of the title isn’t the viewpoint character. As a dog vs. bear story, it’s okay.

I’ve read some truly terrible Western paperbacks by Lee Floren, but he had a long, successful career so there must have been plenty of readers who enjoyed his work. I’ll admit, there are some nice moments in his novelette “This Trail to Bullets”. The protagonist is a two-fisted, gun-totin’ undercover bank examiner, not exactly the sort of character you find in Western pulp yarns that often, and I like that. Floren’s style is a little rough, but it has an effective hardboiled tone in places. I enjoyed this one enough I might give some of his novels a try again. Sometimes I warm up to an author as time goes by.

This issue wraps up with “Bad Medicine”, a short story by an author I’d never heard of, Tom Hopefield. He appears to have published half a dozen stories, all in the early Fifties. This one concerns rock climbing and a bully’s comeuppance, and while it’s nothing special, it’s pleasant enough.

Overall, this is a good but not great issue of EXCITING WESTERN. Wilbur S. Peacock’s story is the best and will have me keeping an eye out for his work. Seven Anderton continues to be a solid author, and Lee Floren’s story was better than I expected. The others were all good enough to keep me reading. I didn’t skip any of the stories, although I did just skim through the columns and features. I do think that by the early Fifties, the Western pulps had suffered from the fact that most of the best authors were concentrating on novels, both hardback and paperback.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Battle Stories, February 1929

A mid-air shootout. I like this cover by Jerome Rozen. There are some good authors in this issue of BATTLE STORIES, too: Raoul Whitfield, Frederick C. Painton, J.R. Johnston, Harold F. Cruickshank, and Arthur Guy Empey, among others.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, February 1947

If I had the actual pulp, I could probably tell for sure, but from the scan it looks like this may be an injury to a hat cover. Or maybe that's some sort of design on the guy's hat, I'm not sure. But either way I'm confident that "Blind Trails at Broken Butte" by W.C. Tuttle is a pretty good story because Tuttle was about as consistent a Western writer as you're ever going to find. I hate to say it because I don't care for the Swap and Whopper series by Syl McDowell, but "Billboard Buckaroos" isn't a bad title, either. Elsewhere in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN are stories by old pros Hal G. Evarts, Harold Cruikshank, and William O'Sullivan.