Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, September 1938

J.W. Scott liked to use blondes on his Western pulp covers instead of redheads, but he teams them with the usual Stalwart, Red-Shirted Cowboy and Wounded Old Geezer, as on this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES. Ed Earl Repp is the author with the biggest name in this one, and he's on hand twice, once as himself and once as Brad Buckner. Other authors include the distinctively named Carmony Gove, Jack Sterrett, Rolland Lynch, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, Harold F. Cruickshank, Luke Tyler (who sounds like a house-name but apparently wasn't), and Ken Jason and John Cannon, who were house-names. I don't own this issue or any other issues of this pulp, as far as I remember, but it looks pretty good. For a lower-rung Western pulp, WESTERN SHORT STORIES ran a long time, from December 1936 to January 1957.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, March 1939

Pith helmet alert! I think the cover on this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES may be by Richard Lyon, who did a lot of them for various Thrilling Group pulps in the Thirties. It's a striking cover, that's for sure. An oddity about this issue is that all the authors except one are best remembered for their Westerns: Philip Ketchum, Edward Parrish Ware, Rolland Lynch, Ben Conlon, and Harold F. Cruickshank. The one author who wasn't a prolific contributor to the Western pulps, Ray Millholland, is the only one who appears to have written a traditional Western yarn in this issue. I say "appears to" because I'm just basing that on the story titles. I don't have this issue and haven't read it. The Cruickshank story is kind of a Western, since it's an animal story and part of a series about a white wolf. I really ought to read more stories from THRILLING ADVENTURES. Most of the issues look great!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ace-High Western Stories, January 1949

I don't own this pulp, but like most of the Western pulps from Popular Publications, this issue of ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES has a good bunch of authors inside and an eye-catching cover. My hunch is that Robert Stanley painted it, but I'm not sure about that. Walt Coburn leads things off, as he so often does, and also on hand are Roe Richmond, Tom Roan, William R. Cox, Eli Colter, James Shaffer, Harold F. Cruickshank, Spencer Frost (whose name isn't familiar to me), and Richard L. Nelson, who's interesting because that's a pseudonym of William L. Hamling, much more famous as an author and editor and the publisher of the science fiction digests IMAGINATION and IMAGINATIVE TALES, as well the founder of the soft-core empire that included Nightstand Books, Midnight Reader, etc., books written by Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Evan Hunter, Ben Haas, Harry Whittington, and many other legendary authors under assorted pseudonyms and house-names.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat ragged copy in the scan. The cover is by Sam Cherry, as usual, and I like it, also as usual.

Ah, Tombstone and Speedy! A ghost story seems perfect for this pair of bumbling but surprisingly astute range detectives, and the novella “Ghost of the Tumbling K” brings them to the title ranch on their latest assignment for the Cattlemen’s Protective Association. However, they don’t know why they’re there, because the rancher who sent for them lies seriously wounded and unconscious. Tombstone and Speedy fetch help for the injured man and, in the process, discover that the ranch is supposed to be haunted. Since they don’t know why they were summoned, they decide to stay there and keep an eye on the place, which, of course, leads to a ghostly encounter.

Author W.C. Tuttle packs a lot of plot into his yarn, as he always does with the Tombstone and Speedy stories. Most of it revolves around the hidden loot of a mysterious outlaw known as the Yellow Mask, who is believed to have died several years earlier. But is he really dead? If he is, could it be his spirit haunting the Tumbling K? Tombstone and Speedy untangle the whole thing, of course, with plenty of action and humorous banter along the way. These stories are pretty formulaic, but they sure are entertaining.

“Indian Slap” is by Barry Scobee, the only pulp Western author with a mountain named after him. Scobee’s work is hit-or-miss for me but mostly good, and I enjoyed this tale about a white boy who was a captive of the Comanches trying to fit back in among a community of settlers. Scobee does a good job with the Central Texas setting, too.

“West of Windigo” is a novelette by Norrell Gregory. I don’t recall if I’ve read anything by Gregory before, but I liked this story of a railroad detective trying to find out who’s been stealing construction supplies, smuggling whiskey to the Indians, and generally trying to stir up trouble on a spur line that’s being built. Gregory moves things along nicely. This would have made a good B-Western movie in the Forties or Fifties.

“Badmen Are Plumb Foolish” is by Donald Bayne Hobart, a very prolific pulpster whose work I’ve come to enjoy. This story is about a gambler framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and despite its short length, maybe 2500 words, Hobart manages to work in a train robbery and a plot twist, too. This is a nice, enjoyable yarn by a real pro.

“Sheriff” by William O’Sullivan uses the “old lawman whose time has passed” plot, and not surprisingly, the old badge-toter has some life left in him after all, as an election campaign against his young whippersnapper deputy proves. This isn’t a memorable story at all, but it’s well-written and pleasant enough.

I’m convinced that Donald Bayne Hobart is also the author of “Bait for a Range-War Gallows”, even though it was published under the house-name Jackson Cole. The style reads very much like Hobart’s work. This is a range war story, as you probably guessed from the title, but it starts with a very nice twist: the range war is already over when the story begins. And everybody who supported the losing side is now considered an outlaw, including young cowboy Dake Latimer, who is holed up in an old adobe hut trying to fight off a horde of gunmen led by his mortal enemy who hates him because Latimer once stopped the lowdown hombre from raping a young woman. Hobart drops the reader down right in the middle of the action, which is something I always enjoy. Latimer gets out of that scrape but almost immediately finds himself in another one with a wounded youngster’s life on the line. Hobart packs a lot into this story and the action never slows down for more than a few paragraphs. This is just a superb Western yarn, one of the best I’ve read recently.

The protagonist of Nels Leroy Jorgensen’s novelette “Longrider Gun-Law” is also a good-guy owlhoot, the son of an Arizona lawman. He’s been below the border in Mexico rustling cattle and horses as part of a gang of American outlaws, but when the group disbands, he heads home to find the area being plagued by a series of stagecoach robberies. The plot developments in this one are pretty predictable, but Jorgensen’s tough prose makes it entertaining reading. Jorgensen’s career started in the early Twenties with detective and adventure yarns. He was a regular contributor to BLACK MASK during that pulp’s early glory days and eventually became a prolific Western pulpster, as well. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him.

There’s also an animal story by Harold F. Cruickshank in this issue, but I didn’t even try to read it. I loved wildlife yarns when I was a kid, but they just don’t work for me anymore.

Other than that, every story in this issue is good and I think it’s a fine issue overall. Although, as usual when there’s not a Navajo Tom Raine story, I missed that series.

To end on a more serious note that usual, I’ve realized that on several occasions recently, I’ve read and reviewed books and pulps that I previously read and reviewed several years ago, with absolutely no memory of reading and reviewing them before. At my age, this is a mite worrisome. If I have any doubts about a book or a pulp, I try to remember to search the blog and see if I’ve already covered it. But the key phrase there is “try to remember” because that’s where the problem lies, isn’t it? If any rate, if you see such duplication, it’s not intentional, and don’t hesitate to bring it to my attention. It’s helpful for me to know about such things.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, April 1935

I've read quite a few stories published originally in Street & Smith's TOP-NOTCH, but never an issue of the pulp itself. I don't own any, as far as I recall, but there are a number of issues available on the Internet Archive. Not this one, though. That cover by William Soare caught my eye, as did the fact that the lead novel is by Thomas Walsh, an old pulpster who was still active and writing for ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE when I was reading EQMM in the Sixties. Also on hand in this issue are Philip Ketchum, William Merriam Rouse, Bob du Soe, Bruce Douglas, and Harold F. Cruickshank. That's a pretty good bunch of writers.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Fiction Stories, June 1931

Frank McAleer's cover on this issue of ALL FICTION STORIES features a pith helmet, a Tommy gun, a spear, and a canteen. As far as props go, you can't get much more adventure pulp fiction than that! The lead story is by F.V.W. Mason, too, one of the giants of the genre. Also on hand are Harold F. Cruickshank, Jay J. Kalez, and lesser-known authors James Stevens, E.L. Marks, and Polan Banks. ALL FICTION STORIES was one of the Dell pulps, and while I haven't read much published by Dell, it was all good, and this one looks like it probably is, too.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Sky Fighters, January 1940

I don't have any issues of SKY FIGHTERS. Maybe I should try to get my hands on some. They have good covers, well-respected authors, and hey, it's a Thrilling Publication, right? Says so right on the cover. I generally like all the other Thrilling Group pulps I've read. I don't know who did the cover on this issue, but I like it. Inside are stories by top aviation/air war pulpsters Robert Sidney Bowen, Arch Whitehouse, and Harold F. Cruickshank, plus Captain J. Winchcombe-Taylor, David Brandt, and house-name Lt. Scott Morgan. I have plenty of other things to read, of course, but one of these days . . .

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Battle Birds, February 1940

I don’t own this pulp, but I do own an e-book reprint of it which I read recently because it contains one of David Goodis’s early aviation yarns, and after reading Cullen Gallagher’s excellent books about Goodis’s pulp fiction, I wanted to sample one of them. I figured I might as well go ahead and read the other stories while I was at it.

This is actually the first issue of BATTLE BIRDS’ third incarnation as a pulp. It started out as a regular aviation/air war pulp under the name BATTLE BIRDS in December 1932 and continued for 19 issues through the June 1934 issue. Then with the July 1934 issue, it became a character pulp with science fiction elements as DUSTY AYRES AND HIS BATTLE BIRDS, with the title character leading an air war against a future invader of the United States. I read one of those many, many years ago and probably ought to check out that series again. That lasted for 12 issues until July/August 1935. The title was dormant for a few years until BATTLE BIRDS made a comeback with this issue from February 1940.

Robert Sidney Bowen, who wrote all those earlier Dusty Ayres novels as well as scores of other aviation and air war yarns, leads off this issue with the novella “The Last Flight of the Damned”. Bowen was a solid pro who knew how to keep a story perking along with action and drama, but the plot of this one, involving a German mad scientist who comes up with a super-scientific weapon (powered by handwavium, no doubt) with which to destroy Allied planes during World War I, had been done an awful lot, even by 1940. Despite it being well-written, I had a little trouble working up much excitement about this one—which is absolutely unfair of me because I’ll read Western pulp stories with plots that had been used even more and still love them. I know that the stalwart cowboy falling in love with the rancher’s beautiful daughter and saving the ranch is even more of a stereotype than the German mad scientist and his super weapon. But I guess as readers we like what we like, and “The Last Flight of the Damned”, while mildly entertaining, is nothing special.

David Goodis is up next with “Bullets For the Brave”, published under his own name instead of one of the numerous house-names under which he also worked, and it’s about as different as you can get from Bowen’s tale and have both of them still be World War I aviation yarns. There are no super-weapons in this one, just raw human emotion and suffering as an American pilot loses his nerve after surviving being shot down and gets a reputation among his squadron for being yellow. His efforts to live with that and finally redeem himself are pretty powerful stuff, and Goodis’s prose is unrelentingly bleak. This is a really good story and just makes me want to read more of Goodis’s pulp fiction.

I don’t know anything about Moran Tudury except that he wrote hundreds of stories for various aviation, sports, Western, and romance pulps beginning in the mid-Twenties and then finally cracked the slicks in the mid-Forties. His short story in this issue, “The Ghost Rides West”, is about a German ace who is shot down again and again, only to rise from the grave and continue fighting. An American pilot who flies for the Lafayette Escadrille eventually figures out the secret behind this seemingly unkillable ace. It’s a decent story. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Tudury, but based on this yarn, I would again.

Despite his name, Orlando Rigoni was a Westerner born and raised, born in Utah and spending most of his life in northern California. He was a railroader, a miner, and worked for the Forest Service in addition to being a very prolific pulpster who wrote hundreds of stories, mostly for the Western pulps, but he started out in the aviation pulps and contributed quite a few stories to them. He also wrote dozens of Western novels and is best remembered for those today. I knew his name as a Western writer long before I found out he wrote aviation stories, too. His story in this issue, “Eagles Fly Alone”, is an excellent yarn about the Horde of Hellions, a group of pilots who are mavericks and have trouble adjusting to a more disciplined style of flying and fighting when a new commander comes in. This is the first thing by Rigoni that I recall reading, although I have several of his Western novels on my shelves. I really ought to get around to reading them one of these days.

Harold F. Cruickshank is another author I knew as a Western writer long before I realized he got his start in the war and aviation pulps in the late Twenties. I haven’t really liked the Western stories I’ve read by him. I don’t know what it is, but something about them just rubs me the wrong way. He did a long series in RANGE RIDERS WESTERN about a group of settlers in Sun Bear Valley, a series that’s sometimes referred to as the Pioneer Folk series. I got to the point that I just skipped those because I knew I wouldn’t enjoy them. “The Valley of the Green Death” in this issue is the first air war yarn I’ve read by him, and I wanted to give it a fair chance. One problem that crops up right away and isn’t Cruickshank's fault is that the group of pilots in this story is also called the Hellions. This is something the editor should have addressed by asking either Cruickshank or Rigoni to change the name of their group or at least not running the stories back-to-back in the same issue. But again, this isn’t Cruickshank's fault, so I pressed on. Sure enough, the villain of this story is a mad German scientist who’s invented a superscientific weapon to kill American pilots. But wait! This time the mad German scientist isn’t a wizened little gnome or a disfigured giant. No, he’s actually a pilot himself and an ace, to boot. This is a very nice twist, and I’ll give Cruickshank credit for it. The story itself isn’t bad. I thought the writing was a little clunky in places, but it moves right along and wound up being enjoyable. I’d read more of Cruickshank's aviation stories, which is good because I have some of them.

“Passport to the Grave” is the only story by Rupert B. Chandler listed in the Fictionmags Index. That always makes me suspicious that the name is a pseudonym. This story has an interesting idea—a group of fliers known as Squadron Ex that’s made up of pilots from different countries—but the writing is clumsy enough that I had to reread several passages just to figure out what was going on. One of the squadron’s members is shot down and believed to be dead, and another pilot goes on a one-man mission to avenge him and uncover a traitor in the group. There are definitely things to like in this one if the writing was better. Maybe Rupert B. Chandler was a real guy and that’s the best he could do. Kind of a shame if he didn’t get a chance to develop, for whatever reason.

The final story in the issue is “The All-American Ace” by Metteau Miles, evidently the author’s real name, who published a dozen and a half stories in a brief career between 1937 and 1941. It’s a pretty good yarn about a former All-American college football player who’s now a pilot flying alongside a former teammate. When the teammate gets shot down, the protagonist sets out to avenge him (a lot of that going around). This is a pretty well-written tale with good characters. I enjoyed it.

Overall, I enjoyed the whole issue, but the more aviation stories I read, the more I realize I need to space them out. As I said above, I’m really being unfair to the genre since I’m a lot more tolerant of stereotypical plots in Westerns—and in detective and science fiction pulps, too, to be honest—than I am of these. Still, I’ve become more of an aviation pulp fan than I’ve been in the past and look forward to reading more of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Rodeo Romances, April 1947

RODEO ROMANCES seems to have been more oriented toward actual romance stories than the other two Western romance pulps published by the Thrilling Group, RANCH ROMANCES and THRILLING RANCH STORIES. Most of the covers are very placid depictions of happy couples. This one, however, features some good ol' bulldoggin' in a painting by Sam Cherry. I've been to quite a few rodeos, and the bulldogging is always exciting, not to mention dangerous for the cowboys competing. The authors in this issue are mostly familiar names: Johnston McCulley, Joe Archibald, Harold F. Cruickshank, Stephen Payne, and Cliff Walters.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, September 1951

Ouch! That definitely looks painful. This appears to me to be a Sam Cherry cover, although it hasn't been attributed to him as far as I know. And it's a very effective one. The lead story in this issue is a novella by the dependable Joseph Chadwick, backed up with stories by Edward Parrish Ware (a reprint from the May 1937 issue of POPULAR WESTERN), Harold F. Cruickshank, and lesser-known writers Frank Watson, Garold Hartsock, and house-name Tex Mumford. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spy Stories, August 1935

I associate A. Leslie Ross with Western pulp and paperback covers, of course, since he did so many great ones, but he did other sorts of covers, too, such as the one on this issue of the straight-forwardly named SPY STORIES. There are some fine authors inside this issue, too, including E. Hoffmann Price, Major George Fielding Eliot, Frederick C. Painton, Harold F. Cruickshank (not a fan of his work, personally, but he was both prolific and popular), Alexis Rossoff, and Dana R. Marsh, a name unfamiliar to me. SPY STORIES was published by A.A. Wyn, who put out five issues in 1929, took a six-year hiatus, and then published five more issues in 1935. This was the next to last issue. The scan and information are courtesy of the invaluable Fictionmags Index.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The cover art is probably by Sam Cherry, although I’m not a hundred percent convinced of that. It’s a nice cover, no matter who painted it. That’s my copy in the scan.

For more than a decade, the stories about Texas Ranger Walt Slade were one of the regular series in THRILLING WESTERN. A. Leslie Scott, under the pseudonym Bradford Scott, wrote more than 70 yarns about Slade, who was also known as El Halcon (The Hawk) and was reputed to be an outlaw, although he was actually an undercover Texas Ranger. “Trail From Yesterday”, the Slade novelette in this issue, is the final pulp story in the series, although as most if not all of you know, a few years later Scott began a series of paperback original novels featuring the character that ran for even longer.

This is an excellent tale for Slade to go out on, as far as his pulp run. Most of the time, these stories find Slade chasing outlaws in the rangelands of West Texas or the brush country of South Texas. “Trail From Yesterday” begins in Dallas (a far different place in the 1880s from what it is today) and the trail of a famous Texas owlhoot was believed to be dead leads Slade to the treacherous swamplands of East Texas, with its dangers of snakes, gators, and quicksand. The plot involves smuggling, gun-running, and a fortune in black opals. Scott packs almost enough material for a novel into this novelette, and he keeps the pace racing along with his usual vivid descriptions and several terrific shootouts. Slade also has a great sidekick in this one, Little Mose Wagner, a black former cowboy who’s too stove up to ride the range anymore, but he functions as Slade’s guide and assistant during this adventure in the swamp. This is great stuff, one of the best Walt Slade pulp yarns I’ve read. Scott was at the top of his game here.

The name Dabney Otis Collins is familiar to me from many Western pulp TOCs, but I don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything by him until now. His short story in this issue, “The Third Outlaw”, is about a fateful encounter between a lone cowboy and a gang of bank robbers on the run from the law as a blizzard is closing in. It’s a very suspenseful, surprisingly hardboiled tale, and I liked it a lot. I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for more by Collins.

The last time I read a Swap and Whopper story by Syl McDowell, I surprised myself by kind of liking it. The S&W story in this issue, “The Roaming Riders”, is pretty entertaining, too. It’s the usual goofy mix of wild circumstances, this time including a runaway pair of pants with all the duo’s money in it, a housing development in the desert of Southern California (this series is a modern-day Western), and an escaped elephant that’s supposed to be in a jungle movie. McDowell pulls it all together and makes it work fairly well. I got a few smiles out of this one. No outright chuckles that I can remember, but the series is growing on me.

Jim O’Mara was a pseudonym of Vernon Fluharty, who also wrote Westerns under the name Michael Carder. He was never all that prolific but he had a steady career producing well-written Westerns. His short story in this issue, “Collateral”, is a cattlemen vs. sodbusters yarn, written from the point of view of a former cowboy turned farmer. It’s a rather bleak yarn, but it has some nice action and a dark but still somewhat hopeful ending. I liked it quite a bit.

The same can’t be said of “Crop o’ Calamity” by Roger Dee (pseudonym of Roger D. Aycock), an author probably best remembered for his science fiction. This is another humorous Western about a couple of characters named Nosy Nolan and Doc Durgin, and it has something to do with escapees from a wild animal show. I don’t know for sure because it’s written in present tense (a style I don’t care for) and is dialect-heavy, and I just didn’t care for it at all, leading me to give up after a few pages. I may be warming up to Swap and Whopper after all these years, but not this one.

Much, much better is “Who’ll Ride With Me”, from the always dependable Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. This novelette is a reprint from the August 1947 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. It’s a cavalry vs. the Apaches yarn set in Arizona Territory, and as usual when Wheeler-Nicholson is writing about the military, there’s a real ring of authenticity to it. Some great action, although the ending isn’t quite as dramatic as it could have been. This story is also a good example of how the late Jon Tuska was wrong when he claimed that pulp editors wouldn’t allow romances between white and Hispanic characters. There’s a nicely handled romantic angle between the white cavalry lieutenant who’s the protagonist and the beautiful daughter of a Mexican rancher, and it’s written the same as any other romance in a Western pulp.

Harold F. Cruickshank wrote a lot of air war stories early in his pulp career and then became a prolific Western pulpster. I’ve never cared for his Pioneer Folk series that ran in RANGE RIDERS WESTERN. He has a stand-alone short story, “Prodigal Gun Thunder”, in this issue. It’s about a young man framed for being a horse thief who returns home from a stretch in prison to get to the bottom of things and settle the score. It’s a definite improvement over the other Western stories by Cruickshank that I’ve read, but there’s still something about his writing that just doesn’t resonate with me.

Harvey Ivison is a brand-new name to me. He wrote only a few stories for the pulps. His story “Thataway” is about a fugitive from the law who isn’t exactly what he appears to be. On the run from a posse, he shows up at a ranch where there’s a badly injured man, and unexpected things happen. This story is written with a very nice hardboiled tone that includes a few traces of dry humor. I really liked it and will have to be on the lookout for more stories by Harvey Ivison.

This issue concludes with a condensed novel, SCORPION by Will James. Is there a difference between a condensed novel and an abridged novel? I don’t know, but I feel like there should be. In a condensed novel, you take out words here and lines there, right? Whereas in an abridged novel, you take out entire scenes or sections. I have no idea which approach was taken in producing the version of SCORPION printed here. I remember reading James’s horse novel SMOKY when I was a kid, but that’s all I could tell you about it. SCORPION is a horse novel, too, and while I wanted to like it, page after page of horse-breaking narrative with no dialogue or actual plot did me in. I didn’t read this one, either. I just don’t have the time or patience I once did.

So the March 1951 issue of THRILLING WESTERN turns out to be a really mixed bag. The Walt Slade story by Scott is superb. The stories by Collins, O’Mara, Wheeler-Nicholson, and Ivison are all very good to excellent. The Swap and Whopper yarn by McDowell is okay, the Cruickshank story is readable but forgettable, and I didn’t finish the other two. As always, some of you might enjoy the stories I didn’t, so if you have this issue on your shelves, it’s worth taking down and sampling its contents.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Golden West Romances, February 1950

This Western romance pulp from the Thrilling Group lasted for only six issues in 1949-50, but I think there's a reason it ended when it did. The final issue of GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES came out approximately the same time as the first issue of RANCH ROMANCES after Ned Pines bought the long-running title from Warner Publications. Why publish an imitation of RANCH ROMANCES when you can publish the real thing? So maybe the six issues of this pulp should be considered a dry run of sorts for the Thrilling Group incarnation of RANCH ROMANCES. This particular issue is the third out of six and features a fine cover by Kirk Wilson, who did many great covers for RANCH ROMANCES. The redhead reminds me of Barbara Stanwyck, which is a good thing. Inside are stories by some fine writers including Wayne D. Overholser, Johnston McCulley, Stephen Payne, John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), Roger Dee (best remembered for his science fiction, Harold F. Cruickshank (best remembered for his air war yarns), and Francis H. Ames. With authors like that, I'm sure GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES was a magazine worth reading during its short life.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Range Riders Western, January 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. My copy has a big chunk out of the front cover, so I’ve used the image from the Fictionmags Index. I think that cover is by George Rozen, but I wouldn’t swear to that. RANGE RIDERS (title later changed to RANGE RIDERS WESTERN) was one of the Thrilling Group’s Western pulps, published officially by Better Publications. It ran for 75 issues from December 1938 through April 1953. The lead novel in each issue featured Steve Reese, Hank Ball, and Dusty Trail, a trio of range detectives who work for the Cattlemen’s Protective Association. Reese, who is actually the hero of the series with Hank and Dusty providing support and occasional comic relief, also has a commission as a U.S. Marshal, so he has jurisdiction wherever he goes.

“The Bloody Bull Trail” in the January 1948 issue is by Oscar J. Friend, probably best remembered as an editor and literary agent, but he wrote a good number of Western and science fiction novels, too. He probably created the Steve Reese series since he was the main author of those novels during the pulp’s early years, then returned late in its run to contribute two more stories, of which this is the first. As the story opens, Reese is on the trail of a missing prize bull which was stolen from an Arizona rancher. Reese is also looking for another range detective who was assigned to the case first but has disappeared. Another rancher in the area, a Mexican don whose spread is an old Spanish land grant, also wanted that bull, so he’s the prime suspect in its theft, not to mention the disappearance of the other detective.

What Reese finds is that he and Hank and Dusty (who show up not long after he does) are in the middle of a complex plot involving water rights, gun smuggling, and a Mexican bandit known as El Gato. Murder ups the stakes as our heroes do a lot of riding and fighting and shooting to untangle all those threads.

Friend was an excellent writer whose work has more humor and literary touches than that of many Western pulpsters. At the same time, he never neglects the action and keeps this story moving along at a brisk, very satisfying pace. By this time, most Western writers, Friend included, had abandoned the “yuh mangy polecat” dialogue, making “The Bloody Bull Trail” read more like a yarn that could have been written in the Fifties, Sixties, or Seventies. It’s smooth and well-done and very entertaining. I liked it a lot.

I’ve always found it a little odd that none of these novels from RANGE RIDERS were reprinted in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies, like the other characters from the Thrilling Group’s Western hero pulps, Jim Hatfield, the Rio Kid, and the Masked Rider. Seems like they would have been prime material for reprinting by Popular Library or Curtis Books. “The Long Noose”, also by Friend and from the first issue of the pulp, was reprinted in hardback by Gateway Press in 1942 and in paperback by Handi-Books in 1947. The main characters’ names were changed in these reprints. I used to have a copy of the Gateway Press edition. Steve Reese became Simon Carter. I don’t remember what Hank Ball and Dusty Trail were changed to. All of Friend’s early novels from the series were also reprinted in England but apparently THE LONG NOOSE is the only American reprint from the series.

Moving on from the lead novel, the next story is a short-short, “Walk Out and Die”, published under the house-name Sam Brant. The Brant name has been connected to Frank Gruber, Louis L’Amour, and Syl McDowell. I think I remember reading somewhere that some of the Sam Brant stories may be by L. Ron Hubbard. I don’t think any of those authors wrote “Walk Out and Die”. It’s a tense little story about a sheriff with a prisoner who’s the target of a vengeful family of owlhoots. To me, it reads like the work of Bennie Gardner, better known under his pseudonym Gunnison Steele, and since there’s a Gunnison Steele novelette next up in this very issue, I suspect that Gardner wrote “Walk Out and Die” as well. He turned out a lot of short-shorts like this. Unfortunately, although “Walk Out and Die” starts out well, the ending is pretty weak and leaves a lot unresolved.

That Gunnison Steele novelette I mentioned is “Heir to Boothill Range”. It uses the very common plot of a young man returning to his hometown to find out who framed his father for rustling and then lynched him seven years earlier. While there’s nothing new about this one, plot-wise, Gardner does a good job with it, giving us a well-paced yarn with a likable protagonist, some fine action scenes, and a nicely handled romantic element. I nearly always like Bennie Gardner’s work and this is no exception.

Since this is a January issue, that means it was on the newsstands during December, so fittingly enough there’s a Christmas story, “A Happy Christmas” by C.V. Tench. This is a Northern, a suspenseful yarn about a trapper/prospector who has a sinister visitor on Christmas Eve. I guessed the late twist in this one, but it’s still an enjoyable, effective tale.

“Killer’s Cue” by William O’Sullivan has an unusual protagonist, an elderly Chinese cook who works in a saloon and hotel in a mining camp. He turns detective in order to find out who killed his best friend, an old codger prospector. The murderer’s identity is really obvious, but that doesn’t keep this from being a good story.

Harold F. Cruickshank wrote a bunch of aviation stories for the pulps, but from the mid-Forties through the early Fifties, he wrote a Western short story series called the Pioneer Folk (sometimes listed as the Sun Bear Valley series) that ran in RANGE RIDERS WESTERN. These stories feature a young married couple, Dal and Mary Baldwin, and their friends and neighbors in Sun Bear Valley. The one in this issue is called “Good Neighbor Gunfire”. To be honest, I skipped it, because I’ve forced myself to read some of this series in the past and never liked any of them. At this point, there aren’t many things I’m going to force myself to read.

The issue wraps up with “Trail Drive” by A. Kenneth Brant, a pseudonym for Brent Ashabranner. This generically-titled yarn about a trail boss trying to get a herd across a waterless stretch is well-written. Not much to it, but I enjoyed it.

Overall, I think this is a good issue of RANGE RIDERS WESTERN. The lead novel is excellent, one of the best in the series I’ve read, the Gunnison Steele novelette is very good, and all the stories are entertaining (except for the one I skipped, which may be good, too, just not to my taste). It’s been a while since I read an issue of this pulp. I think I may need to see if I can rustle up some more of them. (No pun intended.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, May 1950

I'm pretty sure I've never read an issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES. It generally had pretty good covers, though, like this one, which I want to say is by Kirk Wilson, although it might be Sam Cherry's work. Some solid authors in this issue, as well, including Johnston McCulley (writing as Raley Brian), Tom Curry, Ray Townsend, Cliff Walters, and Harold F. Cruickshank (not a favorite of mine, but a lot of readers liked his work).

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, October 1946

A nice action-packed cover by Sam Cherry graces this issue of WEST, and there's a good line-up of authors inside, too: Dean Owen with a long novella, Johnston McCulley with a Zorro yarn, and stories by Allan K. Echols, Harold F. Cruickshank, and house-name Tom Parsons. This is another good example of how Western pulp art directors loved the colors red and yellow. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, February 1934

TOP-NOTCH published some good adventure fiction, had good authors and good covers like this one by Don Hewitt. It's not as well-remembered as some of the other adventure pulps, but from what I can tell, it was a pretty solid magazine. This issue includes stories by Steve Fisher, Leslie McFarlane (the original Franklin W. Dixon of Hardy Boys fame), Hal Field Leslie, Harold F. Cruickshank, C.T. Stoneham, and assorted lesser-known authors. I'd have been tempted by that cover if I had an extra dime and nickel in my pocket back in 1934.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, December 1940

This is a pretty violent cover to find on a pulp, and especially striking because it was published more than a year before the United States' entry into World War II. But it's also pretty effective and has the yellow and red color scheme that was so popular, especially on the Western pulps. I don't know who the artist is. Inside are stories by some top pulpsters, including Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and Louis L'Amour (with one of his great Ponga Jim Mayo yarns). Also on hand are William R. Cox, Denver Bardwell, and Harold F. Cruickshank. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Popular Western, August 1948

I think that's the first time I've seen anybody use a shovel for cover during a gunfight. Doesn't seem to be like it would be all that effective, although it seems to be doing the job in this cover by Sam Cherry. This issue of POPULAR WESTERN has a strong group of authors inside, including William Hopson, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Louis L'Amour, Tom Gunn (probably Syl MacDowell), Ben Frank, Harold F. Cruickshank, Alfred L. Garry, and house-name Jackson Cole. I'm not that fond of some of those writers, but their work was popular and they sold plenty of it.

Saturday Afternoon Western Pulp: Ace-High Western Stories, July 1949

I'm going to be writing a book set in Death Valley later this year, but I won't be able to call it "Death Valley Gun-Devils". I would if I could! I'm sure this is a good story, though, since it's by William Heuman. Other authors in this issue of ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES are Tom Roan, Richard Brister, Larry Harris, and Harold F. Cruickshank. I don't know who painted the cover. Something about the guy's head looks just a bit off to me, as if it doesn't quite sit right on his body, but seeing as I have no artistic talent whatsoever, I feel a little bad about criticizing it. Overall I like it and think it's another exciting Popular Publications cover.