Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Red Seal Western, August 1937

RED SEAL WESTERN is a little-remembered Western pulp these days, but it had some good covers and good authors, too. I think this cover is by Tom Lovell. The cowboy looks like his work, and so does the redhead. Inside this issue are stories by Harry Sinclair Drago, Claude Rister, Dean Owens (almost certainly a typo for Dean Owen/Dudley Dean McGaughey), Cibolo Ford (with his name misspelled on the table of contents), Mel Pitzer, and Wilfred McCormick, one of my favorite authors as a kid for his juvenile sports novels and dog stories. This certainly looks like an enjoyable Western pulp to me.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story, August 9, 1941

We've seen plenty of poker games interrupted by gunfights on Western pulp covers, of course, but as far as I recall, this is the first one I've run across where the same thing happens during a game of pool. This cover is by H.W. Scott, who did nearly all the covers for WESTERN STORY during this particular era. As usual, there are plenty of good authors inside including Harry Sinclair Drago, Cliff Farrell, Hugh B. Cave, Frank Richardson Pierce writing as Seth Ranger, James B. Hendryx, Lloyd Eric Reeve, and Russell A. Bankson. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novel and Short Stories, July 1937

On this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES, J.W. Scott gives us his version of the Iconic Trio: the Stalwart Cowboy, the Gun-totin' Redhead, and the Old Geezer. The Old Geezer is tied up instead of wounded, and the Redhead doesn't look particularly angry, but the Cowboy is definitely stalwart and wearing a red shirt, to boot. (Red shirts on Western pulp covers don't have the same meaning as red shirts on STAR TREK, by the way.) A fine bunch of writers can be found inside this issue, too: Eugene Cunningham, Harry Sinclair Drago, Larry A. Harris, Raymond S. Spears, and Ken Jason, a house-name but usually used by one of the top authors. I don't own this one, but it looks like a top-notch Western pulp that's probably well worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, September 25, 1938

That's a dramatic cover by William F. Soare on this issue of SHORT STORIES. I always like seeing that red sun. There's a strong line-up of authors in this issue: Harry Sinclair Drago, Gordon Young, Frank Richardson Pierce, Warren Hastings Miller, Jackson Gregory, Lawrence Treat, H.S.M Kemp, and Captain Frederick Moore. Probably well worth reading with yarn-spinners like that. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Action, September 1948

Okay, who painted this cover, H.W. Scott or A. Leslie Ross? I can't make up my mind. I don't own this pulp, but I do have a paperback copy of the novel featured in this issue of WESTERN ACTION, "The Lost Buckaroo" by Bliss Lomax, who, of course, was really Harry Sinclair Drago. I haven't read the novel, but I believe it features his series characters, railroad detectives Rainbow Ripley and Grumpy Gibbs. Also in this issue are stories by Gerry Walker (his only credit in the FMI), the prolific Harry Van Demark, and Harold Preece, who I know mostly as a friend and correspondent of Robert E. Howard. I don't think I've ever read any of his fiction.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story, August 30, 1941

This issue of the iconic WESTERN STORY sports a fine, very dramatic cover by A. Leslie Ross, one of my favorite pulp and paperback cover artists. The authors inside are no less notable: Harry Sinclair Drago, L.L. Foreman (with a Preacher Devlin novella), Tom W. Blackburn, S. Omar Barker, Frank Richardson Pierce (as Seth Ranger), George Michener, and Eric Howard. Definitely looks like an issue worth reading. I don't own a copy, or I just might. I do have Harry Sinclair Drago's novel BUCKSKIN EMPIRE, one installment of which is serialized in this issue. May have to see if I can find the book.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, September 1950

Since posting my review of Harry Sinclair Drago's novel APACHE CROSSING earlier this week, I've discovered that the novel also appeared in the September 1950 issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN, also under the Will Ermine name. I don't have that issue so I can't compare the texts, but the book is fairly short in the Popular Library paperback edition, 160 pages, and the pulp version runs 68 double-columned pages of, I assume, fairly small type, so it may or may not have been expanded for book publication. Also in this issue are a short story by Lee Floren and a short-short by W.G. Wyatt, who has only two credits in the Fictionmags Index, the other one being a novella in the May 1950 issue of BLUE RIBBON WESTERN. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the W.G. Wyatt name was a pseudonym, maybe for editor Robert W. Lowndes. That's pure speculation on my part, though. I think the pulp cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but it's hard to be sure because the hombre doesn't have a hat on. Ross's hats are unmistakable.

Review: Apache Crossing - Will Ermine (Harry Sinclair Drago)

I admit, one reason I bought this book is because of the great Sam Cherry cover, which first appeared on the August 1949 issue of the pulp GIANT WESTERN. But also, I knew that Will Ermine, the author of APACHE CROSSING, was really Harry Sinclair Drago, a prolific and popular author of Western stories and novels under his own name as well as his best-known pseudonym Bliss Lomax, in addition to the novels he wrote as Will Ermine. I’ve read Drago’s work numerous times in the past and always enjoyed it, so I expected to like APACHE CROSSING.

The protagonist is a young cowboy named Pat Ritchie who breaks his leg while on a cattle drive through Indian Territory. His outfit has to leave him behind, and he winds up recuperating while staying with a gang of mostly sympathetic outlaws led by a frontier philosopher known as Little Bill Guthrie. Little Bill knows that Pat is tempted to remain with the gang once his leg is healed, but the boss outlaw doesn’t want the young cowboy to start riding the owlhoot trail. He tries to send Pat away, but a chance for a lucrative bank robbery comes up and the rest of the gang wants to use Pat to hold some horses in reserve for the getaway. He wouldn’t participate in the actual holdup, but in the eyes of the law he would still be an outlaw.

Of course, things don’t go as planned. There’s a big shootout in town and the gang has to scatter. Pat makes his way to Arizona, goes to work on a ranch there, falls in love with the rancher’s beautiful daughter, and hopes that his shady past will never catch up to him. I think we all know how that’s going to turn out. Throw in some rustlers plaguing the ranch, too, and you’ve got the makings of a riproaring traditional Western novel.

By the time this novel was published originally by Doubleday in 1950, Harry Sinclair Drago was already an old-timer, having started writing Westerns for the pulps in the early Twenties. Not surprisingly, that causes it to have a bit of an old-fashioned feel to it, rather than the hardboiled grittiness you find in a lot of post-war Westerns. Pat Ritchie is about as clean-cut and stalwart a hero as you’ll ever see, always trying to do the decent and honorable thing even when he’s hanging around with a bunch of owlhoots. Those outlaws, especially their leader Little Bill Guthrie, are the only characters in this book with any moral complexity. Drago’s portrayal of Little Bill is excellent. He was also a historian and produced several well-regarded volumes of Western non-fiction, and that gives his fiction a feeling of authenticity and realism.

APACHE CROSSING ambles along at a very pleasant pace with a fine mix of sympathetic characters, dastardly villains, vivid settings, and enough action to keep things interesting. I really enjoyed it, and I’m glad the cover prompted me to buy a copy. Recommended if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Famous Western, March 1939

This issue of FAMOUS WESTERN has a good cover, but I'm afraid I don't know the artist. The only guess I can venture is A. Leslie Ross, and I'm not convinced of that at all. There are some good writers inside this issue, with the best-known being Harry Sinclair Drago with a novella called, "The Gun Notch That Didn't Count", a great title. There's also a story by Abner J. Sundell under his "Cliff Campbell" pseudonym that later became a house name when other authors besides Sundell began using it. Another house name, James Rourke, also has a story in this issue, plus yarns by some apparently real but completely forgotten writers: Wilcey Earle, Brian Loomis, Gratton Boone, and Thomas Tyler Jackson. I don't know anything about Gratton Boone, but it would be a great name for an evil gunman character. I don't own this issue of FAMOUS WESTERN. The scan and the author information come from the Fictionmags Index. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, December 10, 1934

When he was still a practicing attorney in California, Erle Stanley Gardner often had Chinese immigrants as clients and was very sympathetic to them and the injustices some of them suffered. I'm surprised he didn't write more stories set in Chinatown. "The Black Egg" in this issue of SHORT STORIES appears to be one of them, judging from the cover. I don't own this issue, it doesn't appear to be on-line anywhere, and I don't believe the story has ever been reprinted, so I don't know anything else about it. But since it's by Erle Stanley Gardner, I'm willing to bet it's good. (I wish more of Gardner's pulp stories would be reprinted, by the way.) There are some other excellent authors in this issue, including Donald Barr Chidsey, J. Allan Dunn, Harry Sinclair Drago, and Clifford Knight. And the usual red sun in the cover by Frederick Witten is huge this time around.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Complete Northwest Magazine, July 1938

It seems like it's been a while since I posted a Mountie cover, so here's one I like by one of my favorite pulp and paperback cover artists, A. Leslie Ross. Since this cover features a Mountie, Ross couldn't give him a hat with an enormous brim, as he usually does on Western covers, but I like it anyway. Quite a bit to like inside this issue, too, as it features two stories by Harry Sinclair Drago, one under his name and one as by Will Ermine, as well as yarns by Murray Leinster, Charles H. Snow, C.V. Tench, and Zachary Strong (probably E.B. Mann). That's a good lineup.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western, December 1944

This cover by A. Leslie Ross is another good example of how the Western pulp art directors loved the colors red and yellow. Nearly all of this issue of REAL WESTERN is taken up by the novel "Buckskin Marshal" by Will Ermine, really Harry Sinclair Drago. I think I have the paperback version of that book on my shelves somewhere. I'll have to check. The lone short story is by another familiar name, Lee Floren. I generally like Ross's work, and I think this is a good cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, January 13, 1940

It's been a while since I posted a Mountie cover, and this is a good one (not surprising since it's on an issue of ARGOSY) by Rudolph Belarski. There's an excellent group of authors inside this issue as well, including E. Hoffmann Price, Harry Sinclair Drago, Eustace L. Adams, Bennett Foster, William Gray Beyer, and Bruce Douglas. ARGOSY was always good, often great.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, December 1938

We have an Angry, Gun-Totin' Blonde on the cover of this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES, but the Stalwart, Red-Shirted Cowboy and the Wounded Old Geezer are right there with her. Inside is a very solid line-up of Western pulpsters including Harry Sinclair Drago, W.T. Ballard, Ed Earl Repp, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, and Rolland Lynch. This isn't really a well-known Western pulp, but it looks pretty good to me.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Sure-Fire Western, March 1937

Here are our old friends the Stalwart Cowboy, the Wounded Old Geezer, and the Angry Redhead (not totin' a gun this time) on an issue of SURE-FIRE WESTERN, a Western pulp from Ace that lasted only a dozen issues in the mid-to-late Thirties. The cover, which I like, is by an artist I'm not familiar with, William Luberoff. Most of the issue is taken up by the novel "Canyon of Golden Skulls" by Harry Sinclair Drago. This novel got an abridged digest reprint in the Western Novel Classic line, under Drago's most common pseudonym, Bliss Lomax. There's also one short story in this issue by little-known author R. Craig Christiansen. Every time I see one of these covers, I think I'm going to write that trio, and that scene, into a book, but so far I haven't gotten around to it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, August 16, 1941

I don't think I've ever run across a Western pulp cover depicting a gunfight in the middle of a stampede . . . until now. Because that's what you've got on this issue of WESTERN STORY, in a cover by the prolific H.W. Scott. Inside are stories by some of the best Western writers from that era: Walt Coburn, Harry Sinclair Drago, Philip Ketchum, Frank Richardson Pierce, Bennett Foster, and Lee Floren. There are plenty of good reasons why WESTERN STORY was one of the best Western pulps, and there's a handful of 'em right there.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western, June 1945

To start off the year in this series, a pulp that I own and read recently. The scan is from my copy. The cover is by A. Leslie Ross, far from his best work, I think, but reasonably eye-catching. And as the cover copy proclaims, the featured story is “Outlaw River” by Bliss Lomax, who was really Harry Sinclair Drago, starring his series characters, range detectives Rainbow Ripley and Grumpy Gibbs. In fact, it’s almost the only story in this issue, since there’s only one back-up yarn, “A Muleskinner Goes to War” by Lee Floren.

I’d never read any of the Rainbow and Grumpy novels until now, and I have to say, W.C. Tuttle must have been a tolerant man. If he wasn’t, he would have sued Drago, since Rainbow Ripley is a pretty blatant copy of Hashknife Hartley, although Grumpy is more Gabby Hayes-like than swiped from Sleepy Stevens, Hashknife’s sidekick. But then, there have been plenty of other range detective characters in Westerns, so best just to take Rainbow and Grumpy for what they are and move on.

In this yarn, they’ve come to Idaho to take the side of a couple of miners who leased a failed gold mine from the corporation that owns it and then struck an unexpected bonanza. Once the owners of the corporation realize the mine is valuable after all, they want to run off the men who leased it and hire an old enemy of Rainbow and Grumpy to do so.

In addition to this, the local cattle baron is up to his neck in an irrigation scheme that may have something fishy about it, and that’s tied in with the job that brought Rainbow and Grumpy to Idaho, too. Throw in a romance between a crusading newspaper editor and the cattle baron’s beautiful granddaughter, and you’ve got plenty of elements for Drago to work with. In fact, the whole thing gets maybe a little too complicated at times.

As a mystery, “Outlaw River” isn’t much, but there are some nice action scenes and Rainbow and Grumpy are a likable pair of heroes. One stylistic touch that annoyed me was Drago’s habit of switching back and forth constantly in the way he refers to Rainbow Ripley. Sometimes he’s Rainbow, sometimes he’s Rip, sometimes he’s Ripley. I’ve come across that technique in work from other authors, and it never works very well for me.

“Outlaw River” was reprinted several years later as a paperback of the same title, as half of an Ace Double with SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE by Jim Mayo, who was Louis L’Amour, of course. I don’t know if Drago expanded it for book publication, but if he did it probably wasn’t by much. At 75 pages of double-columned fairly small print, this is one of the few “book-length novels” published in the pulps that actually fit that description.

Lee Floren’s “A Muleskinner Goes to War” is also a pretty good story about a muleskinner who works delivering loads of gold from a mine to the nearby town and his efforts to corral a gang of outlaws who keep stealing the shipments. This one has some nice touches, such as the protagonist being married and also worrying about his wife cheating on him, and Floren keeps things moving along well.

With only two stories on which to rise or fall, the June 1945 issue of REAL WESTERN still manages to come down pretty much smack in the middle. Both stories are okay but not great, and that describes this issue as well.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Double-Action Gang, February 1937

I've never read much from the gang pulps, but this issue of DOUBLE-ACTION GANG looks like a pretty good one, and a bit unusual, too, because most of what's inside it was written by a pair of authors much better known for their Westerns. The featured novel "This Way to Hell", which fills up about two-thirds of the issue, is by Harry Sinclair Drago, who had a long, prolific career as a Western novelist and pulpster under his own name and the pseudonyms Bliss Lomax and Will Ermine. The supposedly true story about the Jesse James gang attributed to Bill Stiles is actually by Ed Earl Repp. And there are two stories by Will F. Jenkins, one under his own name and one under his much more famous pseudonym Murray Leinster. While Jenkins/Leinster isn't really famous as a Western author, he wrote quite a few of them. On top of all that, I like the cover. If I actually owned a copy of this pulp, I'd read it, you can count on that.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Complete Western Book Magazine, October 1937

Two novellas take up most of the pages in this issue of COMPLETE WESTERN BOOK MAGAZINE, and fortunately they're by two top-notch pulpsters, Will Ermine (who was really Harry Sinclair Drago) and James P. Olsen (who was really James P. Olsen but was also very prolific under the name James A. Lawson). There are also short stories by the distinctively named Carmony Gove, who wrote a lot for various Western and detective pulps, and Bob Marsh, not a distinctive name at all and also not very prolific with only three stories in the Fictionmags Index. I've enjoyed everything I've read by Drago and Olsen, though, under their real names or whatever pseudonyms they were using, so I suspect this is a pretty good issue. I like the title of Olsen's story, "Mad Dash for Hell".

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, October 25, 1935

Another good-looking issue of SHORT STORIES with a fine Mountie cover by Frank Spradling and stories by the all-star line-up of H. Bedford-Jones, Clarence E. Mulford, Harry Sinclair Drago, L. Patrick Greene, Hapsburg Liebe, S. Omar Barker, and Richard Howells Watkins. SHORT STORIES was always a high quality pulp.