Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western Stories, October 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know why the front cover is missing that strip at the bottom. That’s the way I got it. Luckily, the loss doesn’t detract too much from the cover by A. Leslie Ross. Not in the top rank of Ross’s work, to my mind, but his covers are always worthwhile. I’ll put a scan of the whole cover from the Fictionmags Index at the end of this post.

This issue opens with a novelette (probably closer to a novella, really) by Seven Anderton, a distinctly named author who’s mostly forgotten but who produced consistently good work for the Western and detective pulps. “Cactus Basin Showdown” features a pair of protagonists who fit the mold of many other Western pulp yarns: Brick Gordon is a handsome, two-fisted, fast-shooting cowboy, while his sidekick Galena Jones is a much older and grizzled old codger. If you’re thinking Buster Crabbe and Al “Fuzzy” St. John, well, so was I while reading this story. Anderton adds a nice variation to the story, though. Brick handles most of the action, but Galena is really the thinking half of the duo as they pitch in to help some homesteaders who are being run out of Cactus Basin by the local cattle baron/range hog. Yes, it’s a cattleman vs. sodbusters yarn, a very standard plot, but Anderton makes it fresh with his solid writing and characterizations. Even the main villain has a little depth to him. I enjoyed this story quite a bit.

The line at the top of the cover says “15 Action-Packed Stories”, but what it doesn’t tell you is that six of them are historical articles and features. I have nothing against such things and when I come across them in pulps, I usually skim them and read the more interesting ones, but really, I’m there for the fiction, so I’m not going to delve into the non-fiction. The next actual story in this issue is “The Haunted Town” by Lon Williams, an entry in his series of Weird Westerns about Deputy Sheriff Lee Winters. In this one, Winters encounters a werewolf—or does he? I’ve been aware of this series for years and always figured it would be right in my wheelhouse, but I’ve read several of them now, including this one, and for some reason I just don’t really like them very much. Something about the writing in them doesn’t resonate with me, and I don’t find Winters to be a very likable protagonist. Maybe I’m wrong about them. I’d be willing to try a few more before giving up on the series, but at this point, I’m not optimistic.

I’ve read several stories by Richard Brister and enjoyed them. “The Ioway Upstart” in this issue is about a tenderfoot from Des Moines who’s stranded in a rough, lawless mining camp. Either picked on or looked down upon by nearly everybody in the camp, he comes up with a clever way to win their respect, and also the heart of the best-looking girl in town. This is an entertaining, well-written story and makes me think I need to try one of Brister’s novels.

I read another story in the Able Cain series by A.A. Baker not long ago and enjoyed it, but his entry in this issue, “Able Cain’s Arena”, left me kind of cold. The title character is a judge in a mining boomtown and comes up with the idea of building a boxing arena so the miners can settle their disputes without shooting each other. It’s not a bad idea, but the story never generated much excitement or interest in me. My fault, maybe. Too soon to pass judgment on this series, but I’ve definitely had mixed reactions to it so far.

Gene Austin wrote a lot of stories for the Western pulps, but he seems to have been on autopilot in “Whistling in Boothill”. This story about the clash between two ranchers has some nice action at the end that almost redeems it, but the plot is really thin.

“The Hombre That Hell Wouldn’t Have” is a good title. The story is by Humphrey Jones, who wrote several dozen stories for assorted Western, detective, and sports pulps. It’s a decent yarn about a prospector who’s robbed and left to die in the desert. The resolution is pretty far-fetched, but overall, not a bad story.

Ralph Berard was the pseudonym of the very prolific pulpster Victor H. White. His story in this issue, “Gold Country Boothill”, is a very suspenseful tale about a young prospector framed for murder and the trial-by-vigilante that results. This is well-written, well-plotted, and has a very nice final twist that I didn’t see coming. I liked this one.

J.J. Mathews was another very prolific pulpster who turned out scores of Western, detective, and sports stories. His story in this issue is “Devil’s Homemaker”, which isn’t a very good title for this yarn about a young man’s quest for vengeance on the man who gunned down his father. But it’s got a decent plot and some emotional complexity, and the writing has a nice hardboiled tone to it. This is another good one from a forgotten but reliable pro.

Rex Whitechurch was a pseudonym that appeared on dozens of Western, detective, and sports stories, all of them published in various Columbia pulps edited by Robert Lowndes. Was it a house-name? That’s possible, I suppose, but I honestly have no idea. The Whitechurch story in this issue, “The Bronc Riders”, is a modern-day rodeo story and more of a romance than an action story. In fact, much of it reads more like mainstream fiction than genre Western. And it’s really, really good, too—until it runs smack into an ending that left me staring at the page in disbelief. Talk about a story falling apart at the last minute! This one is promising but very disappointing.

So what we have here is an issue of REAL WESTERN STORIES that’s a very mixed bag. Several of the stories are very good to excellent, and others I didn’t like at all. I’m glad I read it and will be on the lookout for more stories by Seven Anderton and Richard Brister. Heck, I’d even give Rex Whitechurch another try, and he made me want to throw the pulp across the room! But don’t race to your shelves to look for this one.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, September 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The hat brim and the sketchiness of the background have me convinced that this cover is the work of A. Leslie Ross. He must have been knocking out these pulp covers pretty quickly, but I don’t care, I still like them. I think this one is quite effective.

The first story in this issue is “No White Sheep”, a novella by Burt Thomas. That title is a little odd, but it refers to a family of outlaws—a grizzled old owlhoot and his four or five sons (I lost track). The youngest son decides to give up the life of crime after a deputy is killed right in front of him during a robbery, so he runs away and establishes a new identity and a respectable life for himself in a small town. There’s even a girl he falls for . . . But then his past comes back to haunt him, as you knew all along it would. This is a fairly standard plot, but Thomas does an excellent job with it. The story is well-written, has some good action, and a few nice poignant moments as well. Burt Thomas wrote about three dozen stories published in various Western pulps from the late Forties to the mid-Fifties, but that seems to be the extent of his work. I couldn’t find any record that he ever published a novel. I suspected at first that the name might be a pseudonym for Lee Floren, who also wrote at Lee Thomas, but this story doesn’t read like Floren’s work to me. It could be that Burt Thomas was just a reasonably talented writer who never published much and is now forgotten.

The short story “Black Shemwell” is about a man who takes up the mantle of a gunfighter even though he’s not suited to it in order to avenge the death of his brother. Like the other story by Ben Smith that I read recently, this one is well-written and engaging, with a fairly traditional plot that still manages to be a little offbeat. I don’t know if Smith will ever be a favorite of mine, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read by him so far.

J.J. Mathews published more than 100 Western, detective, and sports stories from 1950 to 1960, all of them in Columbia pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes. That makes me suspect very strongly that the name is a house pseudonym, and so does another fact I’ll get to momentarily. The long novella under the Mathews name in this issue is a real oddity. The protagonist of this story is Ace Champion, “wandering town-tamer”, as the author puts it. The tale opens with action, as Ace comes across a rancher’s daughter (a beautiful blonde, of course) being pursued by three gunmen. He steps in and rescues the girl, of course, and we’re off on another save-the-ranch-from-rustlers yarn. The villain of the piece is the notorious Mexican bandit leader Don Pesco . . . or is it? There’s some sort of connection between our hero Ace and the mysterious bandido. A love/hate relationship quickly develops between Ace and the blonde as he sticks around to help her and her father out of their dilemma, but a neighboring rancher is the third side of that romantic triangle.

This is a very schizophrenic story and leads me to wonder if there were two authors involved. The action is fast and furious and for the most part pretty well done. Ace and Judy nearly get caught in a stampede. Ace is captured by the bad guy, buried up to his neck, and left for the sun and the buzzards to finish off. Ace is ambushed numerous times and wounded more than once (said wounds being forgotten almost right away). But despite the very traditional plot and the hero’s eyeroll-inducing name, the writing is actually pretty good for the most part and the story moves along at a nice pace.

But then there are the scenes that are just terrible, and those are because everybody suddenly lapses into almost incomprehensible pseudo-cowboy dialect. I’m used to what I call “yuh mangy varmint” dialect, I’ve been guilty of it myself, but whoever wrote this story takes it to another level. The word “ter” substitutes for both “the” and “to”. “Yer” is both “you” and “your”. Then there are the things that make me think the author must have been British, like when the hero tells his horse “Away with you now, old fellow.” But it’s not always like that. Some of the dialogue reads normally.

I was curious enough to hunt up a couple of on-line scans of other Western pulps that have J.J. Mathews stories in them, and there’s no sign of such odd stuff in them. That’s the other thing I mentioned that makes me think it’s a house-name. I’m sure the truth is buried in the mists of time, but it’s the sort of thing I like to ponder. At any rate, for all its weirdness, “Through Ticket to Boothill” is kind of an enjoyable story. Whoever wrote it, there was some talent involved. Unpolished, maybe, but still there.

Lon Williams is best remembered for his long series of Weird Western pulp stories starring Deputy Lee Winters, but he wrote quite a few stand-alone yarns, too, such as “Stranger at the Gates”, which wraps up this issue. It’s about a couple of corrupt deputies whose crooked schemes run afoul of an unexpected visitor in town. It’s a short, unmemorable story.

So this is a very mixed issue, with one really good story by Burt Thomas, one good story by Ben Smith, one weird but somehow entertaining story by J.J. Mathews, and one weak story by Lon Williams. If you have this issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN on your shelves, the first three stories are worth reading.