Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, September 1949

This issue of WEST (which I don't own and haven't read) has a great, action-packed cover by Sam Cherry. That lightning bolt in the background really adds to the atmosphere and drama. The authors inside are pretty darned good, too. Jim Mayo was really Louis L'Amour, of course, and his novella in this issue was later expanded into the novel WHERE THE LONG GRASS GROWS. Also on hand are Johnston McCulley with a Zorro story, Allan K. Echols, Francis H. Ames, house-name Tom Parsons, and Porter West, who is quite possibly a pseudonym, as well, since this is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index. I've read the L'Amour story in this novella form, but so many years ago that I don't remember anything about it. I've never read the novel version.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, April 1950

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with one of my favorite Sam Cherry covers and maybe the single best depiction of Jim Hatfield that I’ve ever seen. That’s definitely the way Hatfield looks in my head as I read these pulps.

The Hatfield novel in this issue, “The Rimrock Raiders”, is by A. Leslie Scott writing as Jackson Cole. It centers around the conflict between some cattlemen in West Texas and the oil wildcatters who are moving into the region. One of those wildcatters strikes a gusher, resulting in an oil boom town and even more trouble. Naturally, it’s going to take a Texas Ranger to clean things up and expose the true villain behind all the problems, and of course that Ranger is Jim Hatfield.

In addition to knowing a lot about mining and railroading, Scott was also well-versed in geology and the oil business, and that knowledge comes through in this novel. I’m a long-time fan of oilfield yarns and this is a good one with a real sense of authenticity. There are two great scenes, one in which Hatfield comes up with a unique way of dealing with an oil rig that’s on fire, the other being the literally explosive climax that’s one of the best I’ve read in the series. Scott was at the top of his game in this one, which he rewrote and expanded a few years later into the Walt Slade novel GUNSMOKE OVER TEXAS, published by Pyramid in 1956. I read that version when I was in high school. I remembered the cover but nothing about the plot, so it didn’t spoil “The Rimrock Raiders” for me.

This novel, with its oilfield element, also reminds me of a strange discrepancy in the Hatfield series. Scott’s entries seem to be set around the turn of the 20^th Century, based on historical references, while the Hatfield novels by Tom Curry, the other main writer on the series for many years, read more like they’re set about twenty years earlier, around 1880. The novels by Walker A. Tompkins and Peter Germano are harder to pin down as to time period, but most of them seem to me to be set in the 1880s or 1890s. I find these continuity glitches, if you want to call them that, interesting, but they absolutely don’t bother me. I just enjoy the stories.

Tex Holt was a house-name used by Leslie Scott, Archie Joscelyn, and Claude Rister on novels. It also shows up on a dozen or so stories in various Thrilling Group Western pulps. That’s the by-line on “Ghost Riders of Haunted Pass” in this issue, a lightweight tale about a couple of drifting cowboys named Jim Norton and “Hungry” Hill who encounter a couple of phantom owlhoots. The banter between the protagonists reminded me a little of Syl McDowell’s Swap and Whopper stories, but not as silly and the story’s action doesn’t descend into slapstick comedy. It’s an okay story, but I have no idea who wrote it.

“Long Sam Crowns a King” is another entry in Lee Bond’s long-running series about the good-guy outlaw Long Sam Littlejohn. In this one, set in the South Texas brush country, Long Sam clashes with an old enemy, a former carpetbagger turned would-be cattle king. There’s some nice action, and for a change, the characters don’t stand around explaining the plot to each other. Long Sam’s nemesis, U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, is mentioned but doesn’t make an appearance. This is a solid story in a formulaic but consistently entertaining series.

“Red Butte Showdown” is by Jim Mayo, who we all know was actually Louis L’Amour. This story centers around a mysterious stranger who protects a couple of orphans (one of whom is a beautiful young woman, of course) from a villain who’s after the mine they’ve inherited. That plot sounds pretty well-worn, and to tell the truth, most of L’Amour’s plots were pretty standard stuff. But he was really, really good at them most of the time, and “Red Butte Showdown” is no exception. Not only that, but he throws in a pretty good plot twist at the end of this one. I’ve said for a long time that I think L’Amour was a better short story writer than he was a novelist, and this is a good example. I enjoyed this story a lot. It’s probably been reprinted in one of the many L’Amour short story collections, but I don’t know which.

Barry Scobee’s “Good Country for Murder” is a modern-day Western in which a park ranger in West Texas’s Big Bend encounters a vicious criminal. It’s a suspenseful, very well-written yarn that I thoroughly enjoyed. As I’ve mentioned before, Barry Scobee is the only pulp writer I know of who has a mountain named for him. It’s just outside Fort Davis, Texas, and was named after Scobee to honor his efforts in preserving the old military fort there. In addition to writing for the pulps, he was a newspaper reporter and editor in West Texas and his work really rings true when it’s set in that region. This is another very good story by him.

And this is a very good issue of TEXAS RANGERS, as well. A top-notch Hatfield novel, and four out of the five back-up stories are very good to excellent. The one story that’s weaker than the others is still entertaining. If you’re a fan of this pulp, have this issue on your shelves, and haven’t read it, I give it a high recommendation. (If you want to read the rewritten, Walt Slade version of the novel, GUNSMOKE OVER TEXAS, it’s available as an e-book on Amazon and would be well worth your time, too.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, February 1951

This issue of GIANT WESTERN sports a slightly cartoonish cover by Ed DeLavy, but it's yet another example of just how dangerous it was to go to the barber shop in the Old West. I kept telling my mother I didn't want to get my hair cut when I was a kid. I guess I sensed somehow that some ranny might start burnin' powder. Anyway, this issue (which I don't own) features stories by some fine writers including William MacLeod Raine, A. Leslie Scott, Leslie Ernenwein, Louis L'Amour (as Jim Mayo), T.C. McClary, and B.M. Bower (probably a reprint since Bower died in 1940 although it's not listed as such). 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Top Western Fiction Annual, 1953

This is a reprint pulp, but what a fine bunch of authors behind that Sam Cherry cover: Leslie Scott writing as A. Leslie, Louis L'Amour writing as Jim Mayo, William L. Hopson, Joseph Chadwick, Larry A. Harris, Gladwell Richardson, and Ben Frank. Even if I'd read some of the stories before, I would have picked up this one if I had a spare quarter in my pocket.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, August 1950

That's a nice cover by George Rozen on this issue of GIANT WESTERN, and some pretty good authors inside, too. Jim Mayo was Louis L'Amour, of course, and a few years later he expanded his novella "Showdown on the Hogback" into the novel SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE. Then there's W.C. Tuttle, one of my favorites, with a story featuring his character Cultus Collins (I haven't read any of this series). Also on hand are Leslie Scott, another favorite, writing under his pseudonym A. Leslie, old-timer Charles Alden Seltzer, Arch Whitehouse, better known for his aviation stories, and house-name Charles Alan Gregory.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, June 1952

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is of my copy, complete with newsstand stamp on the cover. I pulled this issue of TEXAS RANGERS off the shelf because there was a story by Clark Gray in the issue I read a few weeks ago that I enjoyed, and the Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “Warpath”, is also by Gray, one of only two Hatfield yarns he wrote for the magazine. The other was “Lobo Colonel”, from the January 1952 issue, which I read in a paperback reprint many years ago. I don’t remember anything about that one except that I didn’t like it and didn’t think Gray had a good handle on the Hatfield character. I wanted to give him another chance, though.

Well, as it turns out, while I didn’t completely dislike “Warpath”, I didn’t much like it, either. It’s the old plot about somebody selling whiskey to the Indians (in this case, the Comanches) and stirring them up. Hatfield’s out to find the culprit and put a stop to the plan. He winds up with a sidekick of sorts, a young white man who was raised by the Comanches and now finds himself unwelcome in both worlds, red and white. There’s a beautiful blonde who plays guitar and sings in a medicine show, as well, along with an older Ranger and a Comanche chief who wants peace. Those are enough ingredients for an entertaining, if stereotypical, story.

And Gray’s writing is okay for the most part, although some of his action scenes are pretty awkward and hard to follow. The thing that bothered me is that this just didn’t really seem like a Jim Hatfield story, like Gray’s other entry in the series. The character was off in ways that are hard to explain. He could have been almost any Texas Ranger protagonist, and he brooded ’way too much. I did like the crazed Comanche warrior Bitterfoot, though. He made a good villain. But overall I wouldn’t recommend “Warpath” to anyone who hasn’t read a Hatfield novel before. It’s not a good representation of the character and the series.

That only takes up about half the issue, though. The first short story is “That Packsaddle Affair” by Jim Mayo, none other than Louis L’Amour his own self, of course. L’Amour was just starting to get established as a Western novelist in 1952 and was still selling regularly to the Western pulps in the Thrilling Group. I’ve long felt that he was a better short story writer than he was a novelist, and this tale is a good one about a Texas outlaw who stops at a New Mexico stage station and finds himself in the middle of a deadly attempt by plotters to steal a rich gold claim from a young woman. The writing is smooth as it can be and the action scenes and dialogue are top-notch, although I thought there was one really good plot twist waiting to be employed that L’Amour never sprang on the reader.

The next story, “Good Country for Prairie Dogs”, is also set at a stage station and is by an author I’m not familiar with, Robert Aldrich. (I assume this isn’t the same person as the movie director Robert Aldrich.) In this one, the station manager and his pregnant wife are waiting for the local doctor to show up on a regular visit, when a seemingly friendly stranger with a dangerous agenda of his own stops at the station. This is nothing ground-breaking but still a nice, tense story.

“Trail Without End” is a novelette by Wayne D. Overholser writing as Joseph Wayne. The protagonist is the sheriff of a dying former boomtown who wants to move on to the gold fields of Colorado, but he’s held there by his love for the daughter of the local storekeeper, whose other daughter is married to a ne’er-do-well young gambler whose father is a horse thief and whose brother is a hired gunman. Got all that? Overholser provides plenty of domestic drama in this one, but there’s some action, too, along with some minor plot twists. I enjoyed it quite a bit because it’s very well written and Overholser does a good job with the characters.

Ralph Perry wrote one of the best Western novels I’ve read in recent years, NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY, and he has a story in this issue, “One Killing Deserves Another”. I like that title, and the story is a fine one about a shooting in a tiny crossroads settlement and the violent aftermath that follows it. Perry has a slightly off-kilter style, but it’s very effective and I thought this was an excellent story, my favorite in the issue.

This one wraps up with “Inside Straight” by Jim O’Mara, whose real name was Vernon Fluharty. It’s the old plot of the outlaw who has gone straight but whose lawless past comes back to haunt him. That familiarity hurts it a little, but O’Mara was a pretty good hardboiled Western writer and does a fine job with it.

This is an odd issue of TEXAS RANGERS. It’s the only one I ever recall reading where the Jim Hatfield novel is actually the weakest story in the bunch. All the others are very good to excellent. So it’s well worth reading, but I’d recommend the lead novel only to Hatfield completists.