Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story, May 24, 1941

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The cover is by H.W. Scott, and while I normally like Scott’s work quite a bit, this cover strikes me as being pretty drab. It wouldn’t have caught my eye on a newsstand in 1941, I don’t think. However, I read it now because I was in the mood for an issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY, the most venerable of Western pulps. Also, I was curious about the work of Ney N. Geer, an odd name I’d seen before, and he wrote the lead novella in this issue, “Gun Packer By Proxy”.

Geer published 34 stories in a short career that ran from 1936 to 1943. All but two of them were published in STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY, so obviously he found a receptive market there. The two stories published elsewhere were in WESTERN ADVENTURES, also a Street & Smith pulp, and WESTERN TRAILS from Ace. His only series character (13 stories) was someone named Potluck Jones. I haven’t read any of them so I don’t know anything about ol’ Potluck, but I’ll admit, the name doesn’t make me optimistic. Geer had only four books published, Western novels in 1936, ’37, and ’39 and then a Potluck Jones novel (probably a fix-up from some of the pulp stories) published only in England in the early Forties. I found a Ney Napolean Geer, born in Ohio in 1895 and died in Washington in 1974, and feel confident this must be the Western pulpster. But that’s all I was able to come up with about him. Why he stopped writing in 1943 remains a mystery, although it’s possible he could have continued under another name.

His story in this issue starts with gunman Jim Westover in Nevada looking for his twin brother Bob. Bob, who is also a hired gun, has signed on with one side in a range war, but Jim doesn’t know any more details than that. On his way to the town of Silver Butte, he makes a tragic discovery: the body of his brother, bushwhacked and murdered. There are several clues to the killer’s identity. Since they were twins, Jim decides to masquerade as his brother and try to find out what happened. This puts him in the middle of the range war, of course, where he clashes with gunnies on both sides and tangles with some rustlers.

The twin gimmick put me off a little at first, but I stuck with the story and soon got caught up in it. Geer’s writing is smooth and relatively fast-paced. This novella reminded me of the work of the Glidden brothers, better known as Luke Short and Peter Dawson. I thought that maybe I’d found another author well worth looking for . . . and then I got to the ending, which is one of the worst I’ve ever come across in a Western pulp, totally undramatic, an anticlimax that left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d read another story by Geer, but I’d be a little bit leery going into it.

When I was a kid, I loved Jim Kjelgaard’s juvenile novels about dogs but had no idea he was a pulp writer starting out. He specialized in animal stories, and despite my fondness for such when I was young, I have a hard time reading stories like that now. However, I stuck with “Sled Dog Savvy”, Kjelgaard’s short story in this issue and was glad I did. It’s a Northern about a Husky who’s stolen from his master by an unscrupulous trapper and the dog’s struggle to survive and be reunited with the human he loves. It’s a moving, well-written yarn. I wouldn’t want a steady diet of such stories, but I enjoyed this one.

Cherry Wilson was one of the few female authors who contributed prolifically to the Western pulps. A couple of others who come to mind are Eli Colter and C.K. Shaw. The protagonist of Wilson’s story in this issue, “Range of Hate”, has his hands full trying to prevent a war between cattlemen and nesters while at the same time trying to prevent a young man he regards as his surrogate son from turning outlaw. To complicate things, the youngster is the actual son of a woman he once loved, who chose another man over him. The domestic drama is even more complex than that, but that’s enough about it. Wilson does a good job of balancing all those elements and providing a satisfying story, although the ending is pretty bittersweet. I don’t recall ever reading anything by Wilson before, but I certainly would again.

Mojave Lloyd is known to be a pseudonym, but as far as I’m aware, nobody had ever figured out the author’s real identity. I’ve read one or two by him and haven’t cared much for them. So I wasn’t expecting much when I read “Bottle-Neck Boomerang”, his story in this issue. I was very pleasantly surprised by this tale of a Chinese cowboy trying to start his own ranch and being caught between a couple of range hogs. The protagonist is known as Shanghai Sam. He came to the United States to study religion but decided to take off for the tall and uncut and become a cowboy instead. He’s big, burly, and very intelligent, as the clever plot of this story demonstrates. I don’t know if there are any more Shanghai Sam stories, but I’d be happy to read there if there were. It should be noted that some modern readers might be offended by this story, but they really shouldn’t be. Shanghai Sam is a great protagonist and this is a very entertaining story.

Russell A. Bankson is one of those vaguely familiar names to me. And it should be familiar since he wrote hundreds of stories, mostly Westerns, in a career that stretched from 1915 to 1957. But if I’ve ever read anything by him before, I don’t remember it. His story in this issue, “Lawman’s Jackpot”, is about a lawman’s desperate plan to keep from being killed by an outlaw whose younger brother was killed in a shootout with the protagonist. It’s a well-written story and generates a decent amount of suspense.

There’s also a serial installment from the novel THE STAGLINE FEUD by Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden). I normally don’t read serial installments in pulps unless I have all of them, and I read the novel version of this one some twenty years ago, so I skipped this one and the usual columns and features on guns, travel, and penpals.

I don’t really know how to rate this issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY. The short stories are all good but not great. I thought the lead novel by Ney N. Geer was excellent until I got to the final two pages that just about ruined it for me. So, was it worth reading? Sure, it’s a Western pulp. I consider reading them time well spent even when an issue isn’t top-notch. But as I’ve said before, don’t rush to your shelves to look for this one.

High Country - Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden)

Jim Sherill is a rancher who plans to sell a herd of horses and then marry the beautiful daughter of a wealthy businessman who owns a riverboat that travels up and down the Missouri River to Montana. The plan is for Jim to take over the riverboat enterprise. But then his horse herd is rustled and in his efforts to locate the thieves and recover the herd, he’s drawn into a dangerous plot that threatens the life of a young woman who’s inherited a ranch from her father.

HIGH COUNTRY is a novel by Peter Dawson, the pseudonym used by Jonathan Glidden, a successful Western pulpster in the Thirties and Forties who became well-known as a novelist in the Forties and Fifties. His brother Frederick Glidden was even more popular with his stories and novels under the name Luke Short, but I don’t recall ever reading about any particular rivalry between the brothers. Both did very well for themselves.

HIGH COUNTRY was serialized in the pulp SHORT STORIES in March and April 1947 and published simultaneously in hardcover by Dodd, Mead, Jon Glidden’s regular publisher. It was reprinted in paperback by Lion Books in 1949 under the title CANYON HELL (with a cover by Robert Stanley) and then reprinted by Bantam, as were most of the Peter Dawson novels, in 1955. There were other Bantam editions over the years. I read the one from September 1966, and that’s my copy in the scan at the top of this post. I don't know the artist. The font on the author’s name and the title reminds me a little of the Doc Savage logo on Bantam’s reprints of that series. I don’t know if that was deliberate or not, but those Doc reprints were really, really popular during that era.

As for the novel itself, it’s a good one. Jon Glidden’s work was more low-key and realistic than that of many of the Western pulpsters. There’s some gritty, well-done action here and there, but it never goes over the top and the prose is restrained, not the least bit purple. To be honest, the book maybe could have used a tad bit more blood and thunder. But the characters are complex, Jim Sherill is an admirable, sympathetic protagonist, the villains are suitably despicable, and the romantic triangle, although it doesn’t occupy a lot of space, is handled well. Once things really take off in the final third of the book, it races right along and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Like every other Peter Dawson novel I’ve read, HIGH COUNTRY is a solid traditional Western yarn. I found it to be well worth reading, and if you’re a Western fan, there’s a good chance you would, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, May 1942

I've seen plenty of guys clench a knife between their teeth in movies and on paperback and pulp covers, but a six-gun? That's got to be more uncomfortable. This stalwart, red-shirted hero doesn't look like he's enjoying it that much. This looks like a Norman Saunders cover to me, but it's not listed on his website, so maybe not. But I like it no matter who painted it. WESTERN SHORT STORIES isn't remembered as one of the top Western pulps, but there's certainly plenty of fine writers in this issue: Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden), Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), H.A. DeRosso, D.B. Newton, Kenneth Fowler, Rod Patterson, Raymond W. Porter, Norrell Gregory, and Mojave Lloyd. Dawson, Steele, DeRosso, and Newton are enough to make any Western pulp worth reading. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, September 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat tattered copy in the scan. I’m not sure of the cover artist. Might be Robert Stanley, who did a lot of Western pulp covers for Popular Publications during this time period. But it might not be.

DIME WESTERN, like the other Popular Publications Western pulps, always had good authors, but there’s a particularly strong lineup in this issue, leading off with a surprisingly good Walt Coburn novella, considering how late this story came in his career. “Shoot or Git Shot!” is a son-of-an-outlaw yarn, where a widowed rustler leaves his six-year-old son with the father of his late wife. The old-timer raises the boy to be a good man, rather than an owlhoot. But as usual in a Coburn story, there’s a lot of back-story and not everything is as it appears to be at first. There’s nothing in this one you won’t see coming, but it’s well-written and has a nice epic feel to it for a novella. Plus there’s a great, brutal fistfight and a spectacular shootout to wrap things up. Coburn was inconsistent by this point, but “Shoot or Git Shot!” is as good as most of his stories from ten or twenty years earlier.

Frank Bonham probably would be annoyed that one of the main things he's remembered for these days is his slightly embittered essay “Tarzana Nights” about his time spent ghostwriting Western pulp stories for Ed Earl Repp. But he was an excellent writer and that’s on display in “Good Squatters Are Dead Squatters”, his short story in this issue. It’s a big rancher vs. small rancher story, but it’s very well-written and does a fine job of capturing the Texas Panhandle country. The resolution is maybe a little hard to swallow, but this is still a good story from a consistently good writer.

Clifton Adams was one of the best of the hardboiled Western writers who broke into the pulps in the late Forties and then went on to write dozens of excellent novels during the Fifties and Sixties. His story in this issue is a novelette about a wounded outlaw on the run called “There’s Hell in His Holster!” It’s a good story in its own right, but it has some historical significance, too. I believe it’s the first appearance of Tall Cameron, who, a couple of years later, would be the protagonist of Adams’ iconic Gold Medal novels THE DESPERADO and A NOOSE FOR THE DESPERADO. Neither of the novels is an expansion of this story, which is sort of an alternate universe take on the character, but Adams took a lot of Tall Cameron’s history from this tale.

Wilbur S. Peacock was a pulp editor as well as a writer. He turned out scores of Western, detective, and science fiction yarns and appears in this issue of DIME WESTERN with a short-short called “Reward of Merit”, about an old sheriff who’s been pushed out of his job in favor of a younger man. It’s well-written but the ending falls flat as far as I’m concerned. I generally like Peacock’s work but think this one was a misfire.

I’ve read good things about George C. Appell’s stories but don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything by him before. His short story “The Search” relies on a gimmick: not revealing one character’s true identity until the very end of the story. That’s kind of interesting, and the search of the title, a hunt for hidden loot, has promise, but overall the plot is muddled enough that it’s hard to follow and I didn’t care much for this story, either.

Peter Dawson, actually Jonathan Glidden, brother of Frederick “Luke Short” Glidden, was always dependable, and he comes through in this issue with the novelette “It’s Your Town—Die in It!” The story concerns a new marshal who believes he’s been roped into a town-taming job under false pretenses. He wants to abandon the job and leave town, but a beautiful new seamstress just arrived in the settlement, so maybe she’ll provide a reason for him to stay and have a showdown with the local hardcases. There’s really not a lot to this story, but it’s well-written and entertaining.

This issue wraps up with a novella by an author I’ve read quite a bit by lately, E. Hoffmann Price (although he’s credited incorrectly as E. Hoffman Price on the cover, TOC, and the story itself). “The Cowman Who Damned His Brand” has a very intriguing twist: the protagonist, a prospector who enjoys hunting for gold, falls in love with a woman who wants him to buy a ranch and settle down. So he buys a spread and inserts himself into the middle of a range war, fully intending to be a failure so he can convince the girl he needs to go back to prospecting. Of course, things don’t work out as he planned. This offbeat plot and Price’s talent for storytelling combine to make this a very good yarn.

This is a solid issue of DIME WESTERN with top-notch stories by Coburn, Bonham, Dawson, and Price, and the stories I didn’t much care for are readable and might be more to someone else’s taste. If you have a copy of it, it’s well worth pulling down from the shelf and reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Best Western, June 1955

Like the Columbia pulps, the ones from Stadium Publishing Corporation edited by Robert O. Erisman were considered pretty far down on the ladder, but they featured a lot of good authors anyway. This issue of BEST WESTERN has stories by H.A. DeRosso, John K. Butler, Noel Loomis, and Lauran Paine, as well as reprints by Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden) and Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner). And one of the half-dozen stories by an author named Les Reasoner, no relation as far as I know.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, June 1947

We can add another category to the things we see on Western pulp covers: Injury to a Saddle. This is a really nice, dynamic cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. And as was common with the Popular Publications Western pulps, a strong group of authors with stories inside, as well. In this case, Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden), William Heuman, Walker A. Tompkins, William R. Cox (twice, once as himself and once as house-name David Crewe), Joe Archibald, Barry Cord (Peter Germano), T.C. McClary, the mysterious Frank Morris, Wallace Umphrey, James Shaffer, and house-name Lance Kermit. A very entertaining issue, I suspect.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, September 1948

We have what looks like a Deliberate Injury to a Hat cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. And a really strong line-up of authors inside, too: Peter Dawson, Steve Frazee, Tom W. Blackburn, Talmage Powell, Rolland Lynch, Joe Archibald, and Rod Patterson. Some well-respected pulpsters and paperbackers there.

Forgotten Books: Lone Rider From Texas - Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden)

(This post originally appeared in different form on May 18, 2005.)

I just finished reading LONE RIDER FROM TEXAS, a Thorndike Large Print collection of seven of Peter Dawson's pulp Western stories:

"Manhunt in Malpais", WESTERN STORY, February 4, 1939
"Lawman of Latigo Wells", COWBOY STORIES, September 1936
"The Boom-Camp Terror", DIME WESTERN, June 1937
"A Renegade Guards the Gold Stage", STAR WESTERN, January 1938
"Bushwhack Heritage", WESTERN STORY, April 2, 1938
"This One Good Eye" (as "Owlhoot Nemesis"), WESTERN STORY, July 30, 1938
"Lone Rider From Texas" (as "Lone Raider From Texas"), WESTERN STORY, March 11, 1939

There are the usual informative story introductions by Jon Tuska. Although it doesn't say so anywhere, this is sort of a theme anthology. Most of the stories deal with outlaws going straight or trying to keep their shady past from catching up with them. All of them are excellent. Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden, the brother of Frederick Glidden, who wrote as Luke Short) was one of the best writers in the Western pulps and always kept the purple prose to a minumum, although it sometimes creeps in during the gunfight scenes (not necessarily a bad thing). This is my favorite of the Dawson collections I've read so far. It'll probably turn up eventually as a Leisure paperback, and if it does, it'll be well worth picking up.

(This collection did indeed appear as a Leisure paperback, as you can see from the cover above. It's even still available as an inexpensive e-book from Amazon, if you've never read Peter Dawson's work and would like to check out one of the best Western pulpsters.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novel and Short Stories, November 1941

This issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES sports a cover by Allen Anderson, an artist I usually associate with Fiction House pulps. No Old Geezer this time, but we get the Stalwart Cowboy and the Gun-Totin' Redhead. (I really should have written a book called LONGARM AND THE GUN-TOTIN' REDHEAD. If the series still existed and I was writing them, I would.) Anyway, this looks like a fine issue of this pulp, with stories by Peter Dawson, Leslie Ernenwein, Clem Colt (who was really Nelson C. Nye), and Jim Kjelgaard, one of the favorite authors of my youth because of all the juvenile novels he wrote about dogs.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Two-Gun Western, November 1953

This issue of TWO-GUN WESTERN features another appearance of the trio who turn up on so many Western pulp covers: the Stalwart Cowboy, the Wounded Geezer, and the Gun-Toting Girl. True, there's a little variation on this one. The Geezer isn't quite as old as some, but he's still got the blood-stained bandage on his head. And the Girl is a brunette instead of the usual redhead and is also showing a little more cleavage than most. But as always, their presence makes for a good cover. What's puzzling is why stories by Philip Morgan (who?) and John Lumsden (again, who?) are featured on that cover, when inside there are also yarns by Noel M. Loomis, Bennie Gardner (once as Gunnison Steele and once as house-name Johnny Lawson), Jonathan Glidden (as Peter Dawson), L.L. Foreman, Stephen Payne, and Lee Floren. There are also stories by house-names Brent North and Ken Jason, who was also at various times Bennie Gardner or Jon Glidden, so the story in this issue may be by one of them. Or it might be by editor Robert O. Erisman, who was known to use the name as well and sell stories to himself. Hard to say. All I really know is that this looks like a pretty good issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, January 2, 1943

Another good cover on this issue of the iconic WESTERN STORY, and two of the best Western writers ever, T.T. Flynn and Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden) have stories inside. The Dawson is an installment of his serial "Trail Boss", the novel version of which was reprinted by Bantam, an edition I remember reading in junior high. Also on hand are several other enjoyable authors such as Archie Joscelyn, Victor H. White (writing as Ralph Berard), and M. Howard Lane. 

Forgotten Books: Phantom Raiders - Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden)

I wrote about Luke Short (Frederick D. Glidden) last week, and this week we’ve got a collection of pulp novelettes by his brother Jonathan Glidden, who wrote under the name Peter Dawson. Although Jon Glidden never achieved quite the same level of fame and popularity as Fred did, he was a successful and well-regarded Western author for many years, his novels selling well enough in paperback that after his death, Bantam hired another author to write several more books that were published under the Peter Dawson name. I’ve enjoyed his work for many years, starting with the novel TRAIL BOSS, which I read all the way back in seventh grade almost five decades ago.

PHANTOM RAIDERS, published in large print by Center Point back in 2008, reprints five excellent novelettes from a variety of sources, starting off with “Retribution River” from the September 1948 issue of WESTERN STORY. As Jon Tuska mentions in his story notes, this was Jonathan Glidden’s last publication in WESTERN STORY, which had serialized his first novel THE CRIMSON HORSESHOE some eight years earlier and published many of his shorter works. This one is a fine, fast-moving story about a rancher framed for rustling who goes on the owlhoot and discovers that’s an even more dangerous line of work.

“Cutbank Welcome”, first published under the somewhat misleading title “Cutbank Welcome for Wet-Cattle Thieves” in the November 1940 issue of BEST WESTERN, also concerns a rancher who’s been framed, but for the more serious crime of murder. This one has a particularly effective opening as the rancher is about to be  lynched.

“Signed on Satan’s Payroll”, which originally appeared in the March 1938 issue of STAR WESTERN, also centers around rustling, but it has an interesting twist on the usual big ranchers vs. small ranchers plot, and it throws in a well-depicted blizzard for good measure.

“The Matched Pair”, which was the last piece of short fiction Jon Glidden wrote, was published under the title “The Devil’s Pardner” in the September 1956 issue of ADVENTURE, well after that magazine had ceased to be a pulp and had become a men’s adventure magazine, although obviously it was still running some fiction. This story is a change of pace for Glidden, as it’s more of a domestic drama that reminded me of some of Ernest Haycox’s stories. It’s very well written and has a poignant ending.

“Phantom Raiders” is another story that first appeared under a long-winded and misleading title, “When Blood and Guns Brand a Man’s Backtrail”, in the February 1941 issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES. It’s about a lone outlaw continually frustrating the efforts of a gang of desperadoes and has a really nice hardboiled tone about it. One word of warning: the dust jacket copy gives away the big twist in the story, although it’s not anything an experienced reader of Westerns won’t have figured out anyway.

All in all, this is a really fine collection and well worth reading. The cover scan is from the edition I own and read, but it’s pretty bland. I would have included some of the original pulp covers, too, since you can never go wrong with a Western pulp, but none of them seem to be on-line. The September 1956 issue of ADVENTURE is, however, so here’s that cover, with the Peter Dawson story featured prominently.