Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, September 1948

I don't have any idea who painted this cover, but I like it fairly well. I've still never read an issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES. I'm going to have to, one of these days. This issue features one of my favorite Western writers, Joseph Chadwick, as well as Clee Woods, Joe Archibald (best remembered, I suspect, as an aviation pulpster, but he wrote everything), Harold F. Cruickshank (definitely best remembered as an aviation pulpster), Bruce Douglas, and Marian O'Hearn, as well as lesser-known pulpster Monica Morton. Oh, wait! Monica Morton was really Johnston McCulley, so never mind. Not lesser-known at all. Chadwick and McCulley make this a worthwhile issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, May 1947

I don’t own this pulp, but I was able to read a PDF of it thanks to a friend of mine. Since I don’t have the actual issue, that’s the scan from the Fictionmags Index. The art is by Allen Anderson, whose work I associate much more with the Fiction House pulps, and it doesn’t really have his distinctive look. The Ace Western pulps, WESTERN TRAILS and WESTERN ACES, were sometimes considered salvage markets when a writer couldn’t sell a story elsewhere, but I haven’t really seen much evidence of that. I’ve found them to be pretty solid magazines with plenty of good authors on hand.

And certainly they weren’t considered salvage markets by veteran Western pulpster J. Edward Leithead, who had at least two stories in nearly every issue of those two pulps during the Forties, one under his own name and one under his most common pseudonym, Wilson L. Covert. I’m confident he wrote these specifically for the Ace pulps and never sent them anywhere else.

The story under Leithead’s name was nearly always a novelette. In this issue, it’s “Roundup of the Plundering Shotwells”, about a family of owlhoots, a father and six sons, but the seventh son wants nothing to do with being an outlaw. In fact, he’s in love the local sheriff’s daughter. But a clash with another gang draws our protagonist into gun trouble anyway, and it’s a bloody, fast-moving tale with several good plot twists, plenty of action, and a satisfying showdown at the end. Leithead is one of my favorite Western pulp authors, and this is a really nice example of his work.

The short story “Blizzard Boomerang” is by another of my favorites, Joseph Chadwick. It’s a little unusual for him in that it’s set in the snowy High Sierras during winter instead of somewhere in the hot Southwest, where his stories are usually set. It’s not a typical plot, either, as it’s about the clash between two men who deliver mail and freight to the remote mining camps, one by dogsled and the other on skis. This is a well-written, emotionally involving story, as you’d expect from Chadwick.

Kenneth L. Sinclair was a fairly popular Western pulp author but is forgotten today. His story, “Trail of the Invisible Herd”, is another story set during the winter and involves getting a herd to some grazing land even though the local range hog has blocked it off with a fence. This one is okay, reasonably entertaining, but the resolution of it seems pretty far-fetched to me. Maybe it’s not, Sinclair may know what he’s talking about, but I wasn’t convinced.

Frank Triem published dozens of Western pulp stories during the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties but is probably even more unknown today than Kenneth L. Sinclair. His story in this issue, “Say It With Sixes”, is about a young lawman waiting nervously for the return of an outlaw he knows is going to try to kill him. Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar. But here’s the interesting thing. This issue of WESTERN TRAILS was published six months earlier than the issue of COLLIER’S that contained John M. Cunningham’s story “The Tin Star”, from which the movie HIGH NOON was made. The similarities are definitely there. Given the timing, I really don’t think Cunningham took any inspiration from Triem’s story. I believe it’s a coincidence, but it’s a striking one.

J. Edward Leithead’s second story in this issue is “Calaboose Cache” under the Wilson L. Covert pseudonym. It’s about a cowboy who returns to his hometown and is forced by circumstances to become the local lawman. He has to deal with a deputy he doesn’t trust, two competing gangs of outlaws, and the missing loot from a bank robbery that has to be recovered to keep the town from being ruined. It’s a complex yarn and pretty entertaining, although I didn’t think it was as good as the novelette under Leithead’s real name.

D.B. Newton is another longtime favorite Western author for me. His stories are always well-plotted, have plenty of action and interesting characters, and his prose is clean and sounds authentic without going in for overdone dialect. His novelette “Cowpoke on a Pistol Payroll” is about a down-on-his-luck cowboy who finally gets a job, only to find that he’s the bait in a scheme to start a range war. This is an excellent story that’s almost all action. Really enjoyable.

I’ve found Giff Cheshire to be an inconsistent Western author, but most of his stories are pretty good and occasionally I run across one that’s excellent. “.45 Merrymaker” in this issue falls into the pretty good category. The protagonist is a young cowboy who plays the guitar and sings, and his friend is a bearded old-timer who plays the fiddle. I have no way of knowing if Cheshire intentionally based them on Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes, but close enough for me! The plot is reminiscent of a B-Western, too, with a couple of swindlers out to bilk a town by promising to build a phony railroad. However, the way our heroes go about foiling that scheme requires a heapin’ helpin’ of willing suspension of disbelief, almost too much so. In the end, I cut Cheshire enough slack to enjoy the story.

“Four Horsemen From Hades” is a great title, and it goes with an entertaining story by Willard Luce, another forgotten pulpster who published 18 stories during the Forties and Fifties. An old-timer who works as the night watchman at a dam construction project in the Pacific Northwest has to solve a payroll theft in order to clear his son’s name. The plot is pretty easy to figure out, but Luce’s writing is smooth enough and his protagonist likable enough to elevate this one.

This is a good issue of WESTERN TRAILS, worth reading if you have a copy of the actual pulp. If you’re a member of the WesternPulps email group, you can find the PDF in the Files section of the group’s website.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the image, but it’s a photograph instead of a scan this time since I find myself without scanning capability at the moment. The cover is by the prolific and always dependable Sam Cherry, and it’s something of a rarity because it actually illustrates one of the stories in this issue. More on that later.

“Alias Adam Jones” is a rather bland title for one of W.C. Tuttle’s rollicking adventures of hapless range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith. (The editors of EXCITING WESTERN loved the word “rollicking”.) In this novella, one of Tombstone’s long-winded, colorful lies causes Speedy to be kidnapped, and that plunges the boys into a complicated case of rustlers, inheritances, and mistaken identities. This plot is actually a little easier to figure out than some in the series, and a few late developments come from ’way, ’way out in left field, but the whole thing races along in wonderful fashion and Tuttle’s dialogue had me laughing out loud in places. This series is pretty formulaic, but the more I read of it, the more I love it.

“The Marshal of Goldfork” is a stand-alone novelette by Walker A. Tompkins, another of my favorite Western pulpsters. Set in a California mining boomtown during the Gold Rush, it’s about the final showdown between the local lawman and a saloon owner, both of whom were badly injured in a shootout with each other five months earlier, before the town was snowed in for the winter. Now it’s the spring thaw, and the lawman has recovered from his injuries and is back to settle the score and bring law and order to the town. Tompkins was great at keeping a story racing along, and he does so here, creating some interesting characters in the process. This is an excellent yarn.

Joseph Chadwick is yet another favorite of mine. His novelette in this issue, “The Indian Ring”, is about a hardboiled Arizona rancher who takes on the web of corruption involving the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the army, and various crooked business interests. Chadwick was one of the best at tough, gritty action, and this is a fine story that could have been expanded into a top-notch novel if he had chosen to do so.

Next up is “Too Smart for His Own Good” by Andrew Bronson, who published 15 stories in various Thrilling Group Western pulps during the Forties and Fifties. This story about a cowboy trying to recover a ranch payroll that was stolen from him is the one illustrated by Sam Cherry’s cover. In fact, it matches that cover painting so exactly that I have a hunch it was written to match. And the fact that all of “Bronson’s” stories appeared in Thrilling Group pulps leads me to suspect he might have been editor Charles S. Strong, who, as Chuck Stanley, did a feature in EXCITING WESTERN called “The Cowboy Had a Word For It”. Strong wrote a number of Western novels under the Chuck Stanley name, too, and was perfectly capable of knocking out a short story overnight to fit a cover painting. Pure speculation on my part, of course. The story itself, in this case, is entertaining but not particularly memorable.

I haven’t read a great deal by Richard Brister, but so far he’s proven to be a pretty dependable Western author. His story “Bandy Legs” is an offbeat yarn about a rivalry between two storekeepers that turns deadly. This is a well-written and suspenseful story that I enjoyed.

Cliff Walters is another very prolific Western pulpster who is forgotten these days. “Broad Shoulders” is about a big, powerful hombre who could accomplish a lot if he tried, but nothing seems to move him to either working or fighting. That changes during the course of the story in a fairly predictable way. This is a minor tale but entertaining.

“Crisis on the Curly Q” is by Don Alviso, who wrote several dozen stories for the pulps, nearly all of them Westerns. It’s a humorous story about a ranch cook who goes on a drunken bender and loses the wagonload of supplies he’s supposed to be taking back to the Curly Q spread. I wasn’t sure I was going to finish this one, but I stuck with it and it turned out to be mildly amusing. Absolutely unmemorable, though.

The issue wraps up with “Men of Their Word” by William O’Sullivan. It’s about two Irish prospectors who are partners but still scrap with each other all the time. They have to put aside their differences to keep from being swindled by a couple of slickers. This is another story that’s pretty lightweight but reasonably enjoyable.

Overall, this is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN, although any issue without Navajo Tom Raine and Alamo Paige seems a little lacking to me. However, two very good stand-alone stories by Walker A. Tompkins and Joseph Chadwick makes up for that, and I always enjoy Tombstone and Speedy. So if you have this issue on your shelves, it’s worth reading. You can also find the whole issue on-line if you want to check it out that way.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First August Number, 1955

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat tattered copy in the scan. The cover art is by Clarence Doore. His signature is visible in the lower left corner. It’s not one of Doore’s best covers, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not bad.

Giff Cheshire is a hit-or-miss author for me. Most of what I’ve read by him has been entertaining but a little bit too much on the bland side for my taste. Some of his stories are more hardboiled and are pretty good. His novella that leads off this issue, “Torment Trail”, is very hardboiled and is an excellent yarn. The protagonist, Cleve Gantry (great name for a Western hero) is partners in a hardscrabble ranch with young wastrel Nat Cole (maybe not as good a name, since Nat “King” Cole, one of my father’s favorite singers, was already very popular by the mid-Fifties). Cole pulls a robbery and frames Gantry for it. Gantry breaks out of jail and sets out to track down Cole, partially to clear his name but mostly because he wants to kill the no-good hombre. Gantry’s vengeance quest is complicated, though, by Cole’s beautiful sister and some other hardcases who are after the loot from the robbery. Set mostly in the desert—and Cheshire makes good use of that setting—this is a fast-moving, suspenseful story with some good action scenes, a fine protagonist, and a very gritty tone. I really enjoyed “Torment Trail”, which is easily the best thing I’ve ever read by Cheshire.

D.S. Halacy Jr. wrote several dozen Western and detective stories for the pulps. I’d read one story by him in the past and thought it was okay but nothing more than that. His story in this issue, “The Five Hundred Dollar Shot” is about a down-on-his-luck rancher who is willing to go to any lengths to provide for his family, even if it means going after a wanted outlaw for the reward. This is a pretty bleak story with a mostly unlikable protagonist, but it doesn’t turn out exactly like you might expect and that’s usually a good thing. So it’s nothing special, but it is a readable yarn.

“Bachelor Trouble” is by Lewis Chadwick, who wrote only half a dozen Western stories, all published in 1955 and 1956. An old rancher decides that one of the cowboys who works for him is going to marry his daughter, but the cowboy doesn’t go along with that idea. That’s all there is to the story, but it’s decently written and everything is resolved in a pleasant enough manner.

James Clyde Harper was reasonably prolific, turning out approximately 50 stories in a career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Fifties. But I didn’t care for his story “The Phantom Rifle” in this issue. It’s a mystery in which a group of settlers with a wagon train try to start a town, only to have several of their number murdered by a mysterious rifleman. The writing struck me as clumsy, and the motivation for the plot just wasn’t believable considering the place and time. This one is a clear miss as far as I’m concerned.

W.W. Hartwig published only three stories, all in RANCH ROMANCES. “The Bride’s Father” in this issue is the last of them. It’s a pure romance yarn about a young cowboy courting the daughter of a railroad tycoon. This is a well-written story with good characters, and although I thought the author could have done a little more with it, I liked it quite a bit.

Alice Axtell was the author of about thirty stories, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES in the Forties and Fifties. Her story “Big Man” is about the feud between a big rancher and the owner of a smaller spread. Their clash takes some nasty turns, and there’s more riding on it for the little rancher than just his business. The girl he wants to marry is watching to see how he handles this problem. This is another story that’s pure romance, but it’s well-written and I enjoyed it.

There are also installments of two serials, “Longhorn Stampede” by Philip Ketchum and “The Vengeance Riders” by Jack Barton, who was really Joseph Chadwick. Ketchum and Chadwick were both fine writers and I’m sure these are good stories, but as I’ve mentioned before, I have the novel version of THE VENGEANCE RIDERS and will get around to reading it one of these days, and I may have a copy of LONGHORN STAMPEDE, too. If I don't, there's a good chance I will have in the reasonably near future.

Rounding out the issue are the usual features—Western movie news, pen pals, astrology—and a somewhat Western-themed crossword puzzle completely filled out in pencil by one of the previous owners of this copy. Only a couple of erasures, too, so a pretty good job. Somehow, things like this make me feel a closer kinship to the person who owned this one originally. I can just imagine her—or him, RANCH ROMANCES is bound to have had some male readers, too—sitting at a kitchen table in 1955, working the crossword puzzle after a long day. That could be all wrong, of course, I have no way of knowing, but it’s an image I find appealing.

Overall, this is a fairly solid issue of RANCH ROMANCES. There’s only one outstanding story, but the Cheshire novella is really good and all the other stories except the one I didn’t like are well-written and entertaining, if not particularly memorable. If you have a copy, it’s worth reading. You might even want to do the crossword puzzle if somebody hasn’t beaten you to it. 

Review: Man Chase - Joseph Chadwick

Dave Macklin is a man with plenty of trouble on his hands. He’s the president of a small electronics company that needs to expand but can’t get a bank loan in order to do so. The company is also the target of a hostile takeover by a larger rival outfit eager to gobble it up and take advantage of some vital research done by Dave’s scientist partner. On a personal level, Dave’s wife is an alcoholic who has just gotten back from rehab, swearing that she’s cured, but is she really? Then there’s the beautiful redheaded receptionist at the plant who has her eye on Dave, not to mention the equally gorgeous owner of the rival company who inherited it from her late husband. Yeah, between business problems and beautiful babes, Dave’s got quite a juggling act going on.

That’s the set-up of MAN CHASE, a 1961 novel by Joseph Chadwick, who happens to be one of my favorite hardboiled Western authors. Published originally in paperback by Beacon Books, this novel has been reprinted in e-book and paperback editions by Cutting Edge Books. I guess you could call it a hardboiled corporate soap opera. Although there’s a private detective and some blackmail, it’s not really a crime novel. But it’s very fast-paced and well plotted as Chadwick manipulates the business and personal elements to pile a whole heap of trouble on Dave Macklin’s head.

This would have made a good early Sixties movie with, say, Jeff Chandler as Dave, Dorothy Malone as the rival business owner, and Ann-Margret as the sultry receptionist. For a novel published by Beacon, there’s not much sex, only a couple of scenes and they’re pretty restrained. It would have been easy enough to fade out before things got too risque.

I really enjoyed MAN CHASE. Dave is a good protagonist. He can be kind of a jerk at times but isn’t really a heel, just a decent guy at heart with a lot to deal with. The plot takes a slightly unexpected turn here and there, always a good thing, and works its way to a satisfactory conclusion. Chadwick was better as a Western writer, but he was a solid pro who could turn out a book like this, too, and do an excellent job of it. He wrote at least one other book for Beacon under his own name and several under the pseudonym Jim Layne. I may have to see if I can get my hands on some of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, February 1948

This issue of WESTERN TRAILS features another fine, dramatic cover by Norman Saunders. As usual with the Ace Western pulps, this issue has two stories by J. Edward Leithead, one under his own name and one under his most common pseudonym Wilson L. Covert. I'm a big fan of Leithead's work and there are some other fine authors in this issue, including Walker A. Tompkins, Joseph Chadwick, D.B. Newton, weird fiction icon Kirk Mashburn, Cliff Walters, and Dan Kirby. I don't own this issue and haven't read it, but with that cover and author line-up I have no doubt that it's very good.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, March 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with another fantastic cover by Sam Cherry. He was really at his peak during this era. Earlier this year when I reviewed the April 1950 issue of TEXAS RANGERS, one of the members of the WesternPulps email group commented that the Jim Hatfield novel in it, “The Rimrock Raiders”, sounded similar to the Hatfield novel in the March 1948 issue, “The Black Gold Secret”. So I had to find my copy and read that one, too. Now I have.

“The Black Gold Secret” and “The Rimrock Raiders” are both by A. Leslie Scott writing under the Jackson Cole house-name, so it’s not surprising that they’re similar. The basic concept—clashes between cattlemen and oil drillers who have moved into what was previously a ranching area—are the same, and Scott used that plot foundation in other novels, as well. But the details in “The Black Gold Secret” are different and it’s an equally entertaining yarn. Early on in this one, Hatfield extinguishes a burning oil well, something that he also does in “The Rimrock Raiders”, but does so in a totally different manner—and it makes for a slam-bang, very exciting scene, too. Scott layers in some geology and behind-the-scenes stuff about the oil industry and also provides plenty of shootouts and fistfights along the way. The vivid descriptions that are a Scott trademark are there but rather limited, as he keeps this one really racing along. Of course, there’s more going on than is apparent at first, but you know Hatfield will untangle all the villainy by the end, and it’s a pretty spectacular climax, too, as the main bad guy meets his end in an unexpected way. I had a great time reading this novel, and I’m sure I’ll be reading another by Scott before too much longer.

Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name, so there’s no telling who wrote “Gun Trail”, a short-short about a Texas Ranger doggedly tracking down a horse thief and murderer, only to find that things aren’t exactly what he thought they were. There’s not a lot to this story, but it’s short and punchy and enjoyable.

I started out not liking Joseph Chadwick’s work very much, but he’s won me over and become one of my favorite Western writers. I think he’s one of the best of the more hardboiled Western authors who rose to prominence in the postwar years. His novelette in this issue, “The Blizzard and the Banker”, is excellent. It’s about a small town in Dakota Territory trying to survive a hard winter. The local banker is the hero of a Western story, for a nice change, but there are several other good characters including an outlaw who’s maybe not quite as bad as his reputation would have you believe, a beautiful female faro dealer, and assorted villains. Chadwick does a fine job with the interactions of these characters as well as his depictions of the harsh weather. Just a really, really good story all the way around.

Allan K. Echols was one of those workmanlike writers who filled up the pages of Western, detective, and aviation pulps with hundreds of stories during a 30-year career (mid-Twenties to mid-Fifties; he passed away in 1953 but still had new stories coming out a couple of years later). He also wrote more than a dozen Western novels. And yet I’ve never run across anybody who proclaims themselves a big Allan K. Echols fan. His story in this issue, “Brother’s Keeper”, is an unacknowledged reprint from the January 1938 issue of ROMANTIC WESTERN. It’s not romantic at all, though. Instead, it’s about an apparently dull-witted sheriff who’s trying to figure out which of two rancher brothers is responsible for the murder of one of their enemies. It’s a well-written, solidly plotted story, and I enjoyed it, but I doubt that it’ll stick with me. Which probably helps to explain why Echols is pretty much forgotten even among devoted Western readers.

There’s also a Doc Swap story by Ben Frank in this issue. I’m sorry, but I didn’t even try to read it. I used to say that the Swap and Whopper stories by Syl McDowell in THRILLING WESTERN were my least favorite Western pulp series, but I’ve surprised myself by kind of warming up to them recently. Not so Doc Swap, which by this time had taken over from Lee Bond’s Long Sam Littlejohn as the regular backup series in TEXAS RANGERS. I just don’t find these appealing at all.

However, I’d still say this is a good issue of TEXAS RANGERS. The Hatfield novel and Joseph Chadwick’s novelette are both excellent, and the stories by Echols and Parsons are entertaining. If you have a copy, it’s well worth reading, as far as I’m concerned. And hey, you may actually like Doc Swap, you never know.

Review: Ride for Vengeance - John Callahan (Joseph Chadwick)

Ed Cavanaugh is a down-on-his-luck rancher who leaves his spread in drought-ridden Texas to head for Arizona with his herd of cattle, hoping to make a new start there. But he’s still in New Mexico Territory, a long way from Arizona, when he runs smack-dab into a barbed wire fence holding his cattle off from water they desperately need. Cavanaugh is a law-abiding man and doesn’t want to cut the fence, but he may have to in order to save his livestock.

That’s how RIDE FOR VENGEANCE, a 1967 Ace Double Western by John Callahan (who was actually Joseph Chadwick) opens, and the author immediately enlists the reader’s sympathy for Ed Cavanaugh, who’s a fine protagonist, a decent man who can be plenty tough and hardboiled when he’s backed into a corner. And if there’s one thing Joseph Chadwick can do to his protagonists, it’s back them into a corner!

That’s what happens in RIDE FOR VENGEANCE as Cavanaugh finds himself in the middle of a range war between the big spread that’s fenced in its holdings and the smaller ranchers adjoining it, including a pretty widow whose husband was hanged by the cruel son of the big ranch’s manager. Cavanaugh is a widower himself and has a four-year-old son along on the trail drive with him, which is something of an unusual angle for a Western novel like this. In Chadwick’s hands, it works very well, though. There’s also a romantic triangle that’s well-handled, despite not really amounting to much, some colorful old-timers, a few hotheaded kids, a stampede, and several bushwhackings and fistfights.

In other words, this is a very traditional Western novel with nothing in it you haven’t read many times before and no surprises. And yet, Chadwick’s execution of the material is almost flawless. Even though I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen, I kept flipping the pages eagerly because I wanted to see it play out. If Westerns are your comfort reading, as they are for me, I think there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy this one. I think it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

By the way, that's my copy in the scan above, and the cover art is by Harry Schaare. It's Ace G-682, with the novel BANDIT BRAND by Tom West (real name Fred East) on the other side. I'm pretty sure I'll be reading that one soon, too.

Gunsmoke Reckoning - Joseph Chadwick

Texas rancher Cole Mowbrey arrives in Montana on the trail of Matt Kerrigan, who ran off with Cole's sister and then abandoned her to die in a mining camp. He finds that his quarry has a stake in a big ranch, and Kerrigan and his partner are trying to run off all the smaller ranchers and homesteaders in the basin. So Joseph Chadwick’s novel GUNSMOKE RECKONING, published in 1951 by Gold Medal, is both a vengeance quest story and a range war story.

Those are, of course, very traditional plot elements for a Western, and we’ve probably all read books like this dozens, if not hundreds, of times. The appeal of a book like this is in the execution, and Chadwick does a fine job of that in this book, manipulating his plot with great skill and achieving a headlong pace that kept me turning the pages past my usual bedtime, which, let me tell you, at my age is quite a feat of storytelling. He also handles the characterization with a sure hand, so that not everyone in this novel turns out exactly like you might think they would. There’s a romantic rectangle, as well, that’s done about as well as you can do that sort of thing.

Not long ago, I had some pretty harsh things to say about Chadwick’s contributions to the Jim Hatfield series in the pulp TEXAS RANGERS, but as unsuited as I think he was to that series, he’s a great Western writer in his stand-alone novels. GUNSMOKE RECKONING is the best of those I’ve read so far and one of the best traditional Westerns I’ve read in a long time. If you’re a Western fan, I give it a very strong recommendation. As far as I know, it was never reprinted after this 1951 edition with its great A. Leslie Ross cover. That’s my copy in the scan, by the way.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, October 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, featuring the usual excellent cover by Sam Cherry. That guy must have been tireless. He turned out a ton of pulp and paperback covers, all of them fine work.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue of TEXAS RANGERS has been attributed to Joseph Chadwick. It begins with Hatfield receiving a mysterious assignment from not only his regular Ranger boss, Cap’n Bill McDowell, but also from the governor of Texas his own self. In a clandestine meeting at the Capitol in Austin, the governor tells Hatfield to go to Fort Worth, check into a hotel there, and wait for someone to contact him and use the code word “Alamo”. It’s an intriguing opening.

Before you know it, there’s a beautiful girl involved, too, and Hatfield finds himself on a vast ranch in the Texas Panhandle impersonating the grandson of the owner and trying to get to the bottom of a deadly plot against the old-timer.

Having read a number of Chadwick’s non-series stories, I can easily believe that he wrote this Jim Hatfield novel. The story is extremely violent and hardboiled, and Hatfield comes in for a considerable amount of punishment, both physical and emotional. Chadwick always put his protagonists through the wringer, so this fits right in with his work. With a different character, this would have been a terrific novel.

But as a Jim Hatfield novel, it’s terrible. Chadwick’s grasp of the character and the series is fine up to a certain point: there are appearances by Cap’n Bill and Hatfield’s horse Goldy, and he refers to Hatfield as the Lone Wolf fairly often. But again and again, especially in the second half of the story, Chadwick has Hatfield doing things that he just doesn’t do in the stories by most of the other authors who wrote as Jackson Cole. He’s slow on the draw, he gets beaten up too easily, he gets too involved with the girl in the story, and he even talks about maneuvering one of the bad guys into a position where it’ll be easy to kill him. Quite a few years ago, I read another of Chadwick’s Hatfield yarns, “Death Rides the Star Route”, and while I don’t recall the details, I remember being displeased with it, too. I suspect it was for the same reasons. I believe he wrote only one other Hatfield novel, and I have a hunch I won’t be reading it any time soon, if ever.

“Spring Storm” is a short story by the prolific pulpster Giff Cheshire. I haven’t read a great deal by him, but I’ve found his work to be a little inconsistent, with a lot of it on the bland side. This yarn about a cattleman trying to drive off a nester fits that description, despite the fact that there’s some action. One of the supporting characters, an old cowboy, is very well-written and also redeems the story to a certain extent.

“The Sheriff Buys a Ring” is by Julian Hammer, one of only two stories credited to him in the Fictionmags Index. The title makes it sound like a comedy, but it’s actually a fairly hardboiled tale about a secret in a lawman’s past coming back to haunt him. It’s no lost classic, but it’s not bad.

“Double Dick and the Widow Woman” also sounds like a comedy, and it is. The author is Lee Priestly, and it’s the fourth and final story in a short series about old prospector Double Dick Richards, who roams around his with burro and pet cat getting into various scrapes. This one features a young cowboy who trades in his horse for a motorcycle and an attractive widow woman who owns a ranch plagued by rustlers. Hijinks, romantic and otherwise, ensue. This story isn’t particularly funny, although it’s supposed to be, but it’s mildly amusing in places and a lot more readable than some Western pulp humor I’ve encountered.

Not surprisingly, the best story in this issue is by Gordon D. Shirreffs. His novelette “Apache Ambush” is set in New Mexico and Arizona during the Civil War and finds a young Union army lieutenant battling Confederate spies and marauding Apaches. There’s a beautiful young woman to rescue and a massacre of Union troops to prevent. A colorful old-timer who is a civilian scout is on hand to help out, too. Shirreffs keeps things racing along with plenty of gritty action scenes and does his usual excellent job with the southwestern setting. This is a suspenseful, thoroughly entertaining yarn.

Charles A. Stearns wrote mostly science fiction for the pulps and digests in the Fifties, but he turned out a few Western stories as well. “Duel at Sundown” in this issue is a short but well-written story about a young man, the son of a legendary lawman, trying to work up the courage to face his first gunfight. It’s an effective tale with a twist ending that I didn’t see coming.

Finally, “Men of Steel” is a late pulp story from the prolific A. Leslie Scott, writing here as A. Leslie. He had already started writing paperbacks and would concentrate on that for the next two decades. In this one, set on the Texas coast along Matagorda Bay, the hero is Sheriff Neale Ross, who is trying to track down a gang of sheep rustlers believed by the local Mexican herders to be ghosts because they wear Conquistador armor. It’s a similar plot to ones that Scott used many times, but the descriptive writing is vivid and the action scenes are great. It’s a minor but very enjoyable yarn. And it got a new life when Scott rewrote it as the first chapter and a half of his Walt Slade novel BULLETS FOR A RANGER, published by Pyramid Books in 1963. The hero in that version is Texas Ranger Walt Slade, of course, with Sheriff Ross becoming a supporting character. I own that novel but I don’t think I’ve ever read it. Maybe now I should.

I’d say that, judged as a whole, this is a below-average issue of TEXAS RANGERS because the Jim Hatfield novel just doesn’t work very well, and only the stories by Shirreffs and Scott are really outstanding among the backup stories. As always, I’m glad to have read it, but I hope the next issue I pick up off the shelves will be better.

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, October 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover is by Sam Cherry, who did nearly all of them for TEXAS RANGERS during this era.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “Riders of the Storm”, is attributed to Tom Curry in the Fictionmags Index, the final Curry novel in the series. However, having read it, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that it’s actually by A. Leslie Scott. It’s Scott’s work, through and through. I was tipped off to this by my friend Anders Nilsson, who told me that the story was rewritten into a Walt Slade paperback called TRIGGER TALK that was published by Pyramid Books five years later under the Bradford Scott pseudonym.

I was baffled as to how a Hatfield novel by Tom Curry wound up being rewritten into a Walt Slade paperback, so I went to my shelves to see if I had a copy of the pulp version. Sure enough, I did, so I pulled it down and read it. I knew within a few pages that Scott was the actual author, not Curry, which explained why he felt free to cannibalize it for that paperback.

The story itself is an excellent entry in the Hatfield series. It opens with Hatfield and a fellow Ranger discovering a ship perched atop a bluff about twenty miles inland from Galveston. Hatfield theorizes that it was carried there by a tidal wave generated by a gigantic hurricane. That seems pretty far-fetched, but hey, it’s a pulp yarn so as I always say, sure, why not. Unfortunately for the new recruit riding with Hatfield, a gang of outlaws are unloading something from the ship and open fire on the two Rangers. The new fellow is killed, and Hatfield is wounded and knocked unconscious. When he comes to and finds his friend dead, he sets out on the owlhoots’ trail, which leads him to Galveston, which has indeed suffered tremendous damage from a hurricane. (The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900? It’s possible. The Hatfield novels weren’t very consistent with their time period, taking place anywhere from the mid-1870s to the late 1890s, depending on the author.)

The plot involves smuggling guns to Mexican revolutionaries and takes Hatfield from Galveston to the Big Thicket in East Texas and finally to Brownsville, down at the tip of Texas on the Rio Grande. It’s a little unusual in that it involves several action scenes on ships. Scott seems to have been trying to break away from his usual formula in the early Fifties, but it didn’t do him any good. His final Walt Slade novella in THRILLING WESTERN appeared earlier in 1951, and the next Hatfield novel in TEXAS RANGERS after this one, “Trail of Hunted Men”, was Scott’s last. But as I’ve mentioned before, he moved right on to paperbacks and probably made more money in the long run. “Riders of the Storm” is a very good story and I’m glad I was prompted to read it. There are also some good interior illustrations by H.L. Parkhurst in this novel.

Next up in this issue is Ralph Yergen’s short story “Vengeance on the Hoof”. It’s written mostly from the point of a view of a horse, a technique I don’t usually care for, and it’s a little hard to read because there’s quite a bit of animal abuse in it. However, Yergen won me over with this story about an outlaw’s horse, and it comes to a satisfying conclusion. Definitely better than I expected it to be.

“The Horsehair Noose” by Leslie Ernenwein is a reprint from the November 1945 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. It’s something of a rarity for a Western pulp because it’s a dying message mystery story. In order to prevent a range war, a sheriff has to figure out who murdered a local cattleman, based on a name scrawled in the dirt by the dying man and a few other clues. It’s not a particularly good dying message story, mind you, but I like Ernenwein’s style and I enjoyed this yarn.

“Buffalo Men” is by another veteran, dependable pulpster, J. Allan Dunn. It's a novelette reprinted from the September 1940 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. Set in the buffalo hunting era, it’s about the founding of Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle and the epic battle there between a few dozen buffalo hunters and a force of a thousand Indians led by the legendary Comanche chief Quanah Parker. In the first half of the story, Dunn sticks pretty close to the historical facts other than inventing a couple of fictional protagonists to be on hand for the battle, along with a renegade hunter to serve as a minor villain. He even has Bat Masterson on hand, which he was in one of his early exploits. In the battle itself, Dunn strays pretty far from history, having one of his fictional characters make the famous long-distance shot that was actually made by Billy Dixon, and changing the outcome of that shot, as well. Despite that, it’s a very well-written story and captures the feeling of the time and place quite well.

The short story “Payoff in Lead” is another reprint, this time from the October 1946 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. The author is Joseph Chadwick, one of the most dependable authors of hardboiled Western tales, and it’s a good one. An embittered ex-Confederate heads west on the trail of the carpetbagger who stole his land and his fiancée after the war. The protagonist finds the man he’s looking for, but things turn out much differently than he expected. A gritty, very satisfying story.

This issue wraps up with a new short story, “A Man’s Job” by Caddo Cameron, whose real name was Charles Richard Beeler. It’s about a young cowboy holding down a line camp by himself for the first time and his encounter with some outlaws. Another good one, with some nice action and a very likable protagonist.

Overall, this is a very solid issue of TEXAS RANGERS with stories ranging from good to excellent and not a really weak one in the bunch. I’m glad the question of who actually wrote the Hatfield novel caused me to pull it off the shelves and read it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, September 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by George Rozen, who has become one of my favorite Western pulp cover artists even though he’s probably best remembered for his covers on various issues of THE SHADOW.

I don’t know anything about Alexander Wallace except that he produced about three dozen stories for various pulps, mostly from Fiction House, between 1946 and 1954. His novelette “The White Peril” in this issue has an Indian as its protagonist, a young Crow chief called Blue Star, who has to battle a white gunrunner with plans to arm the Sioux, who are bitter enemies to the Crow. I don’t recall reading anything else by Wallace, but maybe I should because the writing in this one is very good. The story moves along well and I enjoyed it.

“Water Power” is a more humorous story than the others I’ve read by Ed La Vanway. It’s about a water witcher using a divining rod to head off a war between a cattle baron and some sodbusters. It’s pretty lightweight but okay reading.

Joseph Chadwick has become one of my favorite hardboiled Western authors. His novelette “Home to Boot Hill” features a first-person narrator, sort of unusual for Westerns of this era, a former Texas Ranger who fears he’s gone gun-shy. But he returns home to New Mexico anyway to help his old flame (who is now married) fight off attempts by the local cattle baron (yeah, another of those pesky cattle barons) to force her off her ranch. Nice gritty action and an offbeat protagonist make this one work all the way around. I liked it a lot.

Next up is the novelette “The Saddle Pards at Buzzard Butte”, an entry in a series I usually skip, Swap and Whopper by Syl MacDowell. These are slapstick comedy Westerns starring a couple of hapless saddle tramps, Swap Bootle and Whopper Whaley. (Think sort of Abbott and Costello in the contemporary West, but not quite.) I decided I was going to read this one and stick with it to the end, no matter what. And I did. It’s a bizarre concoction featuring a guitar, road construction, and a baseball game. To my surprise, I actually smiled a couple of times. MacDowell was a good writer. His more traditional Westerns are usually pretty entertaining. Although it’s not saying much, this is my favorite Swap and Whopper story so far. Will that make me go back and dig out all the ones I’ve skipped in the past? Not likely. But if I come across another one, I’ll at least give it a try.

C. William Harrison is a consistently good writer, so it’s no surprise that his short story “Granger—Draw or Die!” is an enjoyable yarn. It’s about a cowboy who gives up that life to become a farmer and his inevitable clash with the cattleman who’s his former employer. Well done, with some good characters and action.

I’m pretty sure I read H. Bedford-Jones’s novelette “Dead Man’s Boots” in the November 1936 issue of THRILLING WESTERN in which it first appeared. It’s reprinted in this issue, and since it’s been more than 20 years since I read it the first time, I tackled it again. It’s a fine story (I’m not sure Bedford-Jones was capable of writing anything else) about a gun-swift drifter riding away from trouble in the border country and right into more trouble involving a double-cross partnership between a crooked saloon owner and a cattle baron. (Lots of cattle barons in this issue.) While the plot is suitably twisty and there’s plenty of action, I’ve always felt that while Bedford-Jones’s traditional Westerns are good, they’re not quite as strong as his historical and straight adventure yarns. “Dead Man’s Boots” is a prime example of that. There’s nothing wrong with it except that it reads like the sort of story that dozens of other Western pulpsters could have written just as well. Maybe that’s holding HB-J to a higher standard than I should, I don’t know, but that’s the way this story struck me.

I always enjoy Ray Gaulden’s work, too. His short story in this issue, “Boom Town Trouble-Shooter” is a mining story involving a boom town (no surprise there, considering the title) and yet another crooked saloon owner. Gaulden packs quite a bit of plot and action into a story of less than 10 pages and does a good job of it.

Ernest Haycox’s short story “Skirmish at Dry Fork” is a reprint from the July 25, 1942 issue of the slick magazine COLLIER’S. But it’s right at home in THRILLING WESTERN, as well. It’s about a group of cavalry troopers who visit a town for a celebration on payday and their inevitable clash with a bunch of cowboys leading to a saloon brawl. Then a young soldier falls for one of the soiled doves who works in the saloon, leading to more trouble. Since this is an Ernest Haycox story, you know it’s well-written, and while Haycox’s work sometimes leaves me a little cold, I really liked this one. Some nice action and very good characters and a few poignant touches make it work really well.

“Six-Gun Specter” is a short story bylined Johanas L. Bouma, rather than the more common J.L. Bouma. It’s a tale about a young man with two outlaw brothers who’s trying to escape his family’s shady past. A stagecoach robbery and a beautiful young woman prove to be turning points for him. This is a pretty good story marred by a very rushed ending.

Robert Ferguson is the author of “Medicine”, a short story about an Apache attack on an isolated ranch in Arizona. Ferguson published only a handful of stories. This is the only one I’ve read, and I didn’t like it at all. Didn’t care for the writing, didn’t like the characters, and almost didn’t finish it. That happens sometimes. Might’ve just been me.

Overall, I’d say this is an above-average issue of THRILLING WESTERN, based on the good cover by George Rozen, the stories by Ernest Haycox, Joseph Chadwick, and Alexander Wallace, and the offbeat elements in some of the other stories. And I even kind of enjoyed the Swap and Whopper yarn! Maybe I will check out some of the others in the series.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Undercover Detective, April 1939

There's a lot happening on this cover. This is the sort of scene that Norman Saunders often painted on his pulp covers, and although the unknown artist of this one doesn't have Saunders' talent (in my opinion), I like it anyway because of its sheer enthusiasm. This is the third and final issue of the short-lived UNDERCOVER DETECTIVE. There are only a few authors on the table of contents whose name I recognize: Joseph Chadwick, Louis Trimble, and Wilbur S. Peacock. The rest are a mixture of house-names and authors who published a few stories and are little remembered. The star of UNDERCOVER DETECTIVE was Conway Clark, who was featured in all three of the lead novels. I don't know anything about the character. This story was published under the house-name John Cotton; the previous two were published as by "Richard Ariel". The first one is a rewritten version of a story by Oscar Schisgall published originally in CLUES. Whether Schisgall rewrote it for UNDERCOVER DETECTIVE and then wrote the other two Conway Clark stories, I have no idea.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Popular Western, December 1947

Here we have Injury to a Squeezebox on this issue of POPULAR WESTERN, but somehow I doubt if that will become a recurring category like Injury to a Hat. But you never know about these things. The lead story in this issue is a non-series yarn by the great W.C. Tuttle. Also in the issue are installments in two series that ran regularly in POPULAR WESTERN, Sheriff Blue Steele by Tom Gunn (probably Syl McDowell) and Sheriff Egg and Deputy Ham by Alfred L. Garry. I like what I've read of the Blue Steele series. The other authors in this issue are the always reliable Joseph Chadwick, C.V. Tench (a reprint from the March 1933 issue of ALL STAR WESTERN & FRONTIER MAGAZINE, a pulp I'm not familiar with) and the little-remembered Ted Fox and Andrew Bronson.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, June 1952

With all the action on this cover, you know it has to be the work of Norman Saunders. Seven guys, a beautiful girl with a quirt and a six-gun, and two stampeding horses. I'm not sure anybody but Saunders could have packed that much into a cover and made it work. As for the authors inside this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES, it's a fine group: H.A. DeRosso, D.B. Newton, Joseph Chadwick, Stephen Payne, Ray Gaulden, Joseph Payne Brennan, Ray Townsend, Roger Dee (Roger D. Aycock, probably better remembered for his science fiction), and a number of lesser-known authors including John Lumsden, Clem Yager, Jay Arrow, and house-name Ken Jason. Steve Frazee is listed on the cover but doesn't actually have a story in this issue, according to the Fictonmags Index.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, August 1953

This is a pretty sedate cover, but I like it a lot anyway. There's a nice sense of impending menace to it, and that's a really beautiful woman. I don't know the artist. The authors inside this issue of STAR WESTERN are good ones, as well: Joseph Chadwick, Will Cook, Frank Castle, J.L. Bouma, Van Cort (Wyatt Blassingame), Kenneth L. Sinclair, and Cy Kees. Even this late in the game, STAR WESTERN was a very good Western pulp.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 5 Western Novels Magazine, April 1952

Well, you know this "friendly" game of cards isn't going to end well. I like this atmospheric cover by Sam Cherry. 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE was primarily a reprint pulp, but this issue features new stories by H.A. DeRosso and Allan K. Echols. The reprints, all novelettes, are by Joseph Chadwick, Chuck Martin, B.M. Bower, Norrell Gregory, and Cliff Walters.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ace-High Western Stories, March 1944

Now there's a cover with some punch to it! I'm not sure of the artist, but I think it may be Robert Stanley. The biggest names inside this issue are Wayne D. Overholser, Joseph Chadwick, C. William Harrison, and Ralph Berard, who was really Victor H. White. The authors rounding out the Table of Contents are Cliff Bisbee, Ralph Yergen, Le Roy Boyd, Melvin W. Holt, and James P. Webb, prolific but little-remembered pulpsters. As usual with a Western pulp from Popular Publications, there are some great story titles, including "Guardian of Satan's Range", "Gun-Prodigal's Homecoming", and my favorite "There's Hell in Thunder Valley!" I think I'm going to have to steal that and use it as a line of dialogue in a book.

Forgotten Books: Hell is My Destination - John Conway (Joseph Chadwick)

Joseph Chadwick was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps, writing dozens of stories under his own name and also turning out novels featuring Jim Hatfield (under the Jackson Cole house-name), the Rio Kid, and the Range Riders. As the pulps faded away in the Fifties, he turned to writing original paperbacks, mostly Westerns, but he also wrote soft-core sleaze, plantation novels, and crime novels under the names John Creighton and John Conway.

One of those John Conway novels is HELL IS MY DESTINATION, published by Monarch Books in 1959 with a great cover. The art may be by Ray Johnson; I’m not enough of an expert on Johnson’s work to be sure about that. But it promises a lurid, noirish yarn, just the sort of thing I enjoy. However, that’s not exactly what this novel delivers.

Instead, HELL IS MY DESTINATION is a rather slow-paced police procedural. The protagonist, Tom Matthews, is a police detective who is warned off from investigating a gas station stick-up in which the proprietor was shot and killed. Despite that tragic death, it seems like a fairly minor case, not worth threatening a cop over, especially when the primary suspect is a petty criminal. But then the stakes get higher as Matthews’ crippled son is struck and killed by a car in what is clearly not a typical hit-and-run. Unless he lays off the case, his wife and daughter are next, he’s told.

Well, that’s not going to happen. Matthews promptly quits the force so he can conduct his own investigation without playing by the rules. At least, that’s what he says, but even though it’s not official, his investigation is as plodding and dogged as if he were still carrying a badge. Oh, other than sleeping with his former mistress to get information, I guess. Got to get the racy scenes in there somewhere. This is a Monarch book, after all.

The whole thing is told in plain, flat, almost DRAGNET-like prose, but lest you think I’m damning with faint praise, let me make it clear that I enjoyed HELL IS MY DESTINATION quite a bit. It’s just not what I expected from the cover. It takes a while to get going good, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The second half generates considerable suspense, and while the solution isn’t unexpected, it works pretty well. Chadwick has never been one of my favorite Western writers, but his work is always competent and sometimes very good to excellent. This is the first crime novel by him that I’ve read, and I liked it enough that I’ll read more. Don’t run out and start looking for HELL IS MY DESTINATION, but if you come across a copy, it’s worth reading.