To wrap up the year for this series, this is a pulp that I
own and read recently. The scan is from the issue I read, ragged cover edges,
scribbling, and all. Anybody who’s read this blog for very long knows that
TEXAS RANGERS is one of my favorite Western pulps and Jim Hatfield is my
favorite Western pulp character. I’ve been reading his adventures (first in the
paperback reprints from the Sixties) for a very long time now.
The Hatfield novel in this issue is “Pecos Poison”, written by Tom Curry under
the Jackson Cole house-name, and behind that very generic title is an
interesting and effective yarn about the conflict between coal miners and
ranchers in West Texas. This particular mine is about played out and isn’t
valuable, so far as anybody knows, but somebody is conspiring to steal it
anyway and is using rustling and the friction between miners and cattlemen as a
distraction. Jim Hatfield is sent in to get to the bottom of the trouble and
works undercover to begin with, as usual. Also as usual, Curry employs a proxy hero,
young miner-turned-cowboy Bert Webb, to carry part of the action while Hatfield
is off investigating other angles. There’s plenty of action, and the main
villain in this one (there’s no secret about his identity) is particularly
dastardly, using a couple of murder methods you don’t often find in pulp
Westerns. It all leads up to an explosive and very effective underground climax
in the coal mine.
There are also four short stories in this issue. The first, “Widow’s Choice” by
William Morrison (who was really Joseph Samachson), concerns the rivalry
between two prospecting partners over the affections of a widow who may not be
much to look at, but she’s a great cook. Then things are complicated by an
Indian attack. This is a pretty lightweight tale that takes a grim turn part of
the way through, then eventually swings back to humorous fare. I’m not sure it
completely works—it’s a little bit too schizophrenic—but it’s a readable story.
“Ranger’s Ruse” by Charles N. Heckelmann is a murder mystery, as a miserly
moneylender is shot in the back and a Texas Ranger has to figure out which of
three suspects is the killer. It’s not much of a whodunit, since Heckelmann
keeps information from the reader that would make it possible to solve the
mystery, but it’s another one that reads okay.
“Range Waif” by W.E. Carleton is a contemporary Western comedy about rival dude
ranches competing for customers. It didn’t work for me at all and I didn’t
finish it.
This issue wraps up with “Sodbuster’s Showdown”, a short story by Frank Morris.
In a post earlier this year about an issue of HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE, I wrote
about how there seem to be two Frank Morrises, one who wrote for a variety of
Western pulps from the mid-Thirties to the mid-Forties, and another who was a
house-name for the Trojan pulps. The author of “Sodbuster’s Showdown” is almost
certainly not the same person who wrote “Location for Murder” in that HOLLYWOOD
DETECTIVE. But it’s a good story anyway, about a small rancher (not really a
sodbuster, despite the title) who clashes with a brutal cattle baron over water
rights. There’s quite a bit of well-written action, and while overall the story
is nothing out of the ordinary, I enjoyed it. It’s the best of the short
stories in this issue.
So while this is maybe a slightly below average issue of TEXAS RANGERS because
of the back-up stories, the Hatfield novel is a good one, and that’s the main
appeal of TEXAS RANGERS to start with, so I enjoyed this one and think it was
well worth taking down from the shelves.
