Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, December 1934

WESTERN ACES usually had good covers, like this one by Rafael DeSoto that appeared on the magazine's second issue. The authors inside are a mixture of the well-known and the obscure. L.L. Foreman, Philip Ketchum (writing as Carl McK. Saunders), Orlando Rigoni, Larry A. Harris, and Clyde A. Warden (writing as Les Rivers) were all prolific, solid Western pulpsters. Eugene R. Dutcher, Leon V. Almirall, and Francis P. Verzani are less well-remembered, but that doesn't mean their stories aren't good. I don't own this issue, but that cover sure would have caught my eye if I'd been browsing the newsstand back in 1934. If I'd had a spare dime, there's a good chance I would have bought it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novel and Short Stories, July 1937

On this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES, J.W. Scott gives us his version of the Iconic Trio: the Stalwart Cowboy, the Gun-totin' Redhead, and the Old Geezer. The Old Geezer is tied up instead of wounded, and the Redhead doesn't look particularly angry, but the Cowboy is definitely stalwart and wearing a red shirt, to boot. (Red shirts on Western pulp covers don't have the same meaning as red shirts on STAR TREK, by the way.) A fine bunch of writers can be found inside this issue, too: Eugene Cunningham, Harry Sinclair Drago, Larry A. Harris, Raymond S. Spears, and Ken Jason, a house-name but usually used by one of the top authors. I don't own this one, but it looks like a top-notch Western pulp that's probably well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, January 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my well-worn copy in the scan, featuring a fine dramatic cover by Sam Cherry.

I bought this issue mostly for the Leslie Scott novel, of course. It’s a bit unusual that he’s billed under his real name here and not Bradford Scott, A. Leslie, or even A. Leslie Scott. “The City of Silver”, which is long enough to be considered a novel even in this pulp version, was rewritten and expanded into the hardcover novel SILVER CITY, published by Arcadia House in 1953 and also appeared in paperback from Harlequin. The protagonist is Jim Vane, who is working as a stagecoach station agent in Nevada when the story opens but soon finds himself in the mining boomtown of Virginia City working for Adolph Sutro, one of several historical characters who figure in this novel, much like a Rio Kid yarn. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve read a Rio Kid novel that takes place in Virginia City and features some of the same characters and historical developments.

In this one by Scott, we get ambushes and stagecoach robberies, Jim Vane and some other men are trapped underground by a disaster, and there’s a big shootout at the end in which Vane uncovers the identities of the men who are behind all the villainy in this story. Those are all standard plot elements for a Scott novel, but he mixes them together with such skill that I always enjoy the story he tells. In addition, the ending of this one is a little different from most I’ve encountered in his work, which is a nice bonus. “The City of Silver” is a good novel and a fine example of Scott writing at the top of his game, with plenty of action and some nice turns of phrase.

“Cow Country Jury” is one of ten Western and detective stories that John Di Silvestro wrote for various pulps in the late Forties. That’s all I know about the author. This short-short is about a young cowboy who decides to become an outlaw, only to encounter several unexpected obstacles to his plan. It’s a fairly light-hearted yarn and has a definite oddball quality to it. For one thing, all the characters have unusual names. The young cowboy is Sorne Dangler, the stagecoach driver he tried to hold up is Brad Nunoon, and the local lawman is Sheriff Lork. The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. This is a story with some promise, but it doesn’t really deliver.

Steuart Emery started writing romance and mainstream stories for the general fiction pulps in the early 1920s and then wrote hundreds of air war stories (with a few detective yarns mixed in) from the late Twenties to the late Forties. In the late Forties he began writing for the Western pulps and was a fairly prolific contributor to them throughout the Fifties. Most of his Westerns were cavalry yarns, but his novelette “Wall of Silence” in this issue doesn’t feature the cavalry, although it does have some Indian fighting in it. Instead of some young officer, Emery’s protagonist is a stagecoach driver in Arizona who used to drive a fire wagon in New York. He had to go on the run after killing a man in a barroom brawl, but a police detective from New York has tracked him down and offers him a choice: go to prison for the killing—or go back to New York testify against an Irish mobster. Unusual characters, an offbeat plot, and plenty of excellent action make this a terrific story with a very satisfying ending. I really enjoyed this one, and it made me even more of a Steuart Emery fan than I already was.

Larry A. Harris wrote hundreds of stories for the Western pulps. I’ve read a number of them and always enjoyed them, finding them competently written and dependably entertaining. That’s a good description of his short story “Killer Bait” in this issue. An old rancher sets a trap for the outlaws responsible for his son’s death. The writing has a nice hardboiled tone and the story moves right along. Maybe nothing special overall, but I had a good time reading it.

The same can’t be said for “No Decisions” by Francis H. Ames. I’d read several stories by Ames before and liked them okay, but this one is just awful. It’s a present-tense, burlesque comedy with characters named Highpockets and Knothole, and it’s about a boxing match between the champions of the settlements of Sandstone and Gumbo Flats. I made it through three pages before saying nope, not for me.

Johnston McCulley wrote more than 50 stories featuring his iconic creation Zorro for WEST between 1944 and 1949. These short adventures play much like episodes of the famous Zorro TV series, although that series was still some years in the future when these stories were written and published. “Zorro Starts the New Year” in this issue has Don Diego Vega and his famous alter-ego clashing with another aristocrat during a New Year’s party at the Vega rancho. The plot is pretty thin, but McCulley’s writing is so smooth and entertaining that the story is quite enjoyable anyway. All of McCulley’s Zorro stories, from his debut in the novel THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO to his final pulp yarns, are available in six beautiful reprint volumes from Bold Venture Press.

Despite the presence of the one story I disliked, this is a very good issue of WEST. The Steuart Emery novelette is my favorite, but Scott’s novel “The City of Silver” is very solid and entertaining, too. The presence of McCulley and Harris is just a bonus. If you have this one, or happen to stumble across a copy, it’s well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 5 Western Novels Magazine, June 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. My copy isn’t in the greatest shape, but that’s it in the scan, featuring a nice, evocative cover by Clarence Doore. You can feel the sweltering heat just looking at it, can’t you? One oddity of note is that it’s 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE on the cover and the masthead on the title page, but FIVE WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE on the spine, the indicia, and the page headers. I’m going to make the arbitrary decision to use the version with the number when I refer to it in this post.

Calling this 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE was something of an exaggeration, of course. The contents actually consist of three novellas, two novelettes, and a bonus short story. This title was, for the most part, a reprint pulp. There’s only one original story in this issue, and that’s the novella that leads things off, “Pistol Partners” by Lee Floren.

Now, Lee Floren has never been one of my favorite Western authors, but I’m coming to enjoy his work more over time. Also, this story features his longest-running series characters, Buckshot McKee and Tortilla Joe, a couple of drifting cowpokes who always manage to wind up in the middle of dangerous situations and sinister mysteries. I’ve read several novels starring Buck and Joe and enjoyed them. In “Pistol Partners”, they’ve come to New Mexico to answer a call for help from an old friend who is sick and has to go to the hospital. He wants Buck and Joe to take care of his pet cat for him.

That cat turns out to be a tame mountain lion named Madagascar Jones. The “hospital” in which the old friend is holed up is a boarding house run by a beautiful former madam, and all the boarders are beautiful saloon girls, one of whom is the unlikely bride of the old codger who summoned Buck and Joe. A ruthless cattle baron wants the old-timer’s land, several men have been killed, supposedly by the mountain lion Madagascar Jones, and Buck and Joe get shot at several times. This is the goofiest Lee Floren story I’ve read, rivaling W.C. Tuttle’s Sheriff Henry yarns in places. But it’s also full of action, well-plotted, and a lot of fun. There are a few examples of the slapdash writing common in Floren’s work—a guy rides up on horseback, for example, and in the very next paragraph he came up on foot and his horse is hidden in the brush—but if you can forgive that, and I can, “Pistol Partners” is pretty darned enjoyable.

William Hopson’s novelette “Trail Drive Boss” first appeared in the September 1945 issue of POPULAR WESTERN. As you can tell from the title, it’s a trail drive yarn in which a young cattleman butts heads with a crooked town boss who controls the only water in the area and uses exorbitant prices to steal herds. There’s also a beautiful woman involved, of course, and not everything is as it seems at first. Hopson was inconsistent but mostly very good, and this is an excellent tale that I enjoyed.

“Sixgun Sweepstakes”, a novella by Walker A. Tompkins, is a reprint from the June 1948 issue of POPULAR WESTERN. Tompkins is a long-time favorite of mine, and he doesn’t disappoint in this story about a town-taming lawman from Texas who’s the marshal of a town in Washington state. He throws in an intriguing angle about the friction between ranchers and wheat farmers but never really does anything with that plot element. Instead, this is a Fourth of July story with a rodeo and a big celebration highlighted by a stagecoach race. One of the marshal’s old enemies shows up in town before the shindig begins, and the romantic triangle between the two of them and the beautiful daughter of a state senator complicates matters before the villain’s true plan is revealed.

Tompkins is in good form in this story. There’s plenty of action, a fight on a train, the stagecoach race, and a few plot twists. It would have been better if the fight had been on top of the train (anybody who’s read much of my work knows I love those scenes), and a running shootout during the stagecoach race would have been nice. But that’s just me. “Sixgun Sweepstakes” is a solid yarn that would have made a good 1950s Western movie.

The novella “Dead Man’s Gold” by Larry A. Harris first appeared in the June 1948 issue of THRILLING WESTERN. A young man’s search for a fortune in gold supposedly hidden by his crazy uncle in the Devil’s River country of Texas puts him in conflict with a crooked banker and a corrupt lawman. The story moves right along and there’s plenty of action, but the writing is pretty flat and bland and the protagonist is so stupid that it stretches the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief too far. He does one dumb thing after another just to keep the plot going. Harris wrote hundreds of stories for the pulps but only a few novels, all of them featuring the Masked Rider. One of those was reprinted in paperback, Harris’s only book publication that I know of. I’ve read a few things by him in the past and found them okay at best. This one is a clear misfire.

The short story “Reunion at Amigo” is by veteran Western writer Allan K. Echols and originally appeared in the June 1948 issue of MASKED RIDER WESTERN. It’s about an old outlaw who has escaped from prison and is searching for his son. It’s pretty well-written overall, but the final twist is so obvious that it detracts quite a bit from the story’s appeal.

This issue wraps up with “The Necktie Party”, a novelette by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson from the July 1948 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. At first glance, this is a cavalry vs. the Apaches yarn, but as it turns out, there’s more to it than that as a young lieutenant tries to save a civilian scout from being lynched, prevent a new Indian war, and round up the bad guys, all at the same time. As always, Wheeler-Nicholson brings an undeniable air of authenticity to a story with a military background. This is an enjoyable tale weakened by an ending that’s not very dramatic and resolves things too easily.

As far as I remember, this is the first issue of 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE, so I don’t have any basis to compare and say how it stacks up against the others in the series. Just as a Western pulp, though, I think it’s a little below average. I was surprised at how good the Floren story is, and there’s nothing wrong with the Hopson tale, but the entries by Tompkins, Wheeler-Nicholson, and Echols were good but could have been better, and the one by Harris just isn’t very good. I really like the cover by Clarence Doore, though. Overall, probably worth reading, but don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, March 1937

This issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES, which I don't own, sports a nice action-packed cover. I don't know the artist. There are stories inside by some very solid Western pulpsters including Tom Curry, Lee Bond, Larry A. Harris, Edward Parrish Ware, and Dabney Otis Collins. Rounding out the TOC are lesser-known William Dixon Bell, William Bruner, and U. Stanley Aultman. I had hoped to continue my streak of posting about pulps that I own and have read, but I ran out of time this week. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, June 1946

An ominous cover by Sam Cherry graces this issue of WEST, which includes a Zorro story by Johnston McCulley and a novella by Paul Evan Lehman. Other authors on hand are Dupree Poe (writing as Roger Rhodes), Larry Harris, and Hal White, a prolific but little remembered author whose career lasted from the mid-Twenties to the early Fifties and included Westerns, detective stories, and dozens of aviation yarns.

Saturday Afternoon Western Pulp: Ace-High Western Stories, July 1949

I'm going to be writing a book set in Death Valley later this year, but I won't be able to call it "Death Valley Gun-Devils". I would if I could! I'm sure this is a good story, though, since it's by William Heuman. Other authors in this issue of ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES are Tom Roan, Richard Brister, Larry Harris, and Harold F. Cruickshank. I don't know who painted the cover. Something about the guy's head looks just a bit off to me, as if it doesn't quite sit right on his body, but seeing as I have no artistic talent whatsoever, I feel a little bad about criticizing it. Overall I like it and think it's another exciting Popular Publications cover.

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: Six-Gun Western, April 1949

This cover looks like it should have been used on an issue of SPICY WESTERN, but as far as I can tell, it never was. So I think there was a chance it was a left-over painting from the magazine that finally got used on this issue of SIX-GUN WESTERN, also from Trojan Magazines, Inc. Inside are stories by the legendarily prolific E. Hoffmann Price and Larry A. Harris, another stalwart of the Western pulps. The other authors are either house-names or guys I've never heard of. I suspect it's an entertaining issue anyway.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, June 1940

This issue of WESTERN ACES sports a nice action cover from Jerome Rozen. Inside are stories by some top Western pulpsters, including L.P. Holmes, John G. Pearsol, Larry A. Harris, Tom J. Hopkins, Lee Floren, Kenneth L. Sinclair and some lesser-known authors.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Popular Western, September 1941

A busy but effective cover on this issue of POPULAR WESTERN, and the contents look good, too, with a Sheriff Blue Steele story by Tom Gunn (Syl McDowell), a Buffalo Billy Bates story by Scott Carleton (a house-name, so I don't know who wrote this one, although for some reason I seem to recall that Walker Tompkins wrote the Buffalo Billy Bates series), and yarns by William L. Hopson, Wayne D. Overholser, Donald Bayne Hobart, and Larry A. Harris.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, February 1935

This is a Western pulp that I own and read recently, so I can talk about the stories for a change. That's a cover scan from the actual copy I read, as well. Art by Delos Palmer Jr. Thanks to Bill Crider for sending this one to me.

This one leads off with a full-length "novel" (more of a novella, really) by Frederick C. Davis, best known as the creator and author of the novels in the Operator #5 series, as well as the Moon Man yarns from 10 DETECTIVE ACES. It's part of Davis's series about Duke Buckland, which ran for twenty stories in WESTERN TRAILS from 1934 to 1937. Buckland is a wanted outlaw who goes under the name Black Jack Spade, but he's really a good guy despite having the law after him. His young partner is Kit McCane. Buckland's trademark is leaving a jack of spades behind every time he kills a villain or eludes a sheriff, but in "Colt Queen", he and McCane run up against a female bandit calling herself the Queen of Spades who always leaves one of those behind as her calling card. She's really the beautiful but dangerous Dell Clanton, and she has reasons of her own for luring Buckland into a trap. I don't think Davis was quite as comfortable with Westerns as he was with the superspy sagas in OPERATOR #5—this yarn is a little repetitive in both plot and language—but there's plenty of nice action, Buckland and McCane are likable heroes, and Dell Clanton turns out to be a pretty interesting character. This is the only Duke Buckland story I've ever read, but I wouldn't hesitate to dive in to another one if I came across it.

"Maverick Law" is the first thing I've read by Francis P. Verzani, not a well-known Western pulp author at all, although he was fairly prolific in the early to mid-Thirties. This novelette combines a couple of familiar plots, the child-raised-by-outlaws story and the save-the-ranch story. It's told in a nice, breezy style and has plenty of action, but it's really predictable, has too much "yuh mangy polecat" dialect, and never rises above the level of just okay.

Clyde A. Warden is another writer whose work I haven't encountered until now. When I looked at the first page of "Double-Barreled Decoy", his novella in this issue, I got excited for a minute because under his byline it said "Author of Clan of the Coltmen". This caught my attention because "Coltmen" (or "Coltman") is an oddball word frequently used by one of my favorite Western pulp authors, J. Edward Leithead. I've seen it only one or two other times in stories by other authors. Also, the name Clyde A. Warden reminded me a little of Wilson L. Covert, Leithead's most common pseudonym. So I thought at first I might have uncovered another Leithead pen-name.

However, upon reading the story, I'm convinced that it's not by Leithead after all, and the mystery of who Clyde A. Warden really was remains. (Of course, he actually could have been Clyde A. Warden, whose byline appeared frequently in Western pulps for more than twenty years.) "Double-Barreled Decoy" is part of his long-running Bert Little series, which appeared in WESTERN TRAILS from 1930 to 1938, with at least 69 stories featuring the stalwart hero. Bert Little's background really isn't clear in this one, but it's obvious he's some sort of freelance good guy. At the request of a lawman friend, he takes on the job of bringing outlaw Harry Baxter to justice. That task is complicated by the presence of a beautiful young woman who may be Bert's best friend or his deadliest enemy, he's not sure which.

Unlike the Verzani story, "Double-Barreled Decoy" is written in clean, fast-moving prose with good action scenes and some emotional depth. The plot may be fairly standard stuff, but Warden does a fine job with it and left me thoroughly entertained. I'd definitely like to read more of his work.

"Branded in Lead" by the ubiquitous (at least in the Western pulps) Larry A. Harris is the story of a man who takes up the owlhoot trail when the girl he loves chooses his half-brother over him. This one has a lot of scope for a short story, covering almost a decade in time, and it's written in Harris's smooth prose, as usual. The ending is a little lacking, but overall I liked it.

Not surprisingly since it was written by James P. Olsen, another of my favorites, I thought the novelette "Trigger Tempest" was excellent. It's a cattlemen vs. sheepmen story, an ancient plot but well-handled by Olsen, even though the hero's name, Burnin' Cole, is a bit groan-inducing. Fine action scenes, though.

The last story in the issue is "Gun Smith of Tonca" by Joe Archibald, who wrote detective stories, aviation yarns, and sports stories in addition to a lot of Westerns. Since he was a veteran pulpster, you'd expect the prose to be smooth and readable, and it is. The plot, about the aftermath of a stagecoach robbery, is fairly complex for a short story, with a couple of nice twists. This is another entertaining tale.

All in all, this is a fine issue of WESTERN TRAILS, never one of the top pulps but a consistently good one. The stories range from fair to excellent, and I really enjoyed reading it.

UPDATE: Will Murray advises me that Clyde A. Warden was that author's real name. Thanks, Will! I need to find more of Warden's stories.