Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1948

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with an exciting and dramatic cover by Sam Cherry, who always delivered the goods. And I’ll have more to say about this cover later.

This issue leads off with another Tombstone and Speedy novelette by W.C. Tuttle, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones”. In this one, our intrepid range detective duo aren’t on the trail of rustlers for a change. As a favor to their boss at the Cattlemen’s Association, they set out to investigate a case of high-grading at a gold mine. But when they arrive on the scene, they find the mine owner and his lawyer both dead. Is it murder? What does it have to do with the kidnapping of an inept young drummer from back east who sells ladies’ ready-to-wear goods? Why’s everybody so interested in a beautiful young woman and her son? Tombstone and Speedy will untangle all those threads, of course, with a lot of banter and gunplay along the way. After being a little disappointed in the last yarn I read in this series, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones” really hits the mark. The dialogue is funny, the action is good, the detective work, mostly by Tombstone, is canny, and the plot hangs together nicely. This is a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy story.

“Catch Rope” is the third and final story in Chuck Martin’s short-lived series about crippled range detective Jim Bowen. It’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which Bowen goes after a gang of rustlers who have kidnapped a rancher. Martin is nearly always worth reading, and this is an enjoyable story. I hoped it would bring some resolution to Jim Bowen’s continuing storyline, but it doesn’t, which is a shame.

Nels Leroy Jorgensen started out as a hardboiled crime and mystery writer in BLACK MASK before concentrating on Westerns later in his career, and I’ve enjoyed a number of his stories in the past. “Bullet Trail to Bexar”, his novelette in this issue, gets off to a promising start. It’s set in Texas in the spring of 1836, during the Texas revolution, and is about a young Texan on a mission to San Antonio. He gets saddled with a beautiful young woman along the way, and she has an agenda of her own. This should be a good story, but it’s riddled with anachronisms and blatant historical errors, as well as continuity glitches such as the young woman’s stepfather suddenly becoming her half-brother for the rest of the story. I wound up abandoning this one halfway through. It just has too many problems for it to be entertaining to me.

“Killer, Here I Come” is by Robert J. Hogan, best-known for the G-8 series, of course, but he wrote quite a few Westerns as well. This is the second story in this issue where the protagonist has a crippled leg. In this case, he’s not a range detective but rather a saddlemaker and veterinarian. He’s a very likable character, and you can’t help but root for him as he has to deal with an old enemy turned bank robber. I didn’t like this one whole-heartedly—there’s some cruelty to animals in it, and I have a hard time with that—but it’s a pretty good story overall.

Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name. The story under that by-line in this issue, “Born to Hang”, is the one illustrated by Cherry’s cover. Actually, I strongly suspect this is another case of a story being written to match an existing cover painting, because the scene lines up perfectly with the story. I also think there’s a very good chance the story was written by editor Charles S. Strong, who was also Western writer Chuck Stanley, author of a regular non-fiction column in EXCITING WESTERN. It’s a good yarn about a drifter framed for murder, and its only real drawback is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it might have been. Still an enjoyable story, though.

Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine has become one of my favorite Western pulp characters. In “Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger!”, he’s sent to find out who’s been attacking and burning out some homesteaders, which leads him to a mystery involving the inheritance of a valuable ranch. It’s a good story, and I’m convinced it’s the work of Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond created the Navajo Tom Raine series and wrote more of the stories than anyone else, although C. William Harrison contributed quite a few, as well. This one ends with a big shootout between Raine and multiple bad guys, one of the trademarks of his stories.

The issue wraps up with “Reba Rides Alone” by D.B. Newton, one of my favorite Western authors. Of course, I can’t see that title without thinking about the country singer, but in this case, Reba is Mike Reba, a veteran outlaw who’s wounded and on the run when he encounters a young man determined to take up the owlhoot trail. This story is kind of predictable, but it’s very well written, and like all of Newton’s work, it’s worth reading.

This is a good issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN with a strong Tombstone and Speedy entry, a solid Navajo Tom Raine story, and the other stories are all okay with the exception of Jorgensen’s. If you have a copy, it’s certainly worth taking down from the shelves. If you don’t, the whole issue is also available on the Internet Archive.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with a dramatic and very effective cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve always liked leather shirt cuffs like the ones the cowboy on this cover is wearing.

“Brains in Broken Fork”, the featured novelette in this issue, opens with our intrepid range detective due Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith on their way to the cowtown of Broken Fork on a rainy night. They start to take shelter from the storm in an isolated cabin, only to find it occupied by a recently deceased corpse, and a rather active one, at that, since it starts to move around and startles our heroes into lighting a shuck out of there.

After that atmospheric opening, the rest of the story is the usual mix of action, mystery, colorful characters, and humorous dialogue. Tombstone and Speedy have been sent to Broken Fork to corral some rustlers, but they find that an old robbery and a cache of missing loot are mixed up in the case, as well. And of course, there’s a pretty girl, an old sheriff, and a deputy who’s smarter than he looks, which is a good description of Tombstone and Speedy, too. As much as I enjoy this series—and I got some good chuckles out of this one—it still strikes me as one of the more uninspired entries. The plot relies heavily on elements that author W.C. Tuttle has employed in other Tombstone and Speedy yarns, and unless I missed something, he leaves one fairly important plot point completely unresolved, as if he totally forgot about it. Tuttle definitely wasn’t at the top of his game in this one, although I enjoyed reading it.

“Shotgun Nester” is by Ray Hayton, an author I’m unfamiliar with. He appears to have been rather prolific for a while, turning out 20 stories in various Western pulps from 1946 to 1948. According to the Fictionmags Index, he died at 1947 at a young age, so I was intrigued enough to do a little research. Turns out he was from Monroe, Louisiana, but committed suicide in New York City when he was only 25. His obituary on the Find A Grave website says that he served in the Army during World War II and had been writing since high school. More than half of his published fiction came out after his death, so he had stories in inventory at several magazines. Judging by “Shotgun Nester”, he was a decent writer. The protagonist is a sodbuster with a chip on his shoulder who clashes with the local cattle baron. It’s a pretty traditional story, nothing special, but well-written. I have to wonder why a writer who was apparently selling stories hand over fist would kill himself, but there’s always a lot more going on in people’s lives than we know, isn’t there?

I’m happy to report that Navajo Tom Raine makes an appearance in this issue, in the novelette “A Ranger to Reckon With”. This series, published under the house-name Jackson Cole, was created by Lee Bond, who shared writing duties on it with C. William Harrison. I’m convinced this story is by Lee Bond. For one thing, the characters stand around explaining the plot to each other, a very common technique in Bond’s stories. For another, the final shootout pits Raine against three villains, a setup that occurs in almost every story I’ve ever read by him. In this one, Raine is sent to find out who’s responsible for lynching three sodbusters. Despite being familiar, it plays out just fine and is an enjoyable read.

The last time I read a Ben Frank story, I surprised myself by kind of liking it. His story in this issue, “Circle C Checker Coup”, doesn’t have a promising title. I was expecting a humorous yarn about a checker game. Well, checkers figures in the plot, all right, but so do robbery and murder. The protagonist is a young cowhand who has a photographic memory, something I don’t think I’ve encountered before in a Western pulp yarn. I liked this one, too, quite a bit, in fact.

“Stranger in Rocky Gulch” is by Reeve Walker, a Thrilling Group house-name, so I don’t know who wrote it and couldn’t hazard a guess from reading the story. It’s about a young trail boss trying to get home with the money from selling his herd, only to be detoured into a poker game with some sinister characters. It’s a decent story, slightly unpredictable in how it plays out.

The novelette “Owlhoot Buckaroo” is the second appearance in this issue by Lee Bond (assuming I’m right about him being the author of the Navajo Tom Raine story). This stand-alone story is about a young cowboy who spent ten years being raised by an outlaw gang, although he didn’t take part in any of their criminal activities. He’s trying to put that shady past behind him, but of course, it keeps coming back to haunt him, especially when he tries to save a ranch belonging to a beautiful young woman. Although the plot is pretty standard stuff, this is an excellent story, well-written with good characters and plenty of action. Bond was a formulaic writer but capable of turning out a really good yarn. This is one of the best I’ve read by him.

“Lead Evens the Score” is by the prolific Gladwell Richardson. The protagonist is a young cowboy who returns to a crooked town to get even with the stable owner, saloonkeeper, and sheriff who robbed him on his previous visit. He discovers he’s not the only one with a grudge against that trio and has to move fast to settle their hash himself. I haven’t read a lot by Richardson. This story is okay, if nothing special.

“Judge Guppy’s Colt Law” sounds like it might be a humorous story, which is not something I expect from Wayne D. Overholser. But no, this tale of a frontier jurist trying to save a young cowboy from a murder frame is the straightforward, slightly dour sort of Western yarn Overholser usually turned out. It’s not bad, but I’ve never been a big fan of Overholser’s work and this one didn’t convert me.

Overall, this is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN, although I wouldn’t say it’s one of the best I’ve read. With a slightly below average but still entertaining Tombstone and Speedy yarn, a good but not outstanding Navajo Tom Raine story, and better than expected tales by Lee Bond (under his own name) and Ben Frank, it’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, July 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my rather tattered copy in the scan, with a fine action cover painted by Sam Cherry.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue is by A. Leslie Scott writing under the Jackson Cole house-name, as is obvious from the vivid descriptions right from the start. The Lucky Hammer of the title is the name of a silver mine in Texas’s Big Bend region, so-called because the two old prospectors who discover the vein also find an ancient Aztec carving of a snake that’s shaped in the form of a hammer. Oh, and the hammer just happens to be lying next to the body of a dead man who appears to have guzzled down a drink from a poisoned waterhole.

Naturally, the silver strike results in the founding of a boomtown, and a boomtown always brings owlhoots, and eventually things get so lawless in the area that a call for help goes out to the Texas Rangers. And who’s going to respond to that call? I think we all know the answer to that question.

“The Lucky Hammer” is a dandy Jim Hatfield yarn full of the things that make Leslie Scott’s stories so enjoyable: a historical background, a terrible sandstorm on the desert, underground scenes in a mine, exploding dynamite, a missing archeologist, rustlers, smugglers, and gunfights galore. The big twist in the plot is fairly obvious, but to be honest, I would have felt cheated if it hadn’t been there. Sure, I knew it was coming, but I liked it anyway. Actually, there’s nothing in this novel that we haven’t seen in numerous other Hatfield novels by Scott, but he puts the various elements together so well, I still greatly enjoy reading them. He was at the top of his game in these mid-Forties Hatfield novels.

Bennie Gardner, who wrote as Gunnison Steele, turned out some excellent novels for the Thrilling Group Western character pulps, but he was also very prolific when it comes to short-short stand-alone stories. “Cold Creek Killer” in this issue is probably about 1500 words long, but in those words Gardner packs rustling, murder, and a canny sheriff bringing a killer to justice. The twist ending to this one is a little weak, I thought, but Gardner’s fast-moving prose still makes it fun to read.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t make it very far in Ben Frank’s “Doc Swap’s Powder Puff”. I just don’t like this series. I’m not sure why. The author, whose real name was Frank Bennett, puts words together well enough, but the Doc Swap stories just don’t work for me.

On the other hand, I really like the Long Sam Littlejohn stories by Lee Bond, and they’re every bit as formulaic as the Doc Swap yarns. In “Long Sam Collects a Bounty”, the good-guy outlaw is trying to corral a notorious outlaw and collect a reward, when he’s usually the one who’s the quarry in a situation like that. Naturally, his long-time nemesis, Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, shows up, too. Quite a few of the Long Sam stories, like this one, take place in the Big Thicket in East Texas, and that makes for a nice change-of-pace. I wish Bond had done a little more with the character, but I still enjoy the series and am always glad to read another one.

And the same holds true for most issues of TEXAS RANGERS. Even with Doc Swap and a slightly below-average Gunnison Steele story, this one is well worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, December 12, 1936

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with tape around the edges applied by some previous owner. The cover art is by Albin Henning, who appears to have done more interior illustrations for the pulps and the slicks than he did covers. I think this one is okay, but I don’t like it as well as the covers by R.G. Harris and H.W. Scott, who did most of the WILD WEST WEEKLY covers during the Thirties and Forties.

The lead novelette in this issue is “Long-rider’s Loot” by William A. Todd, a house-name used on the Risky McKee series by Norman W. Hay. Hay wrote hundreds of stories for WILD WEST WEEKLY under half a dozen pseudonyms and house-names, including approximately three dozen about a young rancher in Arizona named Risky McKee, who raises and trains horses. This is the first Risky McKee story I’ve read. In it, a drug-addicted outlaw named Hypo Crawley (great name) escapes from prison and tries to recover the loot from a bank robbery he hid several years earlier. Crawley double-crossed his gang and stole the money from them, so they’re after it, too, and hope he’ll lead them to it. Risky finds himself in the middle of all this, assisted by his sidekick Sufferin’ Joe, a hypochondriac old codger always complaining about one ailment or another acting like he has one foot in the grave. This is a pretty decent, if standard plot, and Hay throws in a couple of nice twists in before the end. There’s a great line that put a smile on my face: “He’s so crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew.” Sufferin’ Joe is a good character, too, definitely comedy relief but also tough and competent when he needs to be. The only real problem about this story is Risky himself, who is such a bland and shallow character that he’s barely there on the page. I don’t know if he comes off better in the other stories—I’d certainly read more of them because I like Hay’s writing overall—but he keeps this yarn from being anything more than average.

Hay is also the author of the second story in this issue, a stand-alone called “Six-gun Wages” published under the house-name Philip F. Deere. This is a much better story about a young cowboy who discovers a rustling operation along the border between Arizona and Mexico. It’s a well-written tale and one of the characters who seems like a villain turns out not to be, which is always a nice twist. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. As I said, I like Norman W. Hay’s work. As far as I can tell, he published only a handful of stories under his own name, and maybe that’s the way he wanted it, but I think that’s kind of a shame. I wish he’d written some Western novels.

J. Allan Dunn wrote more than 150 stories about Texas Ranger Bud Jones for WILD WEST WEEKLY. I’ve read only one other one before now, and I liked it fairly well with a few reservations. The Bud Jones yarn in this issue is called “Hide-out” and opens with a gang of desperate outlaws fleeing with the loot from a bank robbery they’ve pulled. Bud is the Ranger who sets out to track them down, but he seems stymied when their trail mysteriously disappears, until he figures out the clever trick they’ve pulled. No reservations on this one. It’s a solid, well-plotted yarn with a great showdown at the end.  By the way, has anyone ever tried to figure out how much Dunn wrote? His total wordage has to be right up there with Frederick Faust, H. Bedford-Jones, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

Lee Bond wrote two long-running series about good guy outlaws and the lawmen who dogged pursue them, the Long Sam Littlejohn series that ran for some 50 stories in TEXAS RANGERS and the Oklahoma Kid series in WILD WEST WEEKLY which was even more popular, lasting for approximately 70 stories. “Boot Hill Gamble” is the Oklahoma Kid novelette in this issue, and it finds the Kid (whose real name is Jack Reese, but that’s hardly ever used) on the trail of some outlaws who held up a stage, murdered the driver and guard, and got away with $30,000 in gold bars. The Kid is blamed for this crime, and the only way to clear his name is to round up the real culprits. This is a very standard plot, as usual for Bond, but he does a good job with it and includes plenty of well-written action, which is his strong suit. I like the Long Sam yarns considerably more than the ones featuring the Oklahoma Kid, but Bond’s work is nearly always worth reading although it seldom rises to the top rank of Western pulp fiction.

Claude Rister wrote more than a hundred stories for the pulps, mostly Westerns but with some detective, adventure, and aviation yarns mixed in. He also wrote a number of Western novels under the pseudonym Buck Billings. His story in this issue, “Outlaw Option”, is about a cowboy who’s had a bit of a shady past coming to the aid of an old-timer who’s about to be finagled out of his ranch by a slick gambler. In order to do that, the protagonist enlists the help of several other former owlhoots. There’s nothing special about the plot in this one, but Rister writes well and isn’t as heavy-handed with the dialect as some Western pulpsters can be. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him and need to read more.

There’s also a Texas Triggers novelette by Walker A. Tompkins to round out this issue, but that series was fixed up into a novel called TEXAS TRIGGERS, and since I happen to own that book, I didn’t read the novelette. I’ll get to it when I read the book.

Overall, this isn’t a bad issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. All the stories are readable and fairly entertaining. But it’s not an outstanding issue, either. It's about as average as you can get with a Western pulp. Fortunately, with WILD WEST WEEKLY, that means it’s enjoyable enough to be worth reading if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a little scribbling on a dramatic Sam Cherry cover that I like. EXCITING WESTERN has become one of my favorite Western pulps because I really enjoy two of the series that ran regularly in its pages.

One of those series is, of course, the Tombstone and Speedy stories by W.C. Tuttle. The lead novella in this issue, “Trail of the Flame”, finds our intrepid heroes, range detective Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith, enjoying some unexpected and newfound wealth in the form of a reward they received for capturing a notorious outlaw. Despite that, they run smack-dab into trouble—literally—when there’s a collision between the buggy they’ve bought and a fella on horseback fleeing from some pursuers. This lands the duo in the middle of a case involving a fabulously valuable gem, a herd of stolen polo ponies, a wealthy eastern dude who has come west, a town south of the border that’s a bandit stronghold, and a sinister Chinese smuggler. As you can tell, Tuttle crams a lot of plot into this yarn, and to be honest, it doesn’t hold together quite as well as some of the other stories in the series. But there’s plenty of action, the story races along at a fast clip, the banter is genuinely amusing, and Tombstone and Speedy are as likable as ever. As always, I really enjoyed reading it.

The other long-running series in EXCITING WESTERN that I like a lot is that featuring Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine, the son of a famous lawman who was raised by the Navajo after his father was murdered in a range war. This series was started by Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole, and C. William Harrison is known to have written many of the stories, too. I have a pretty strong hunch that the novelette “Loot of the Lobo Legion” in this issue is by Harrison. He’s a more polished and less formulaic writer than Bond. (Don’t get wrong, I enjoy Bond’s work, too.) In this story, Raine is sent to investigate the mysterious lynchings of three men, but when he arrives on the scene, he discovers that they were actually murdered before they were strung up. It appears that the local cattle baron is making a land grab and trying to get rid of the smaller ranchers in the area, but everything may not be exactly as it seems at first. Harrison’s Navajo Tom Raine stories usually have some sort of mystery angle to them, which is another thing that makes me believe he wrote this one. It’s a well-plotted tale, not much action until the end, but still very entertaining. Every time I read one of these, I find myself wanting to write a Navajo Tom Raine story myself. He’s a fine character.

I read another story by Barry Scobee not long ago and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I was predisposed to like his story in this issue, a novelette called “Hated Wire”. It has an intriguing premise: a cattle baron fences off his entire spread with barbed wire and has only one gate into the place. Any outsiders who venture onto the wrong side of the fence are never seen or heard from again. A neighboring rancher sets out to find out what happened to one of the men who disappeared. There’s a bizarre late twist which kind of comes out of left field, but it’s the sort of thing I generally like. However, in this case, I just didn’t care for the story. Something about the style rubbed me the wrong way, and none of the characters are likable, even the protagonist. This one might strike some other readers completely differently, but for me it’s a misfire.

Stephen Payne’s short story “Old Timer” is an unacknowledged reprint from the April 7, 1934 issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE. It’s a well-written, low-key, poignant tale about an old range rider who gives up cowboying to become a farmer in partnership with an old friend. There’s no action and the entire story is character-driven, but I liked it anyway. I need to read more of Payne’s work.

Gunnison Steele was really Bennie Gardner. He was a top-notch writer who did some fine novels for the Western character pulps, but he was great with short stories, too, like this issue’s “The Meanest Man”. In this one, a rancher robs the local bank, kills the banker, and gets away with it, but then his partner turns him in. But is that what actually happened? Gardner throws in a clever way of getting to this story’s resolution and I enjoyed this one.

Sam Brant was a house-name, so we don’t know who wrote “Manhunters Ain’t Human”, the short story that wraps up this issue. The plot seems pretty simple: a merciless lawman tracks down a killer, but again there are some twists waiting for the reader that lead to a very satisfying conclusion. This story has a very similar feel to the Gunnison Steele story, which makes me suspect that Bennie Gardner might have been the author here, too, but again, it’s impossible to say for sure.

This is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN. Not an outstanding one due to the Scobee story I didn’t like and the slightly below average Tombstone and Speedy yarn. But the Navajo Tom Raine novelette is excellent and the short stories are all solid. I’m already looking forward to the next issue of EXCITING WESTERN that I read.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, August 27, 1938

I own a couple dozen issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY, but the August 27, 1938 issue isn’t among them. It’s available on the Internet Archive, though, and I picked it to read for a reason which I’ll get around to. The cover is by the legendary Norman Saunders, and it’s a good one illustrating the lead novella, “The Cougar’s Claws”.

That novella features Pete Rice, and that’s the reason I read this one. A little background for those of you unfamiliar with the character: Inspired by the success of THE SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE, in 1933 the good folks at Street & Smith decided to launch a Western hero pulp. The result was PETE RICE MAGAZINE. The title character is the two-fisted, fast-shootin’ sheriff of Trinchera County, Arizona, who's assisted by two deputies, scrawny little Misery Hicks (who does double duty as the barber of Buffalo Gap, the county seat) and Teeny Butler, who, in keeping with the nicknaming tradition of pulp characters, is well over six feet tall and weighs 300 pounds. The gimmick of the series, if you can call it that, is that while it has all the Western trappings, it’s set in the modern day, putting it in firmly in the same camp as the Western B-movies of the times starring Gene Autry and others. These Pete Rice novels, and they were full-length novels, were written by veteran pulpster Ben Conlon under the pseudonym Austin Gridley.

Well, PETE RICE MAGAZINE was not a raging success. It ran for 31 issues, approximately two and a half years. I read one of the novels years ago and don’t remember much about it except that I wasn’t impressed and didn’t seek out any more of the series. But . . . after Pete’s own magazine was cancelled, the character moved to WILD WEST WEEKLY, where he starred in 21 more novellas and novelettes. Or did he? You see, the stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY are no longer set in the modern day but take place in the Old West, which prompted a recent discussion between me and a friend about the idea that the Pete Rice in the WILD WEST WEEKLY stories is actually the father or grandfather of the Pete Rice who starred in his own magazine. That seems feasible, other than the fact that in WILD WEST WEEKLY, Misery and Teeny are still Pete’s deputies, and claiming that those characters are also an earlier generation seems like quite a stretch to me. I suspect that in real life, nobody at Street & Smith ever gave the change in time period a second thought other than maybe instructing Conlon to make the stories actual Westerns in hopes that they would help sell WILD WEST WEEKLY. It’s a safe bet that none of the pulp writers and editors dreamed anybody would still be talking about this stuff nearly a century down the road!

Anyway, another difference in the characters in PETE RICE MAGAZINE and WILD WEST WEEKLY is that in the later incarnation, Austin Gridley became a house-name. Ben Conlon continued to write some of the stories, but other authors contributed Pete Rice yarns, too, including Paul S. Powers, who teamed Pete with his popular character Sonny Tabor, leading to a joint byline of Austin Gridley and Ward Stevens (Powers’ pseudonym); Ronald Oliphant, who penned a crossover between Pete and Billy West of the Circle J, under the names Austin Gridley and Cleve Endicott (the house-name on the Circle J series); Lee Bond; and the extremely prolific Laurence Donovan, who also ghosted some Doc Savage novels for Street & Smith. The Pete Rice story in this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY I just read, “The Cougar’s Claws”, is Donovan’s first Pete Rice story.

And after my lukewarm at best reaction to the other Pete Rice yarn I read, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I really enjoyed this one. The Cougar is the leader of an outlaw gang plaguing Trinchera County and has come up with a really grisly way of disposing of his enemies: he wraps them in green bullhide and then lets the sun dry it out so that it shrinks and crushes the victims to death. Pete and his deputies clash several times with the Cougar and his gang, escape from some death traps, and finally expose the real mastermind behind all the villainy. There are some clever twists and Donovan was always really good with action, of which there is plenty. I found Pete and his deputies likable and had a fine time reading this novella. I’ll be on the lookout for more of the Pete Rice issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY.

I think the novelette “Gunsmoke Tornado” is the earliest story I’ve ever read by Dudley Dean McGaughey, the real name of Dean Owen, who gets the credit for this one. I’ve read quite a few of McGaughey’s pulp novels from the Forties and a bunch of paperbacks from the Fifties and Sixties, but “Gunsmoke Tornado” was only his ninth published story. It’s a good one, too, about a drifting young cowhand who signs on with a ranch crew where he faces some hazing. That might have been a story in itself, but there’s more going on than that, and before you know it, our young hero finds himself in danger up to his neck because of a feud between rival ranches. McGaughey’s work has a nice hardboiled tone to it and this story is no exception.  Plenty of tough action makes this one a winner.

I’m familiar with Lee Bond mostly from the long-running Long Sam Littlejohn series he wrote as backup stories in TEXAS RANGERS, but he did several series for WILD WEST WEEKLY, including one featuring drifting cowpokes Calamity Boggs and Shorty Stevens. Shorty is, well, short and feisty, just as you’d expect. Calamity is tall and husky and full of doom and gloom, an extreme pessimist who always believes the worst is about to happen, which is, I’m sure, how he got his nickname. Bond doesn’t explain that in “Calamity Hubs a Frame-Up” in this issue, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s easy enough to just jump right into this yarn in which our two rambling heroes find a recently abandoned line shack, decide to spend the night there, and wake up the next morning to find themselves the prisoners of a posse out to hang them for murder and rustling. As you might suppose, eventually they sort things out and everything gets resolved in a big gunfight, as things usually do in a Lee Bond story. Bond moves things along well and was always excellent when it comes to the action scenes. This is the third very good story in a row in this issue.

I’ve written here before about how Elmer Kelton and I enjoyed talking about Western pulps whenever we’d get together. I think I may have been the only one of his friends who was a pulp fan. He told me several times that WILD WEST WEEKLY was his favorite pulp when he was a kid growing up on a ranch in West Texas, and Sonny Tabor was his favorite character. Paul S. Powers wrote the Sonny Tabor series under the pseudonym Ward M. Stevens. More than 130 novelettes and novellas between 1930 and 1943 is quite a run. Some of those stories were crossovers featuring Sonny Tabor meeting up with other series characters from WILD WEST WEEKLY, including Kid Wolf (also a Paul S. Powers creation), Pete Rice, and Billy West and the Circle J outfit.

But who was Sonny Tabor? He was a good-guy outlaw, falsely accused of some crime (I don’t know the details) and on the run from the law, blamed for every bit of outlawry that occurs any time he’s around, and sometimes even when he’s not. The novelette in this issue, “A Murder Brand for Sonny Tabor”, is actually the first one I’ve read. The youngest of three brothers who own a ranch together is gunned down, shot in the back, and the name Tabor is carved into his forehead. The dead man’s brothers and the local law blame Sonny, of course, and he has to uncover the real killer to clear his name of this charge, anyway, although he’ll still be wanted for dozens of others. This is a really well-written story and I found myself liking Sonny and rooting for him right away. I have quite a few more issues with Sonny Tabor stories in them and I’m glad of that because I really enjoyed this one.

I was familiar with Allan R. Bosworth as the author of several excellent Western novels, but I’ve discovered in recent years that he also wrote scores of stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY under house-names, as well as contributing to the magazine under his own name. He used it on his long-running series about freight wagon driver Shorty Masters and his sidekick Willie Wetherbee, also known as the gunfightin’ Sonora Kid. In “A Hangin’ on Live Oak Creek”, all Shorty and Willie want to do is run a trotline and catch themselves a mess of catfish for fryin’ up. Instead, they find a fella who’s been lynched, but luckily they come across him before he’s choked to death. Rescuing him puts our heroes smack-dab in the middle of a fight between ranchers and rustlers. There’s a nice twist in this one. I saw it coming, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying. Also, I like the way Shorty names the mules in his team after classical music composers. That’s a nice touch I wasn’t expecting. Another really good story.

One of WILD WEST WEEKLY’s specialties was the series of linked novellas that could then be combined and published as a fix-up novel. Walker A. Tompkins was the master of this format, writing many of them for the pulp. His story in this issue published under the house-name Philip F. Deere, “Death Rides Tombstone Trail”, is the third of six to feature a Wyoming cowboy named Lon Cole who is in Texas working as a trail boss and also getting mixed up in various adventures. In this one, he’s between trail drives and takes a job as a special guard for a stagecoach carrying a shipment of gold. Of course, the stagecoach is held up. Lon is grazed by an outlaw bullet and knocked out so they think he’s dead and ride off leaving him there. He goes after the varmints, of course, and discovers they’re a gang known as the Secret Six and are led by a mysterious mastermind known as The Chief. This is nothing we haven’t all seen before, but Tompkins is good at it. Even though the story has a beginning, middle, and end, it’s weakened slightly by being part of a bigger whole, but I had a good time reading it anyway. The six Lon Cole stories were combined into the novel THUNDERGUST TRAIL, published under Tompkins' real name by Phoenix Press in 1942. I own a copy of that book but haven't read it. When I get around to it, I'll have already read a chunk out of the middle of it, but I don't think that'll bother me too much.

Overall, this is one of the best Western pulps I’ve read in a long time. Every story in this issue is very good to excellent, and several of them really make me want to read more about the characters. If you’ve never read an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY, it would make a good introduction to the magazine, I think. If you’re a long-time fan like me, it’s well worth downloading and reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, April 1950

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Street & Smith's Top-Notch, December 1932

TOP-NOTCH, despite its name, definitely played second-fiddle to ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, BLUE BOOK, and SHORT STORIES when it comes to adventure pulps, but even so, it published some good fiction. I like the title "Fandango Island", Fred MacIsaac was a dependable author, and John Coughlin's cover illustrating the story is pretty good. Also in this issue are stories by Leslie McFarlane (ghost of the Hardy Boys!), Galen C. Colin, Lee Bond with a Western novelette under the house-name Tex Bradley, Kenneth Gilbert, Tom J. Hopkins, Ben Conlon with a serial installment under the house-name Ralph Boston, and a Zip Sawyer story by Reginald Barker writing as Vance Richardson (I have no idea who Zip Sawyer was; not a bad pulp character name, though). That's a solid enough line-up I suspect this was an entertaining issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, February 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a good Sam Cherry cover as usual for this era.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “Panhandle Freight”, is an interesting one for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, though, it’s a good solid story that finds Hatfield getting mixed up in a war between two freighting companies in the Texas Panhandle. Settling that trouble isn’t actually his assignment, as it usually is when he wades into a case. Instead, he’s on the trail of an outlaw he’s followed across Texas, and that hardcase has gone to work for the villainous freight line owner who plans to wipe out his competition. That’s what draws Hatfield into the trouble, and when he finds out a young woman has been kidnapped, he’s not going to stop until he puts things right. There’s no mystery in this one about who the main bad guy is—the reader knows right away. But that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment as we get a shootout at a waterhole, assorted bushwhackings and fistfights, a big fire, a stagecoach holdup, and a final showdown in which Hatfield and a young freighter who serves as sort of a proxy hero take on the whole gang. It’s traditional stuff, but done very well.

For a long time, this novel was attributed to D.B. Newton. I forget why Newton’s name was attached to it, possibly because of payment records from the August Lenniger Literary Agency. Newton is listed as the author of four Hatfield novels in the Fictionmags Index, including this one. But the manuscript of it is known to be in the collection of Tompkins’ papers at the University of California-Santa Barbara, so it seems pretty safe to say that he wrote it. Having read it now, I’m even more confident of Tompkins’ authorship. It reads just like his work with plenty of well-done action scenes and an abundance of hyphenated words, his most distinctive stylistic tag. Establishing that it is Tompkins’ work and not Newton’s is one of the reasons I find it interesting.

The other is that I was reading along in it and suddenly Anita Robertson shows up! Anita Robertson, for those of you not familiar with her, is a beautiful young woman who lives in Austin with her teenage brother Buck. She was added to the series in the mid-Forties presumably in response to the numerous letters to the editor asking that “Jackson Cole” give Hatfield a steady girlfriend. Anita and Buck appear in a dozen or so novels written by Tom Curry. Usually, Anita is in the story only very briefly, just there long enough for a quick kiss and a paragraph about how Hatfield can’t marry her until he gives up his dangerous work as a Ranger. Then Buck tags along with Hatfield as a sidekick on his latest case. The readers apparently didn’t like them, although the editors printed a few letters in support of them, but they vanished after a few years and nobody seemed to mind.

I’d read that Tom Curry was the only Hatfield author to use the characters, except for one appearance in a story by D.B. Newton. This must be the story, except it’s not by Newton. And while Buck is mentioned, he doesn’t appear. Surprisingly, Anita actually has something to do. She teams up with Hatfield to help him break the case open, and—this really surprised me—I liked her! Tompkins handles the character much better and she’s more believable. It’s kind of a shame she didn’t appear in more of the Hatfield novels by Tompkins, but getting rid of Buck is an acceptable trade-off.

This issue of TEXAS RANGERS was on the stands in January 1952 (the cover dates on pulps were off-sale dates), but it has a Christmas story in it, “Double Dick Follows a Star” by Lee Priestly, who was really Opal Shore Priestly. It’s the third in a series of four stories about a colorful old prospector named Double Dick Richards. I read another in the series a while back and found it readable and mildly amusing. I found this one to be neither of those things. I bailed after a page or so. Probably more to do with my mood than the story itself, although I wouldn’t swear to that.

“Dead Man’s Boots” is a novelette also by Walker A. Tompkins, but it has his name on it, and reading it so soon after “Panhandle Freight” just convinced me that Tompkins did author that Hatfield novel. The styles are identical. The novelette is a good one using the “outlaw masquerades as a lawman” plot. In this case, escaped convict Rand Weston, sent to Yuma Prison for a murder he didn’t commit, winds up assuming the identity of a murdered range detective who was supposed to investigate the murder of a beautiful young woman’s rancher father. That’s a lot of murders there, but Tompkins untangles things with his usual skill. This one starts off especially well but eventually feels a little rushed. It probably would have worked better at novella length. But it’s still a very enjoyable yarn and well worth reading.

“Fiddle and Fight” by Cy Kees is another humorous story, this time about a fiddling contest. The Devil does not show up, which is kind of a shame because it might have made this one better. This is another story I didn’t like and didn’t finish. Man, I really must have been in a grumpy mood when I read this issue!

On the other hand, I thought “Haggerty’s Valley” by Francis H. Ames was pretty good. Ames published about 80 stories in various Western pulps in the decade between the late Forties and the late Fifties. If I’ve ever read anything by him before, I don’t remember it. This one uses the old amnesia plot, as our protagonist wakes up wounded and not knowing who he is, being tended to by a beautiful girl who tells him he’s a deputy and has to rescue her from a gang of vicious outlaws who are after her. I kept waiting for one more twist in this story that never materialized, but it's well-written, moves along nicely, and had plenty of action.

You know anything by Clifton Adams will be well-written. “The First of May”, his short story in this issue, certainly is. It’s about a young man who wants to avenge the death of his brother, but he has to wait for his twenty-first birthday to do so because of a promise he made. This is more of a psychological Western than anything else, and because of that I found it a little unsatisfying overall. I don’t think it’s one of Adams’ better stories, but it might hit the target for other readers.

The issue wraps up with Lee Bond’s “Long Sam Pays a Visit”, and it’s a momentous entry in the long-running series that debuted in the very first issue of TEXAS RANGERS along with the Jim Hatfield novels. This is the final Long Sam Littlejohn story. Appropriately, it finds the heroic outlaw returning to the small settlement in the Piney Woods of East Texas where he grew up. The visit doesn’t go as planned, though, because Sam has to deal with an old acquaintance who has turned into a vicious owlhoot. This is a good story with plenty of drama and action and a nice plot twist near the end. Long Sam’s constant nemesis, Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry is mentioned but doesn’t appear, for a change. While it isn’t exactly a series finale as we think of them now, this story does end with at least a hint that life may be about to change for the better for Long Sam Littlejohn. I’ve been reading these stories for so long that Sam seems like an old friend now, so I hope things worked out for him. And I’m glad there are still plenty of earlier stories in the series that I haven’t read yet.

Despite the fact that I didn’t finish a couple of the stories and the one by Clifton Adams was slightly disappointing, I think that overall this is a pretty issue of TEXAS RANGERS. The Hatfield novel and the novelette by Tompkins are both very entertaining, the Long Sam yarn is one of the better ones in the series, and the Ames story was a pleasant surprise since I didn’t know what to expect from that one. I’m also happy to have confirmed that the Hatfield story is by Tompkins. If you happen to have a copy of this one, it’s well worth reading, and who knows, you might enjoy those humorous yarns more than I did.

Review: Perdition: Four Navajo Tom Raine Stories - Jackson Cole (C. William Harrison, Lee Bond?)

I’ve enjoyed all the Navajo Tom Raine stories I’ve read in the pulp EXCITING WESTERN and have written about several of them in various posts. But it occurs to me that many of you may not own any issues of EXCITING WESTERN. However, you can still read four of the Navajo Raine novelettes in an e-book collection entitled PERDITION that’s available on Amazon. I had already read one of them, so I decided to check out the others.

This collection leads off with “Boothill Beller Box”, the story I’d read before. Here’s what I said a few weeks ago when I posted about the October 1944 issue it’s in.

“The novelette “Boothill Beller Box” is a notable one. It’s part of a long series starring Arizona Ranger “Navajo” Tom Raine, and this story features Raine teaming up with Wayne Morgan, the Masked Rider, and Morgan’s sidekick, the Yaqui Indian Blue Hawk. As far as I know, this is one of only two such crossover stories between Thrilling Group Western characters. Steve Reese from RANGE RIDERS WESTERN appears in an earlier Navajo Raine story, “Rawhide Ranger”, in the April 1944 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The title “Boothill Beller Box” refers to a telephone line being strung from a cowtown to a nearby logging camp. This is a loggers vs. cattlemen story in which Wayne Morgan is framed for murder. Just like in 1960s Marvel Comics, the two heroes meet and fight at first before realizing they’re on the same side, after which they team up to defeat the bad guy. The author of this one packs quite a bit into it and it’s a really good yarn. Unfortunately, a proofreading and/or typesetting error almost ruins the story by completely invalidating the big twist in the plot. I salvaged it by editing it in my head back to what it should have been.”

I went on to speculate about who actually wrote this story under the house-name Jackson Cole. My guess of Chuck Martin turned out to be wrong. The actual author is C. William Harrison, a dependable and prolific pulpster who also wrote paperbacks under his own name and as Coe Williams and Will Hickok. I wasn’t surprised to find out he wrote this novelette because I almost always enjoy his work. Also, the person who put this e-book together fixed the editing mistake from the original pulp version, so if this is the only one you read, you’ll never know that glitch was there.

Next up is “Ride Your Hunch, Ranger” from the May 1950 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. A notorious outlaw and gunfighter has sent word that he’s going to give up his guns and turn himself in to a local sheriff. Raine is on hand when that unexpected development occurs, but not surprisingly, there’s more to the plot that than and everything leads to a big showdown between the Arizona Ranger and a gang of killers. This story is by a different author, and once again I’m going to make a guess who was behind the Jackson Cole name: Lee Bond. This story has several similarities to Bond’s style in his long-running Long Sam Littlejohn series in TEXAS RANGERS. The characters spend a lot of time explaining the plot to each other so the reader can follow along, and during those conversations they almost always address each other by name. The story’s climax, with Raine facing off in a shootout against several men, is also reminiscent of the Long Sam stories. Bond has been identified as the author of the first nine Navajo Raine stories, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to believe he came back for some of the later ones, as well. But, again, this is just an educated guess and could be wrong.

“Passport to Perdition”, from the February 1945 issue, is another one that’s been attributed to C. William Harrison. When I saw that title, my first thought was that maybe Bennie Gardner wrote it. Gardner, best known under his pseudonym Gunnison Steele, wrote hundreds of stories and novels for the Western pulps, among them a Rio Kid novel called “Passport to Perdition” (THE RIO KID WESTERN, August 1948). But maybe this was just a case of two authors coming up with the same admittedly catchy title. This story opens with Raine being on hand for the ghost town showdown between a wealthy mine owner and an outlaw gang led by the mine owner’s former partner, who turned bad after his partner cheated him out of his share of the bonanza. The resulting gun battle would be the climax in many pulp Western stories. In this one it takes place early on and leads to an unexpected aftermath. Harrison is really at the top of his game in this one: vivid, evocative prose, great action, and genuine moral complexity in the characters, including Navajo Raine. This is easily the best story from this series that I’ve read so far.

This collection concludes with “Take a Rest, Ranger”, from the July 1949 issue. Raine is on his way to the town of Wagon Gap to take on a new assignment, but he doesn’t know the details. He’s supposed to collect a letter from his boss, Captain Burt Mossman, when he gets there that will tell him what to do. But before he can do that, he’s ambushed and finds himself mixed up in a dangerous scheme that involves the murder of a sheriff. Of course, he gets that sorted out and finally finds out what his new orders are, and they’re not what he expected at all. I think this one is by Lee Bond, although I’m not nearly as sure of that attribution as I was with the earlier “Ride Your Hunch, Ranger”. The big shootout at the end between Raine and several foes certainly smacks of Bond’s work, but that’s not definitive. I’m going to have to let this one go with a guess and nothing more.

I enjoyed this collection quite a bit. The two stories by Harrison are clearly superior, and I’m definitely going to seek out more of his contributions to the series. But they’re all entertaining and have increased my fondness for Navajo Tom Raine’s adventures. If you want a good sampling of Western pulp action, I give PERDITION a high recommendation.

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: Texas Rangers, July 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by Sam Cherry and illustrates, although not with complete accuracy, a scene from the Jim Hatfield novel featured in this issue.

The last Hatfield novel by A. Leslie Scott that I read, “The Wasteland Empire”, was a mining story, with barely a mention of ranches and cattle. The one in this issue, “The Spoilers’ Trail”, is also a little unusual because it’s a railroad yarn through and through. Scott put his mining experience to good use in the previous tale, and the time he spent as a railroader gives this one an undeniable air of authenticity.

In “The Spoilers’ Trail”, Jim Hatfield, ace of the Texas Rangers, is sent in to discover who’s behind the sabotage and outright attacks plaguing the construction of a railroad line through West Texas. The C&P Railroad is run by an old friend of Hatfield’s, James G. “Jaggers” Dunn, who appears in numerous stories by Scott, sometimes as the protagonist of stories published in RAILROAD STORIES, often as a supporting character in Jim Hatfield novels. Dunn doesn’t show up until late in this one, but he’s the reason Hatfield is on the case to start with. Hatfield starts out working undercover as a railroad guard but winds up bossing most of the construction project, since in addition to being a Ranger he’s also an expert engineer.

There’s a subgenre of pulp adventure stories centered around construction projects, and this one actually fits more in that category than it does as a Western, although there are some ambushes and shootouts. Much of the plot is concerned with engineering problems, and that culminates in a long, suspenseful scene in which Hatfield and some of the workers battle to save a partially completed bridge during a flood. At one point, Hatfield and some companions are trapped underground by a cave-in (never go to the opera with Ellery Queen, or into a mine or a railroad tunnel with Jim Hatfield) and saves the day with an unusual and dramatic way of breaking out.

Scott is in top form in “The Spoilers’ Trail” even though it’s not very representative of the Hatfield series as a whole. It’s a fast-paced yarn with an interesting background, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first of three back-up short stories in this issue is “A Badman’s Dog” by Dupree Poe. A vicious outlaw murders the lawman who discovers his hideout, but he adopts a puppy that the sheriff had with him at the time of the killing. This isn’t the heart-warming tale you might expect but rather a story of justice and retribution. It also seems to be lacking a plot twist that might have made it more effective. Even so, it’s a fairly entertaining story, and I’ll venture far enough into spoiler territory to say that the dog does not die.

“The Return of Dave Kilbane” is by Walt Morey, an author I don’t recall reading before. Something about his style was a little off-putting to me at first, but I got used to it and wound up enjoying this tale of a young ex-convict returning to his hometown and his lawman father, just in time to help back his dad’s play in a showdown with three killers. The question is, will he, since his father is the one who sent him to prison? It’s an interesting moral dilemma solved by some well-done action. This isn’t a good enough story to make me run out and look for more by the author, but I liked it well enough.

I’ve been a fan of Lee Bond’s Long Sam Littlejohn stories for more than thirty years now. The one in this issue, “Long Sam Jumps the Devil”, finds the good-guy outlaw sticking his nose into someone else’s trouble, as usual, and winding up in a run-in with Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, the dogged lawman who is constantly pursuing Long Sam. In this case, Long Sam battles a notorious outlaw called El Diabolo Blanco, who dresses all in white, including a hood that conceals his identity, and saves the ranch belonging to an old friend. It occurred to me while reading this story that in some ways, the Long Sam Littlejohn series isn’t very well-written. The plots are extremely formulaic, and the characters have a habit of standing around and discussing things they already know, just so the reader will be filled in on what’s going on. Those flaws aside, though, I still really like this series and I’ve never read one that I didn’t enjoy. Long Sam is a great character, and Bond has a sure hand with the action scenes. Every time I read one, I’m tempted to write a Long Sam Littlejohn story of my own. Maybe one of these days.

Overall, this is another very solid issue of TEXAS RANGERS, and I’m glad I took it down from the shelf to read it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, May 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by the very prolific Sam Cherry and is certainly quite dramatic. We know Jim Hatfield’s horse Goldy is all right, but even so, that’s quite a spill he’s taking.

The Hatfield novel in this issue is “The Wasteland Empire”, written by series creator Leslie Scott writing under the house-name Jackson Cole. It’s strictly a mining boomtown yarn. There are mentions of some cattle ranches in the area but nary a sign of any rustlers, which is a little unusual for a Scott story. Hatfield—and Scott—get to put their mining backgrounds to good use in this one, as a gold strike attracts trouble to the West Texas boomtown of Gravel Bank, and Hatfield is sent in undercover to find out who’s behind the outlawry and put a stop to it.

The identity of the mastermind is pretty obvious and Hatfield figures out who it is fairly early on, but he has to round up enough proof to take action. Along the way, there are several shootouts and ambushes and Hatfield is trapped underground and almost killed not once but twice before he brings the head varmint to justice.

As always in a Scott novel, there are vivid descriptions and over-the-top action scenes, but the plot seems a bit thinner than usual. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “The Wasteland Empire” was phoned in, but it does have a certain workman-like air about it. Still entertaining, of course. I don’t think Scott was capable of writing a story that’s not fun to read. But it’s not in the top rank of his Hatfield novels.

There are only two back-up stories in this issue of TEXAS RANGERS. The first, “Empty Holsters”, is by-lined Sam Brant, which was a frequently used house name in Thrilling Group Western pulps. I can’t even make a guess who wrote this one. There’s nothing distinctive about the style. The plot concerns a veteran lawman who has to solve a bank robbery in which his young deputy is implicated. Nothing special by any means, but it's well-written enough that I found it enjoyable reading.

The Long Sam Littlejohn series by Lee Bond was the longest-running back-up series in TEXAS RANGERS, more than 50 stories from 1936 to 1952. I’ve read a lot of them and enjoyed every one. These yarns about a good-guy outlaw pursued by a stubborn lawman and getting into one fracas after another are very formulaic, but it’s a formula I like. In this issue’s story, “Long Sam Flies a Flag”, he gets mixed up in a border dispute and a land grab centered around the Rio Grande changing course. There’s just enough action and plot to make a fine short story.

While this isn’t an outstanding issue of TEXAS RANGERS, it’s a good one, with all three stories providing enjoyable reading, and if you have a copy, it’s worth taking it down from the shelf and giving it a try.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, June 1945

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat beat-up copy in the scan, with a rather whimsical cover by the incredibly prolific Sam Cherry.

The lead feature in EXCITING WESTERN for most of its run was the Tombstone and Speedy series by one of my favorite Western authors, W.C. Tuttle. Like Tuttle’s justly more famous Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens, Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith are range detectives working for the Cattleman’s Association. They’re generally thought of as being pretty dumb and usually solve their cases through pure luck, with considerable snappy banter and some slapstick humor along the way. From time to time, though, Tuttle drops hints that the two of them aren’t nearly as dumb as they act. In fact, in this issue’s novelette, “Gunsmoke in Oro Rojo”, they unravel a fairly complicated mystery involving rustled beef and high-graded ore and seem to be fully aware of what they’re doing as they “bumble” their way to a solution and justice for the bad guys. This is a very good entry in a consistently entertaining series.

The Navajo Tom Raine, Arizona Ranger series ran in EXCITING WESTERN for several dozen stories, always by-lined with the house name Jackson Cole except for one story published under the name C. William Harrison, the real name of an author who may well have written some of the other stories, too. But prolific Western pulpster Lee Bond has also been linked to the series. “Indian Killer”, the Navajo Tom Raine story in this issue, reads to me like it might be Bond’s work. Raine, a white man raised by the Navajo after his lawman father was murdered, is sent to quell an uprising by the Papago tribe, which is being blamed for a series of stagecoach and freight wagon holdups. Raine quickly figures out that the Indians are being framed and uncovers the real culprit. The blurb on the first page of the story gives this away, so it’s not much of a spoiler. I think most Western pulp readers would know what was going on anyway. Despite the very predictable plot, Raine is an appealing protagonist and the writing is smooth and fast-paced, leading to a satisfactory conclusion. I’ve never read a Navajo Raine story that was great, but I’ve never read one that failed to entertain me, either.

Writer/editor T.W. Ford was another very prolific pulpster, mostly in the Western and sports pulps. I’ve found his work to be inconsistent but generally pretty good. His novelette “Lead for a Donovan” in this issue is a Romeo and Juliet yarn, with a young couple from two feuding families running off to get married and the lengths to which the patriarchs of those families will go to prevent the wedding. Everything plays out about like you’d expect, but there’s plenty of action along the way and I found this to be a very enjoyable story.

In something of a rarity for a Western pulp, the cover painting from this issue is redone as a black and white interior illustration for the short story “Lynching Lawman” by an author I’m not familiar with, Bud Wilks. He published only eight stories, five in 1945 and three in 1948, all in Thrilling Group Western pulps. I have a hunch that was the author’s real name, but who knows? Might have been a house name. “Lynching Lawman” is a short but effective tale of two lawmen who have a falling out, and then one tries to frame the other for horse stealing and murder. I thought it was pretty good. Another unusual aspect is that the cover and interior illo accurately illustrate a scene from the story, meaning that artist Sam Cherry either read it or (more likely) the editor told him what to paint.

Another long-running series in the pages of EXCITING WESTERN featured the adventures of Alamo Paige, Pony Express rider. These were published under the house name Reeve Walker. Walker A. Tompkins, Charles N. Heckelmann, and Chuck Martin have all been linked to this series, and other authors may have contributed to it as well. I don’t know who wrote “Ten Days to California”, the Alamo Paige story in this issue, but it’s a good one in which Paige pursues a wanted outlaw and killer who tries to escape justice by riding the Pony Express route and stealing fresh mounts at each way station. That’s really all there is to the plot, but the story moves right along and has some nice action scenes.

That wraps it up for the June 1945 issue of this pulp, and it’s a really solid one with the five stories ranging from good to excellent. If you have this issue of EXCITING WESTERN and haven’t read it, I think it’s well worth pulling down from the shelf.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, March 1936

Although THRILLING RANCH STORIES was considered to be a Western romance pulp, the covers often featured gun-blazing action like this one, which I think may be by Richard Lyon. The authors inside are Western pulp action aces, too: Leslie Scott (as A. Leslie), Stephen Payne, Lee Bond, Syl MacDowell, Bruce Douglas, Eugene A. Clancy, and house-name Jackson Cole, who could be any of those guys (but if I had to bet, I'd say in this case it was probably Lee Bond, for some reason). I've never read an issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES. I'm not sure I own any. I need to check on that.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, May 26, 1934

This is a dandy, very dynamic cover by Walter Baumhofer. The action seems to almost leap off the page, to use a cliché that happens to be accurate in this case. This issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY features the usual assortment of series and stand-alone stories, heavy on the series. In this case, The Whistlin' Kid by Emery Jackson (J. Allan Dunn), Sonny Tabor by Ward M. Stevens (Paul S. Powers), Shorty Master by Allan R. Bosworth, Hungry and Rusty by Samuel H. Nickels, and the Bar U Twins by Charles E. Barnes. The stand-alones are by Lee Bond, George C. Henderson, and Kent Bennett (who was actually Samuel H. Nickels, his second story in this issue).

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, August 1934

I don't normally associate beautiful women with Walter Baumhofer's pulp covers, like I do with, say, Allen Anderson or Earle Bergey, but the blonde on this issue of PETE RICE MAGAZINE proves that he could paint one when he wanted to. The Pete Rice series is an odd one. Created by Street & Smith to try to recreate the success of DOC SAVAGE, it featured the heroic Pete Rice as an Arizona sheriff with a group of colorful assistants. The pulp ran for 32 issues and almost three years, with most of the novels being written by Ben Conlon under the house-name Austin Gridley. Then, after Pete's own magazine was cancelled, he appeared in 20 more adventures in WILD WEST WEEKLY, still under the Gridley name but written by Conlon, Laurence Donovan, Lee Bond, Paul S. Powers, and Ronald Oliphant. Despite all that material, few, if any, of the Pete Rice stories have ever been reprinted. I read one issue of the pulp many years ago with a Conlon novel in it, and I recall not liking it much. Even so, I'd be interested in reading more of them. Sometimes my first impression of a series doesn't hold up. At any rate, I like this Baumhofer cover, and the other authors in this issue are Harold A. Davis (who would go on to ghost some of the Doc Savage novels), Wilfred McCormick (whose juvenile sports novels were favorites of mine when I was a kid), and George Allan Moffett, who was really prolific pulpster Edwin V. Burkholder.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, April 1933

I really like this cover by Karl Godwin. It fairly shouts "Adventure!" at a potential reader. TOP-NOTCH is a pulp you don't hear much about anymore, but it had some good stories, most notably several by Robert E. Howard and the Ozar the Aztec series by Walker A. Tompkins writing as Valentine Wood. This issue has an Ozar story in it, as well as a novella by the always dependable J. Allan Dunn, a Western by Lee Bond writing as Tex Bradley, and several stories by authors I'm not familiar with: F.N. Litten, James Edward Hungerford, Paul H. Salomon, Erik W. Modean, and Alan Grey Mayne. They must have been decent writers to sell to Street & Smith.

Saturday Morning Bonus Pulp: Wild West Weekly, July 4, 1931

This issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY may not have a patriotic cover, but it is dated July 4, 1931. The art is by H.W. Reusswig, and I think it's a pretty good cover. As usual for WILD WEST WEEKLY, the contents lean heavily toward series stories and house names. Lee Bond, William F. Bragg, Clee Woods, and Samuel H. Nickels have stories under the own names. There's a Circle J story by Norman Hay writing as Cleve Endicott, a Whistlin' Kid story by Guy L. Maynard writing as Emery Jackson, and entries in other series I'm not familiar with by Galen C. Colin, Reginald C. Barker, and Houston Irvine. (I'm not familiar with Barker and Irvine, either.) But overall, it looks like an entertaining issue and a good way to pass the time in the summer of 1931, if you had an extra dime and nickel in your pocket. Which a lot of people didn't in those days. But I'm glad the pulps were able to survive.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1948

Another Old West poker game gone bad in this excellent cover by Sam Cherry! EXCITING WESTERN was a consistently good Western pulp with several different series running regularly in its pages. In this issue there's a Tombstone and Speedy yarn by the great W.C. Tuttle, plus a Navajo Tom Raine, Arizona Ranger story by house-name Jackson Cole. Also on hand are top-notch pulpsters Wayne D. Overholser, Lee Bond, Gladwell Richardson, Ben Frank, and another house-name, Reeve Walker.