Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Summer 1945

I don't own this issue of FRONTIER STORIES, so I haven't read it. But it has a dramatic cover by Richard Case and a fine group of writers inside. The lead story by Les Savage Jr., "The Lone Star Camel Corps", may have been cannibalized for Savage for his novel ONCE A FIGHTER. It was reprinted in one of the Les Savage Jr. collections packaged by Jon Tuska and I have a copy of that book on order. I'm looking forward to reading the story. Also on hand in this issue of FRONTIER STORIES are William Heuman, Tom W. Blackburn, William R. Cox, R.S. Lerch, Fairfax Downey, and the lesser-known Ben T. Young and Raymond L. Hill. Lots of good reading there, I have no doubt about that.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Mysteries, January 1941

I've never read an issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES and don't own any, but I should probably try to remedy that because it looks like my kind of pulp! The covers make it look like a cross between a regular detective pulp and a Weird Menace pulp. I don't know who did the art on this one, but it's certainly eye-catching. And the authors inside are equally intriguing: Norvell Page, Henry Kuttner, Russell Gray (who was really Bruno Fischer), Stewart Sterling, and R.S. Lerch. That's a fine group.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, October 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The Fictionmags Index attributes the cover to Sam Cherry, but I wonder if it might be by Robert Stanley, based on the facial features and the distinctively large hands. As always when it comes to art, I could be wrong and welcome any opinions on who painted this cover.

One of the longest-running series in EXCITING WESTERN was the Tombstone and Speedy series by one of my favorite authors, W.C. Tuttle. Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith are a couple of range detectives working for the Cattleman’s Association, but their boss insists they have no detective skills and solve their cases through pure luck. Tombstone and Speedy seem to share that opinion, but I don’t know. They usually manage to do some actual detective work in these humorous, action-packed yarns. “Trouble Trailers in Tomahawk” finds the duo traveling to Tomahawk City to find a rich Easterner’s son who wants to become a rancher, while at the same time assisting an old friend of their boss who needs some help. Not surprisingly at all, the two cases turn out to be connected, and soon the bodies are dropping as three murders take place not long after Tombstone and Speedy arrive in town. Of course, they eventually untangle everything and bring the villains to justice. The plot in this one seems a little weaker to me than some, but it’s still a highly entertaining novelette. I always get a kick out of Tombstone and Speedy’s antics and their non-stop banter.

The longest-running (almost 50 stories) series in this pulp stars Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine, the son of a famous lawman who was raised by the Navajo after his father was killed during a range war. In “Navajo Turns Firebug”, Raine is sent to corral a vengeance-seeking young outlaw who’s been burning down ranch houses. Of course, not everything turns out to be as it appears at first. We know that two authors, Lee Bond and C. William Harrison, wrote Navajo Raine stories that were published under the house-name Jackson Cole, and other authors may have contributed to the series as well. I’m pretty sure this story isn’t the work of Harrison, whose plots and characters were usually a bit more complex. It might be by Lee Bond, but my hunch is that it’s by some as yet unidentified pulpster.

“A Meal For a Rodent” is a short-short by Allan K. Echols about an encounter between a homesteader and a bank robber on the run from the law. Very predictable for the most part, but it’s well-written and has a bit of a twist at the end.

Another long-running series in EXCITING WESTERN featured Pony Express rider Alamo Paige. The by-line is Reeve Walker, a house-name used by Charles N. Heckelmann, Tom Curry, and no doubt numerous other Western pulpsters. I don’t think any of the Alamo Paige stories have been attributed to the actual author. The story in this issue, “Stage Line to Hell”, finds Alamo helping out a friend who quit riding for the Pony Express because of an injury and started a stage line instead. When he’s hurt in a robbery, Alamo steps in to round up the thieves. Alamo Paige is a likable protagonist and this yarn is decently plotted and has some nice action. A worthwhile entry in the series.

I don’t know anything about Jack Gleoman except that he published a few stories in the Western and detective pulps. His short-short in this issue, “A Waddy Counts Days”, is about a cowboy accused of a murder he didn’t commit. It features as an illustration a black-and-white version of the cover art, which actually depicts a scene in the story. This is an okay but very minor story, and I’m not sure why it warranted a piece of cover art. Unless . . . Jack Gleoman was actually the pseudonym of an editor at the Thrilling Group (since all his published stories appear in Thrilling Group pulps) and he wrote the story to fit the cover that was already scheduled to be used on this issue when the contents came up a few pages short. That seems like a plausible explanation, but it’s pure speculation on my part, of course.

The issue wraps up with “Vanishing Trails”, a novelette by R.S. Lerch, an author I associate more with the Fiction House pulps even though he actually wrote for a wide variety of publishers in several different genres. This story, set in Montana during a snowstorm, has a bit of a Northern feel to it, although its plot is pure Western pulp. U.S. Marshal Crack Forsythe (a great name) trails a bandit from Wyoming to Montana and finds himself in the middle of a deadly feud between two families. This is a well-written story with a lot of action. Lerch is pretty much forgotten these days, but I’ve enjoyed most of the stories I’ve read by him. Nothing special, maybe, but dependably entertaining.

Which is a pretty good description of this entire issue. All of the stories are enjoyable but have an air of forgettableness about them. Is forgettableness a word? If it’s not, it ought to be. This issue is worth reading for fans of the Tombstone and Speedy, Navajo Tom Raine, and Alamo Paige series, but if you don’t fall into that category, don’t rush to your shelves to look for it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North*West Romances, Fall 1945

I like posting snowy covers of Northern pulps during the summer when the weather is hot. This one is by the always-excellent George Gross. This issue of NORTH*WEST ROMANCES also has some fine authors in its pages, most notably Dan Cushman, Les Savage Jr., and William Heuman. Those three are enough to make any pulp issue worthwhile by themselves. Also on hand are R.S. Lerch, Kenneth P. Wood, Larry McLane, R.A. Emberg, Paul Selonke, and Michael Oblinger. I like listing the authors' names, even the ones I've never heard of, because every so often somebody will be searching on-line for mentions of a relative, and then they email that So-and-So was their grandfather or great-uncle or something, and they're excited to see the name in a post. That always makes me feel good.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, October 1942

Wanted posters show up a lot on Western pulp covers. Usually, the outlaw depicted on the poster is standing there either shooting or about to shoot. You can't really tell if the fellow on the cover of this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES is also the one on the reward dodger, but there's a good chance he is. There are stories by some fine Western pulpsters in this issue: Philip Ketchum, William Heuman, Thomas Thompson, and Frank Bonham. Other well-known authors in this one include Joe Austell Small, R.S. Lerch, John Wilstach (better known for his adventure yarns in ARGOSY and elsewhere), Carl G. Hodges (best remembered for his mystery stories and novels), and Edwin K. Sloat. Then there are the ones I'm not familiar with--P.J. Delanoye, Roy B. Angell, and W.W. Montgomery--and house names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit. I'm going to name the hero in a Western novel Lance Kermit one of these days. I'm sure this is a good issue since the Popular Publications Western pulps were consistently top-notch.

UPDATE: As Paul Herman points out in the comments, this hombre is wearing a lawman's star, so he's not the outlaw on the wanted poster. And since there's powdersmoke coming from the barrel of his gun, I reckon we can figure he just ventilated the owlhoot in question. Dadgum it, I don't know how I missed that! Thanks, Paul.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, June 1942

This is kind of an unusual issue of WESTERN ACES because it doesn't have a story by J. Edward Leithead in it. His yarns appeared in almost every issue of WESTERN ACES during the Forties, sometimes several in an issue under his real name and pseudonyms. It seemed that way, anyway, which is okay with me because I really like his work. But even though there's no Leithead, this issue does have a good cover by Norman Saunders and a lead story by one of my other favorite Western authors, Walker A. Tompkins. Also on hand are Tom J. Hopkins, Stephen Payne, Orlando Rigoni, R.S. Lerch, and a handful of lesser-known pulpsters. I've enjoyed every issue of WESTERN ACES I've ever read and I'm sure this one is entertaining, as well.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Mysteries, September 1940

You don't get much more lurid than this cover for STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES. I don't know who the artist is, but he's just crammed the action and menace into this one. Inside are stories by Emile C. Tepperman, Donald G. Cormack, R.S. Lerch, Raymond Whetstone (sounds like a pseudonym, but apparently his real name), and Donald Dale, who was really Mary Dale Buckner, one of the few female authors to write Weird Menace yarns. I don't see how the contents could live up to that cover, but you never know.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, January 1946

This issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE came up in the comments on last Sunday's pulp post, as did the one I'll be posting tomorrow. This cover is by Fiction House stalwart Allen Anderson, although I don't think it's a typical Anderson cover. Still a pretty good one, though. Inside are stories by William Hopson, Giles A. Lutz, Lee E. Wells, Curtis Bishop, R.S. Lerch, and lesser-known authors John C. Ropke, Harold R. Stoakes, and Walter Galli.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, December 27, 1941

You can't really tell this is a Christmas issue by looking at the cover art on this WILD WEST WEEKLY, but it says so right there: "A Thrilling Sonny Tabor Novel of Christmas by Ward M. Stevens". The story is actually called "Six-Gun Santa". Paul S. Powers, who wrote the Sonny Tabor series under the Stevens pseudonym, has a second Christmas story in this issue under his own name, called "Vigilante Christmas". Also on hand are stories by Norman A. Fox (writing as Clint McLeod), William R. Cox, Chuck Martin, Archie Joscelyn (writing as Andrew A. Griffin), R.S. Lerch, and a poem by S. Omar Barker. All that probably would be enough to get me in the Christmas spirit. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Spring 1944

Here's another good Mountie cover on this issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. I don't know who the artist is, but I know there are some fine authors with stories in this issue, with the biggest name probably being Dan Cushman. Two authors better known for Westerns rather than Northerns are also on hand, William Heuman and Archie Joscelyn, both of them writers I like quite a bit. Fiction House regular R.S. Lerch contributes a story, as well. Looks like a good issue of the leading Northern pulp.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novels and Short Stories, November 1949

WESTERN NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES was never considered one of the top Western pulps, but there were stories by good authors to be found there, plus the occasional good cover like this one. H.A. DeRosso has a story in this issue, as does veteran pulpster Paul Chadwick, writing as John Callahan. What little I've read by R.S. Lerch has been pretty good, and while I've never read anything by John Latham that I recall, he published several novels as Ace Doubles, so he must have been an entertaining writer.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double-Action Western, March 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. I don't know who did the cover art, but it goes pretty well with "The Californy Kid", the lead novel by Seven Anderton. Anderton was a prolific pulpster who is almost completely forgotten today. My friend Richard Moore is a fan of his work, but he's the only one I know. As far as I recall, I hadn't read anything by Anderton until now, but I thought "The Californy Kid" was a very good yarn. It's set in 1849, during the Gold Rush, and the title protagonist is a young, falsely accused outlaw who finds himself involved in a would-be uprising by the Californios, Mexican settlers who lived in California for generations before it was taken over by the United States. There's plenty of action and Anderton's writing is smooth and very effective. I definitely need to read more by him.

R.S. Lerch is even more forgotten than Seven Anderton. Between the mid-Twenties and 1953, he wrote a couple of hundred stories for the Western and detective pulps under his own name and the pseudonym L.R. Sherman (his real name was Roger Sherman Lerch), but only one novel that I can find any mention of, a Western called THE GUN-DEVILS that appears to have been published only as an Australian paperback. Whether that means Lerch was actually Australian, I have no idea. But I've read several of his stories now and enjoyed all of them. His novelette in this issue of DOUBLE-ACTION WESTERN, "Return to Hell", is about a town-taming marshal who just wants to settle down, marry his sweetheart, and become a rancher. But the girl won't marry him while he's still wearing a badge, and a range hog is moving into the area with a bunch of cattle and some hired guns. To support the cattle, he's going to have to take over some of the smaller ranches, and he'll do it with fire and lead if he has to. There's nothing original about this plot, but Lerch spins his yarn with enough skill to make it enjoyable reading. He was a solid second-tier, or maybe third-tier, writer who might have moved on to a good career as a paperbacker during the Fifties had he not passed away in 1953.

Lauran Paine was a prolific writer for the Western pulps but even more prolific as a novelist, authoring more than a thousand novels, many of them for British publisher Robert Hale under a multitude of pen-names. But even though I have maybe a dozen of his books on my shelves and numerous pulps with his stories in them, I'd never read anything by him until now. His short story in this issue, "Thunder River", is a standard range war yarn, with the small ranchers clashing with the range hog from back east over water rights, and while it's fairly well-written, I kept waiting for a twist that never came and didn't find the characters particularly engaging. I still need to read one of Paine's novels—I have friends who are fans of his work—but this story didn't impress me.

Nor did "Cattleman's Courage" by J.J. Mathews, an author I'm unfamiliar with. This is a cattlemen vs. sheepherders yarn, and while I'm more tolerant of stereotypical plots than just about anybody, they need something to engage my attention. I didn't find that here and wound up skimming this one.

Then there's "Emancipation of Crow Dog" by Lon Williams, a stand-alone by the author better known for his long-running series of supernatural Westerns featuring Deputy Lee Winters. This one has the unusual setting (for a Western pulp) of a Sioux Indian reservation in more modern times, late 19^th or early 20^th Century, I'd say. The reaction of a lot of modern readers would be to find it appallingly politically incorrect, and most of the phony "redskin" dialect is sort of cringe-inducing. However, the protagonist Crow Dog, who's doing his best to assimilate to the reservation way of life, is a pretty interesting character, and Williams sets up an intriguing conflict between the old ways and the new. Then, unfortunately, he does almost nothing with it, as the story limps to a very undramatic ending. A shame, because this could have been an excellent story.

There are also some assorted features and Old West history articles, but to be honest, I just skimmed through them, too. I read pulps for the fiction, that's all.

So to sum up, this issue of DOUBLE-ACTION WESTERN is definitely a mixed bag. The Seven Anderton story is excellent, and the one by R.S. Lerch is well worth reading. The stories by Lauran Paine and Lon Williams are readable but could have been better. The rest of the issue is forgettable. (The image is a photo of the actual copy I read. I wasn't able to scan the cover this time.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Six-Gun Western, June 1946

In the mid-to-late Forties, the Western pulps from Trojan Publications had a number of minimalist but effective covers like the one on this issue of SIX-GUN WESTERN. There are some fine writers in these pages, too, including Dan Cushman, Cliff Farrell, Giff Cheshire, Wayne D. Overholster, and R.S. Lerch. That's a solid line-up.