Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Giant Western, June 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat ragged copy in the scan. The covers aren’t in great shape, but the pages inside are really nice, just lightly tanned and very supple. I think the cover art is by Sam Cherry, but I’m not absolutely sure about that.

For a change, a story in a pulp billed as a novel actually is long enough to be considered one. “Nobody’s Neutral in Kansas” by Roe Richmond is about 40,000 words, I’m guessing, maybe even a little longer. It’s only sort of a Western, though, more of a historical yarn taking place in Kansas in the late 1850s and early 1860s and dealing with the violence there between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the lead-up to the Civil War. Rupe Maitland and his father and brother have come from the east and settled on a farm in Kansas, and they just want to be left alone instead of taking sides in the conflict. But then tragedy occurs, hostilities increase, and inevitably Rupe and his family and friends are drawn into the bloody clashes. Roe Richmond knew how to keep a story moving along briskly and his action scenes are excellent. The biggest problem I have with this story is how unrelentingly bleak and grim it is. Of course, given the subject matter, it couldn’t exactly be a light-hearted romp. Still, it makes for heavy reading. But worthwhile, I’d say. (As a bibliographic aside, there’s a story of the same title by Richmond in the December 1951 issue of REAL WESTERN STORIES, but it’s much shorter. I haven’t read it, so I have no idea if Richmond expanded it for this version in GIANT WESTERN or if he just liked the title and they’re completely different stories.)

I don’t recall reading much by Cliff Walter in the past. He was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps. His story “Montana Man” in this issue is about a colorful old mountain man and his encounter with some settlers. It’s written in a folksy, supposedly humorous style that fell completely flat with me. Didn’t like it at all and wound up skimming through it.

I’ve found Robert L. Trimnell’s work to be a little inconsistent, but when he’s on his game, his stories are really, really good. His novelette in this issue has a pretty generic title, “Gun For Hire”, so I was a tad bit leery of it, but it didn’t take me long to realize that this is a terrific yarn. Tough Texas cowboy Mike Morrow trail bosses a herd to Montana, and once it’s been delivered, the crew blows off some well-earned steam in a night of drinking and debauchery. Unfortunately for Mike, when he wakes up the next morning, he has more than a hangover to contend with. He’s been framed for murder, and he winds up in the middle of a war between two rustlers, one of whom happens to be a beautiful young woman with a fondness for wearing red silk shirts with nothing under them. (Yeah, it’s a little risqué for a Western pulp story in 1952.) Mike is blackmailed into working for the young woman, but mostly he wants to sort things out and keep her from getting into too much trouble. Trimnell tells the story in hardboiled prose that reminded me of 1950s Gold Medal crime novels even more than the Western Gold Medals. He even provides a small but effective twist in the big showdown at the end. This is one of the best Western pulp stories I’ve read in a while.

Giff Cheshire is yet another author who’s hit-or-miss with me. “Drivers’ Pass” in this issue centers around the conflict between a railroad spur line being built into a mining town and the freight outfit that hauls goods with mules and wagons. It’s an interesting, well-written story that suffers from a really rushed ending, but other than that, I liked it.

Inconsistency seems to be an unofficial theme of this issue. I’ve read plenty of very good novels and stories by William Hopson, but I’ve read some that were pretty bad, too. His story “The Blue Mule” wraps up the fiction in this issue. Which was it going to be? This story is narrated by the eight-year-old son of a horse trader and starts out like it’s going to be a humorous, Doc Swap sort of story. Then it gets more serious with the introduction of a bully and a new county attorney from the east. The plot meanders around as if Hopson couldn’t decide what he wanted to write about and comes to an inconclusive ending. I hate to say it because I like Hopson’s work more often than not, but despite the narrator’s engaging voice, this just isn’t much of a story and isn’t very good.

I believe this is the first issue of GIANT WESTERN I’ve ever read, and it’s very much a mixed bag. The Trimnell story is fantastic, the Richmond novel is very good if depressing, the Cheshire story is okay, and the other two stories I didn’t like at all. Don’t go running to your shelves to look for this one, but if you do have a copy, I highly suggest you check out Trimnell’s yarn.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, March 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know who did the cover art. Robert Stanley did a lot of covers for DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE during this era, but I feel like this one isn’t Stanley’s work. But as always when it comes to art, I could be wrong!

The lead novella, “Killers in the Canyon!”, is by John M. Cunningham, best remembered for writing the story on which the movie HIGH NOON is based. “The Tin Star” appeared in the December 6, 1947 issue of the slick COLLIER’S. As in that classic story, the protagonist of “Killers in the Canyon!” is also a lawman, but he’s not the stern, upright sort like Will Kane. No, he’s a reformed outlaw, and his old gang wants him to throw in with them again and help them loot some gold shipments. Our hero’s old flame, now married to one of his former partners in crime, wants him to turn crooked again, too, and she has some blackmail material to hold over his head and force him to do so. This is a fairly traditional plot, but it has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, Cunningham doesn’t do much with it except for scene after scene of people standing around talking. Yes, the prose is very slick and smooth, but I kept waiting for something to happen and it doesn’t until the last few pages of the story. Even then, the action is low-key and unsatisfying. Also, the title must have been slapped on by an editor at Popular Publications, because it has nothing to do with the story. I read all of this story and didn’t give up on it, but in the end it’s a clear miss for me.

Will C. Brown was the pseudonym of Clarence S. Boyles, the other famous writer from Cross Plains, Texas, and a classmate of Robert E. Howard although Boyles was a few years older and they weren’t in the same grade. Nor has his reputation and popularity endured nearly as long as Howard’s has, but even so, Boyles had a long and successful career as a Western pulpster and novelist under the Will C. Brown name. His story in this issue, “He’s Death on Nesters!”, announces its Texas origins right away with a reference to the Cap Rock, the escarpment that angles down across Texas and separates the state’s central region from its western one. In this yarn, the hard-nosed foreman of a big ranch confronts three nesters who have started a small spread on the edge of the big one, only to find that there’s more going on there than he expected. This story has a really nice voice to it, along with interesting characters and a well-done bit of action. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read by Boyles/Brown in the past, and this one is excellent.

Dee Linford was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps all through the Forties and early Fifties and published one novel, MAN WITHOUT A STAR, which was made into a well-regarded movie starring Kirk Douglas. I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie, which apparently wasn’t very faithful to the source material. A lot of people like the movie, but I didn’t care for it. But I digress . . . Linford’s novelette in this issue, “Sudden John’s Ghost Herd”, is a reprint originally titled “Railroads Are Hell on Cattlemen!” when it was published in the October 1940 issue of DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE. It’s part of a series Linford wrote about range detective Sudden John Irons. The plot is the well-used one about rustlers stealing cattle and blaming their crimes on the local Indians, but it’s well-written, has a great opening, some nice action, and a fine protagonist in Sudden John. I don’t think I’ve read anything else by Linford, but I enjoyed this one a lot and will be on the lookout for his work in the future. If you’d like to know more about him, there’s a great article on the Pulpflakes blog.

“Baptism of Fire” is a rather uninspired title for a gritty, well-written tale of the cavalry versus the Apaches written by Clifton Adams. The young officer in command of a patrol is looking for a fight with the Apaches because he wants to avenge the death of his older brother. Things don’t go exactly as planned. Adams was a fine writer, but he could be almost as bleak as H.A. DeRosso and Lewis B. Patten at times. This is a good story, but its downbeat ending meant that I admired it more than I actually liked it.

I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read by Robert L. Trimnell. His story in this issue, “Return of the Vargas”, is a modern-day Western and is narrated by an American veterinarian who is sent with a Mexican army escort into a former stronghold of Pancho Villa to vaccinate cattle against hoof and mouth disease. Old grudges lead to violence. This is certainly an oddball plot, but Trimnell was a good writer and things don’t turn out exactly as I expected, which is always a bonus.

Bennett Foster was a pretty big name as a Western author during the Thirties, Forties, and the first half of the Fifties. He wrote for the top pulps and also published quite a few stories in the slicks. His novelette in this issue, “One-Man Horse”, is a reprint from the March 26, 1938 issue of ARGOSY, where it was published under the title “Wedding Gift”. A young cowboy makes a horse trade with the father of the girl he’s in love with, and it has unexpected repercussions. This story is told in a smooth, folksy, entertaining style, heavy on the humor and romance, but Foster does get some action in, late in the proceedings. I don’t recall reading anything else by Foster, so I don’t know if this is typical of his work, but I enjoyed it enough I’d like to read more and find out. I own several of his novels. I ought to go ahead and read one.

That wraps up the fiction in this issue. My dislike of Cunningham’s novella, which takes up almost half of the page count, makes it difficult for me to rate it very highly, but on the other hand, the stories by Will C. Brown and Dee Linford are very good and the other stories are entertaining. So don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy, but if the opportunity arises, you might find it worth dipping into. And of course it’s always possible you might like Cunningham’s story a lot more than I did. I always want to be fair about these things.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, May 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know who did the cover art, but I’m not very impressed with it. I don’t guess they can all be by Norman Saunders or Robert Stanley or Sam Cherry, can they? Not that I could do any better, I hasten to add. I have no artistic ability whatsoever, so maybe I shouldn’t be complaining.

Anyway, this is the next to last issue of NEW WESTERN, a run that lasted twenty years. It’s also a pulp that was on the stands after I was born, although being less than a year old at the time, I doubt if I ever saw a copy back then. It leads off with a short story, something of a rarity since most pulps had a novella or novelette in the first position. “Blood Star for Satan” is by William Heuman, one of my favorite Western authors. The title doesn’t fit the story at all, and neither does the blurb that some editor at Popular Publications came up with. However, the story itself is a taut little tale about an inexperienced lawman having to deal with a trio of train robbers who ride into his town. Heuman has never disappointed me and he does a fine job with this suspenseful story.

Next is “Blast a Red Trail!” by Robert L. Trimnell, billed as a novelette on the Table of Contents but closer to novella length in my opinion. And it packs in enough plot that it could almost have been a novel. The story opens with the protagonist, Blaine Sandford, in jail, charged with murdering a man he hired to help him on his freight line. Sandford is innocent, of course, and the man who was killed had dropped some hints about having enemies back in the town where he came from, two hundred miles away. So when Sandford escapes, that’s where he heads, determined to dig up the secrets of the murdered man’s past and uncover the real killer.

He winds up in the middle of a war between a freight line operated by a beautiful young woman known as The Wench and some hired killers and corrupt businessmen working with the railroad that wants to extend into the area. If that’s not enough, there’s a lot of psychological drama going on behind the scenes and the sort of family secrets that often show up in the work of Ross Macdonald, Walt Coburn, and Max Brand. In fact, this offbeat story reminds me quite a bit of some of the stories by Max Brand (Frederick Faust).

“Blast a Red Trail!” took me completely by surprise. I’d read only one other story by Robert L. Trimnell in the past, as far as I recall, and it was a humorous Western I didn’t like very much. But this story is an absolutely terrific hardboiled Western yarn with fascinating characters and a terse, fast-moving style. Trimnell wrote about 120 stories in a pulp career that lasted only eight years from 1948 to 1956. After that, he wrote one historical novel published by Lion Books and a number of soft-core novels published by Beacon/Softcover Library under the pseudonym Brian Black, before turning out a Western series called The Loner in the Seventies. Those three novels were published under his real name by Manor Books and are expensive if you can find them. I don’t think I have any, but I’m going to check my shelves. And I’m certainly going to keep my eyes open for his name on Western pulp TOCs in the future. I want to read more by this guy.

“A Man Must Fight” is a short story by Roe Richmond, not one of my favorite Western authors but one who usually can depended on for a decent story. This one is very reminiscent of the movie HIGH NOON, with a lawman who is reluctant to seek help from the townspeople when a couple of outlaws show up intent on killing him. It’s set up as a moral dilemma story but is resolved pretty easily. Other than that, it’s okay but not very memorable.

“The Rider From Hell” is another title that must have been slapped on by an editor at Popular Publications, because it doesn’t fit J.L. Bouma’s story at all. This is another lawman story as a young deputy with new-fangled ideas about keeping the peace clashes with a hard-nosed old town-taming marshal of the “shoot ’em all and sort it out later” school. It’s a low-key tale without much action, and the drama comes more from the characters than from gunplay. It’s very well-written, and although this kind of story normally isn’t really in my wheelhouse, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Bouma is one of those authors who did mostly good work, published steadily for a long time, never achieved any real fame, and is mostly forgotten these days. He’s almost always worth reading, though.

Walt Coburn’s “The Death Dealer” is a long novelette that’s a reprint. It appeared originally in the July 1938 issue of DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE as “Signed On to Die”. That title makes a little more sense than “The Death Dealer”, although quite a bit of death is dealt in this yarn. As usual with Coburn’s work, there’s a ton of back-story and a plot that’s almost too complicated to follow and difficult to describe. What we have is a stalwart young cowboy from Montana who buys a spread in Arizona known as the Haunted Cave Ranch because, well, there’s a cave on it that may well be haunted. You see, a gang of outlaws used it as a hideout and there’s a rumor that a fortune in loot is hidden in it. There’s even supposed to be a map split up in a number of pieces that, if combined, will lead to the treasure. Throw in not two but three, count ’em, three feuding owlhoot families, a beautiful girl and her spunky twin brother, a crooked range detective, some false identities, and last-minute revelations from ’way out in left field, and you have a confusing but fast-moving, action-packed, and downright compelling tale . . . which accurately describes a lot of Coburn’s work. This one is goofy as all get-out, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

I’ve probably mentioned before how I met Fred Grove at the Western Writers of America convention in San Angelo, Texas, in 1990. Let me tell you, sitting and talking with Fred Grove for a couple of hours at an outdoor barbecue, under some giant pecan trees on the banks of the Concho River as the cool of the evening settled down over West Texas, is a pretty darned good memory. His short story “Satan’s Saddlemate” wraps up this issue. (What was it with the editor of this issue? This is the second story with “Satan” in the title, plus we also have “The Rider From Hell”.) This one is about a cavalry patrol in Texas coming on a family of settlers massacred by Comanches and trailing the war party back to their village for a showdown. There’s also a white girl captive to be rescued. Although there’s some nice action late in this story, most of it is rather low-key and introspective. Grove was a really fine writer and does a good job of capturing the time and place. He’s always worth reading, and this story is no exception.

This is a very solid issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. There’s not a bad story in the bunch, and several of them are very good to excellent. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s very much worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Max Brand's Western Magazine, July 1952

MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE started out as a reprint pulp, using older stories not only by Frederick Faust under his Max Brand pseudonym and other pen-names but also stories by other Western pulpsters. As time went on, though, the magazine published more and more new stories. By the time the July 1952 issue came out, there was only one reprint in the Table of Contents, a John Colohan story from the July 1936 issue of DIME WESTERN. Authors with new stories in this issue include Philip Ketchum, Ray Townsend, Lee Floren, Allan K. Echols, Cy Kees, Robert L. Trimnell, and Marvin De Vries. Most of those may not be big names, but they published regularly in the Western pulps. And that dramatic cover, which I like, is by H.W. Scott.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Best Western, August 1953

Norman Saunders' work is instantly recognizable on the cover of this issue of BEST WESTERN, and he's probably the best-known name associated with this issue, too, although Noel M. Loomis and Lauran Paine are well-regarded as Western pulpsters and novelists. The other stories are by Robert L. Trimnell, Paul L. Peil, Theodore J. Roemer, and Jim Brewer. And of course, this is yet another appearance of our old friends The Stalwart Cowboy, The Beautiful Redhead (she may be angry, but she's not gun-toting this time), and The Wounded Old Geezer. I have got to write those three into a book.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, August 1949

Well, that's gonna hurt! And that's one ugly varmint tusslin' with the star packer. Inside this issue of DIME WESTERN are stories by a couple of long-time top-notchers, Walt Coburn and Giff Cheshire (although Coburn was past his prime by this point), as well as George C. Appell, John Prescott, Kenneth Fowler, and Robert L. Trimnell. I'm not sure who did the cover art on this one. Robert Stanley, maybe? The lawman looks a little like Mike Shayne on those Dell mapback covers Stanley did for the Shayne series. But that's just a guess and I'm not convinced it's right.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, September 1952

I don't recall seeing a railroad handcar on a Western pulp cover before, but I'm sure there were others besides the one on this issue of NEW WESTERN. As always with a Popular Publications Western pulp, this looks like a solid issue with stories by E.B. Mann (a reprint from a 1934 issue of STAR WESTERN), George C. Appell, James B. Hendryx (a Black John yarn), Hascal Giles, Robert L. Trimnell, and Clark Gray.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, April 1954

This issue of STAR WESTERN from April 1954 is one of the latest appearances I've seen of that trio who appear on so many Western pulp covers: the stalwart cowboy, the redheaded gal, and the old geezer. Often the girl is toting a gun and sporting a fierce expression on her face. Not so much this time, but the way the figures are arranged, she could have a gun in her hand and we just can't see it. Anyway, this is far past the glory days for STAR WESTERN, but there are still some pretty good authors in its pages: Joseph Chadwick, Will Cook, William Vance, Paul W. Fairman, T.C. McClary, Richard Ferber, and Robert L. Trimnell. A pulp still worth reading, I suspect.