Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, August 1936

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with a cover by Arthur Mitchell, an almost forgotten but consistently pretty good artist who did most of the covers for ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE. This was Dell’s flagship Western pulp (maybe its only Western pulp, I don’t really know), and although I haven’t read many issues, they’ve all been good so far.

This issue leads off with the novella “Deuce of Diamonds”, the second in a short-lived series by Charles M. Martin about a drifting cowboy and troubleshooter known as Roaming Reynolds. There are three stories in the series. I don’t have the first one, but I do have the third one in addition to this one and will be getting to it soon, I expect. In this one, Reynolds and his sidekick, a 16-year-old cowpoke called Texas Joe, drift their way into a range war when they interrupt a setup by two hardcases intended to result in the death of a rancher’s son. This leads to a bunch of action in the next twenty-four-hour span, including ambushes, fistfights, the discovery of a rustled herd, and a stampede.

Martin, who also wrote a lot for the pulps as Chuck Martin, has a distinctive style that I enjoy, although he does get pretty heavy-handed with the “Yuh mangy polecat” dialect. And his plots are very traditional, nothing that Western pulp readers haven’t encountered many times before. But he spins his yarns with such enthusiasm that I can’t help but enjoy them. Martin was a colorful character who supposedly made little grave markers for the villains he killed off in his stories and planted them in his backyard. I like his work, but reading it is always a slightly bittersweet experience for me because, like Walt Coburn, he eventually committed suicide. Making a living in the pulps definitely took a toll on some writers.

Sam H. Nickels was another Western pulp author who turned out hundreds of stories, many of them in a long-running series in WILD WEST WEEKLY about a couple of cowboys nicknamed Hungry and Rusty. He also wrote many stand-alone stories under the house-names common in that pulp. Now and then he published a story under his own name in a different pulp, such as “Mud in Mooney’s Eye” in this issue of ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE. The protagonist is known as Mournful Mooney because of his sad disposition, which is caused by his habit of running afoul of the law. Mooney, despite not looking like much, is hell on wheels when it comes to shooting and fighting. He seems like he ought to be a series character, too, but as far as I know, this is his only appearance. In it, he’s hired as a lawman to tame a wild town. The results are entertaining, if not particularly memorable. Nickels was a decent writer.

Harry F. Olmsted is one of my favorite Western pulp writers. He’s almost completely forgotten because he never wrote any novels, but he turned out more than 1200 pieces of shorter fiction. His story in this issue, “Empty Shells”, is about a sinister gunfighter who turns up in a frontier town looking for the son of a local rancher who has just taken over the spread after his father passed away. Clearly, the gunman is there to settle a score with the young man, who was something of a shady character himself, running with outlaws, before coming home and trying to settle down. Of course, Olmsted is too good a writer not to put a twist on what seems apparent. The prose is spare and clean, the dialogue isn’t overloaded with dialect (although there is a little), and the suspense builds steadily throughout this one. “Empty Shells” is an excellent story and a good example of why I enjoy Olmsted’s work so much.

Carson Mowre is better remembered as a pulp editor rather than a writer, but he turned his hand to fiction, too, now and then, and published several dozen stories, most of them Westerns. He contributes a novelette, “One Night in Ten Sleep”, to this issue. As the title indicates, all the action takes place in one night in the frontier settlement of Ten Sleep, where a stranger called Tennessee Parker rides into town and finds himself in the middle of a war between a crooked judge on one side and a crooked sheriff and deputy on the other. Parker plays the two sides against each other (I was reminded a little of Hammett’s RED HARVEST) because he has an agenda of his own that doesn’t become clear until the end of the story. This one features some of the most brutal and graphic violence I’ve encountered in a Western pulp yarn. It has interesting characters, the pace is swift and never really lets up, and I really enjoyed it. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of Mowre’s fiction.

I normally don’t read the non-fiction features in Western pulps, but one in this issue caught my attention. It’s “The Blond Cossack” by Ed Earl Repp, whose work I usually enjoy. This is an interesting article about an outlaw known as Russian Bill, who was part of the Cowboy faction in Tombstone along with the Clantons and Johnny Ringo. Russian Bill claimed to be the son of a princess and told people he was forced to flee from Russia for political reasons after being a Cossack there. Whether there was any truth to that story remains unknown, but Repp’s recounting of it is vivid and interesting. Repp was known to use ghostwriters and the prose in this is a little toned down from his fiction, so another writer may have had a hand in it, but the Cossack parts of it read like Repp’s work to me.

I love S. Omar Barker’s cowboy poetry and the non-fiction columns he wrote for RANCH ROMANCES and TEXAS RANGERS, but his fiction usually isn’t to my taste. For ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, he wrote a series of humorous stories about a yarn-spinning old cowboy named Boosty Peckleberry. In this issue’s “All Ears”, Boosty is telling his bunkhouse mates about an alcoholic mule named Napolean. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t make it all the way through this one. This sort of stuff just doesn’t resonate with me, but I’m sure plenty of readers found it funny and charming because Barker was very popular for a long time.

Like Charles M. Martin, J.E. Grinstead was an actual cowboy at one time in his life, and his stories have a ring of authenticity. “Six-Gun Music” begins with a violent encounter in a saloon between a down-on-his-luck stranger and a local gunman/bully, and that leads to rustling and ambushes. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read by Grinstead in the past, and this is one of his best stories.

Galen C. Colin is another very prolific pulpster who’s mostly forgotten today. His story “Death Takes the Trail” is actually a dying message mystery, although not a very complicated or clever one. It leads to a good action scene, though. While I’ve read better by Colin, this is an okay yarn.

Overall, this issue of ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE is a solidly entertaining Western pulp. The stories by Olmsted, Mowre, and Grinstead are the best, and the others are all enjoyable with the exception of the S. Omar Barker tall tale, and other readers might like that a lot better than I did. I have several more issues of ALL WESTERN on hand and will be getting to them soon, I hope.

A Cowboy's Christmas Prayer - S. Omar Barker

I first posted this twenty years ago tonight, the year I started this blog. I couldn't have predicted that I'd still be around or that the blog would, but I am and so is the blog, and some of you reading this saw that post back in 2004, too. So here it is again, my favorite Christmas poem, but I don't guarantee I'll post it again twenty years from now.

On the other hand, I might.

A COWBOY'S CHRISTMAS PRAYER
By S. Omar Barker (1894-1985)

I ain't much good at prayin', and You may not know me, Lord
I ain't much seen in churches where they preach Thy Holy Word,
But you may have observed me out here on the lonely plains,
A-lookin' after cattle, feelin' thankful when it rains,
Admirin' Thy great handiwork, the miracle of grass,
Aware of Thy kind spirit in the way it comes to pass
That hired men on horseback and the livestock we tend
Can look up at the stars at night and know we've got a friend.

So here's ol' Christmas comin' on, remindin' us again
Of Him whose coming brought good will into the hearts of men.
A cowboy ain't no preacher, Lord, but if You'll hear my prayer,
I'll ask as good as we have got for all men everywhere.
Don't let no hearts be bitter, Lord.
Don't let no child be cold.
Make easy beds for them that's sick and them that's weak and old.
Let kindness bless the trail we ride, no matter what we're after,
And sorter keep us on Your side, in tears as well as laughter.

I've seen ol' cows a-starvin, and it ain't no happy sight
Please don't leave no one hungry, Lord, on thy good Christmas night
No man, no child, no woman, and no critter on four feet
I'll aim to do my best to help You find 'em chuck to eat.

I'm just a sinful cowpoke, Lord-ain't got no business prayin'
But still I hope You'll ketch a word or two of what I'm sayin'
We speak of Merry Christmas, Lord-I reckon you'll agree
There ain't no Merry Christmas for nobody that ain't free.
So one thing more I'll ask You, Lord: Just help us what you can
To save some seeds of freedom for the future sons of man.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and good night.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story, August 30, 1941

This issue of the iconic WESTERN STORY sports a fine, very dramatic cover by A. Leslie Ross, one of my favorite pulp and paperback cover artists. The authors inside are no less notable: Harry Sinclair Drago, L.L. Foreman (with a Preacher Devlin novella), Tom W. Blackburn, S. Omar Barker, Frank Richardson Pierce (as Seth Ranger), George Michener, and Eric Howard. Definitely looks like an issue worth reading. I don't own a copy, or I just might. I do have Harry Sinclair Drago's novel BUCKSKIN EMPIRE, one installment of which is serialized in this issue. May have to see if I can find the book.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, January 1928

Now that is one suspicious-looking hombre. Don't reckon I'd trust him at all. But he gives us an eye-catching cover by H.C. Murphy Jr. There are some fine authors in this issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE, led by Eugene Cunningham with two entries, one a short story and the other an installment of a serial, plus Walt Coburn, S. Omar Barker, and Galen C. Colin. I'm not familiar with Jack Smalley, the author of the cover-featured story, or E.L. Marks, U. Stanley Aultman, and Charles Penvir Gordon, who wrote the other stories in this issue. But Cunningham, Coburn, and Barker are more than enough to make me figure this one would be worth reading if I had a copy. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, August 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover is by Sam Cherry, of course.

The Jim Hatfield story in this issue, “Rustlers Ride”, has been attributed to A. Leslie Scott, but when I started reading it, I said, “Wait a minute. This has to be a Tom Curry story.” The first two chapters have all the hallmarks of a Hatfield yarn by Curry, including several scenes setting up the plot before Hatfield is ever introduced and a proxy hero in the person of stalwart young rancher Arch Haley. The prose is the straightforward storytelling of Curry, as well, lacking any of the descriptions and catch phrases you always find in Scott’s work.

Then, in Chapter 3, everything changes. The writing is definitely Scott’s, and that continues to the end of the novel. There are a number of plot twists that don’t turn out the way they seem to be set up in the first two chapters. If I had to guess, I’d say Tom Curry started this novel, and then for some unknown reason Scott took over with the third chapter. I could be ’way off on that theory, of course. This is pure speculation on my part. But it comes from reading a bunch of both authors’ work over the past 60 years.

Anyway, regardless of who wrote what, is “Rustlers Ride” a good Jim Hatfield novel? Yes, it is. Despite the title, rustling plays almost no part in this story. Instead, it’s about a gold strike in West Texas and the gang of outlaws preying on the mines and the nearby town. Hatfield foils numerous of the gang’s plans before finally figuring out who the mastermind is, and even though the big boss’s identity is pretty obvious, it still involves one of those nice twists mentioned above. The breakneck pace and the action scenes are good, as always. There’s nothing here Hatfield fans haven’t read many times before, but it’s done well and I had a really good time reading this story.

Moving on, Leslie Ernenwein’s short story “Outlaw Hunch” is about a former owlhoot gone straight and turned livery stable owner who has to consider a return to outlawry, but for noble reasons. This is a fairly lightweight, almost humorous story until it turns deadly serious near the end. I really like the way Ernenwein writes, and this is a very good story, reprinted from the March 1946 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. I need to read more of Ernenwein’s novels.

Wayne D. Overholser’s novelette “Traitors’ Blood is Red” originally appeared in the April 1947 issue of THRILLING WESTERN. Like much of Overholser’s work, it’s set in the Pacific Northwest. This story involves espionage and a conspiracy during the Civil War which, if it succeeds, will not only alter the course of the war but change the entire country as well. It’s an odd plot—you don’t often think of the Pacific Northwest in terms of being important to the Civil War, or at least I don’t—but Overholser makes it work. The writing is a little bland, but I find that to be true of most of Overholser’s stories.

Tom Curry appears under his own name with a short story original to this issue, “Stranger in Town”. A drifting gambler is blamed for a murder he didn’t commit and has to uncover the truth. It’s a fairly common plot, but Curry, always a dependable writer, does a good job with it.

I don’t know anything about Cibolo Ford except that he published several dozen stories in various Western pulps in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. The name has always sounded like a pseudonym to me, but I don’t know that it is. His story story “Widelooper Luck”, also original to this issue, features cowpokes Stony Lonesome and Stingaree Stanton helping their friend Gooble Nutter save his ranch from the evil scheming of lawyer J. Tubelo Zero. Those names were almost enough to make me skip this one, but I stuck with it and it’s actually okay. Mildly humorous, and I found myself liking the characters, which I didn’t expect to.

Barry Scobee is the only pulp writer to have a mountain named after him. It’s in the Davis Mountains in West Texas, near the town of Fort Davis. In addition to writing for the pulps, Scobee was a journalist and newspaper publisher and was instrumental in getting old Fort Davis, an abandoned military outpost from frontier days, restored and turned into a tourist attraction. His story in this issue, “Always Wanting Something”, is a reprint from the January 1946 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. It’s about a young cowboy at a turning point in his life, trying to figure out which direction to go, and is well written enough but never really very involving.

Best remembered for his Western poetry, S. Omar Barker turned out quite a bit of fiction as well. His story “Rowdy Romance”, as you’d expect from that title, is a humorous tale about a cowboy who sets aside his wild, devil-may-care ways in order to try to win a girl, only to have things turn out differently than he expects. Barker had an appealing way with words and the story is entertaining without ever really amounting to much. It’s a reprint from the December 1936 issue of THRILLING WESTERN.

There are also interior illustrations by H.L. Parkhurst and Nick Eggenhoffer, among other, unsigned illustrations.

I enjoyed this issue because “Rustlers Ride” is a slightly above-average Jim Hatfield novel and the short story by Leslie Ernenwein is pretty good. The other stories are highly forgettable. But I’m glad I read the Hatfield yarn.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, November 7, 1942

I feel like I should know who painted this cover. Tom Lovell? R.G. Harris? Maybe someone who's better than me at artist IDs can give us a definitive answer. But one thing I do know is that WILD WEST WEEKLY was almost always fun to read, and this issue doesn't look like any exception. Walker A. Tompkins has two stories in this one, a Tommy Rockford yarn under his own name and a stand-alone story under the house-name Andrew A. Griffin. House-names William A. Todd and Nelse Anderson are in this issue, as well; Norman W. Hay wrote the Risky McKee story as by Todd, and Bennie Gardner wrote the stand-alone Anderson. Also on hand are C. William Harrison, S. Omar Barker, and James P. Webb. A very solid line-up and a good cover, typical of WILD WEST WEEKLY.

Update: The cover artist has been confirmed as R.G. Harris.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, July 1935

That's a nice dramatic cover on this issue of COWBOY STORIES. I don't know the artist, but he did a good job. Other than James P. Olsen and S. Omar Barker, this issue doesn't have many well-known authors on hand. The other stories are by Jay Kalez, William E. Brandon, Eben Garrett, Victor Kaufman, Paul R. Morrison, Butler Van Steenbergh, Carl F. Happel, and house-name Ken Martin. It's understandable if you're saying "Who?" in response to most of those. Doesn't mean the stories aren't enjoyable, though.

UPDATE: This cover is by Tom Lovell. Thanks to those who identified it as his work.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, March 1957

A Western pulp from very late in the pulp era, but judging by the authors inside, this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES was still pretty good: H.A. DeRosso, S. Omar Barker, Edwin Booth, Clayton Fox, William Vance, and reprints by Tom W. Blackburn, D.B. Newton, John G. Pearsol, Giles A. Lutz, and Glenn H. Wichman. That's a fine bunch of Western pulpsters no matter what the era.

UPDATE: My friend Bob Deis has identified this cover artist as Jim Bentley and tells us that the cover was used originally on the January 1956 issue of MALE. Thanks, Bob.

 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, June 1935

Well, this cowpoke has all kinds of problems, what with being thrown off that horse and having a rattlesnake waiting for him on the ground. I don't know the artist, but he's painted a scene I wouldn't want to find myself in. Inside this issue of COWBOY STORIES are yarns by plenty of good writers, though, including James P. Olsen, W. Ryerson Johnson, Wilfred McCormick, S. Omar Barker, Carmony Gove, and Galen C. Colin. COWBOY STORIES was a long-running Street & Smith pulp, never as popular as WESTERN STORY or WILD WEST WEEKLY but with consistently good covers and authors. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, November 1934

Great cover by Tom Lovell on this issue of COWBOY STORIES, and some fine writers inside, too: Philip Ketchum, James P. Olsen, Archie Joscelyn, S. Omar Barker, John Colohan, house-name Ken Martin, and some lesser-known writers, H. Fredric Young, Lee Willenborg, and Rand Rios. This one would sure catch a potential buyer's eye on the newsstand.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, April 1947

I tell you, this is the way I feel a lot of the time these days: ready to snarl and start bashing things with a shovel. By 1947, ADVENTURE may have been long past its glory days as the top pulp in the business, but it still had some great covers, such as this one by Peter Stevens, and some top-notch authors, represented in this issue by E. Hoffmann Price, Jim Kjelgaard, F.R. Buckley, Robert E. Pinkerton, S. Omar Barker, and Franklin Gregory.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, October 1936

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That's my copy in the scan. ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, and for that matter, the other pulps published by Dell, are little remembered these days, but I’ve read several issues of ALL WESTERN and found them to be very solid. The cover on this issue was painted by Arthur Mitchell, who did most of the covers for this pulp.

The issue leads off with a novella by Tom Roan, “The Two-Gun Sheriff of Painted Rock”. Roan was most prolific in the Western pulps from Popular Publications, but he appeared in others as well. This yarn begins with a couple of owlhoots bushwhacking a rider who they believe to be the new sheriff on his way to tame the wild town of Painted Rock. Their unfortunate mistake sets in motion a chain of violent events as the new sheriff clashes with the crooked saloon owner who runs the town. It’s a stereotypical plot, but Roan keeps things moving very fast and has a good touch with an action scene. He’s never been one of my favorite Western pulpsters, but he’s dependably entertaining, and so is this novella.

Miles Overholt sounds like a pseudonym, but evidently that was his real name. He had a long, prolific career as a pulpster stretching from 1909 to the early Fifties, writing a variety of genres early on and then concentrating on Westerns. His story in this issue, “Gunsmoke Money”, is the first thing I recall reading by him. The protagonist is a young, drifting cowboy who’s forced to kill an hombre trying to steal his horse. The dying man asks him to deliver some money that’s in his saddlebags, and the cowboy’s promise to do so lands him in the middle of a range hog’s attempt to take over a beautiful young woman’s ranch. Nothing new there, but Overholt spins his yarn in such a breezy, fast-moving fashion, and his protagonist is so likable, that I really enjoyed this story and will be keeping my eyes open for more of his work. As far as I can tell, he never wrote any novels, just short fiction.

I’ve read a number of stories by Hapsburg Liebe over the years. His contribution to this issue is the short story “The Britches Kid”, which finds a prodigal son returning home to help save his father’s ranch from yet another range hog. It’s very different from the Miles Overholt story with a similar plot, and not as well written as Overholt’s story, to be honest, but several interesting, offbeat characters make this one worthwhile.

Charles M. Martin, who also frequently wrote as Chuck Martin, was a very prolific Western pulpster who worked as a real cowboy in his younger years. His work is heavy on pseudo-Western dialect and standard plots, but he wrote good action scenes and kept his yarns moving right along. His story in this issue, “Casa Grande Bullets”, find two Arizona Rangers trying to arrest a couple of bank robbers, and the ensuing shootout results in a vengeance quest that leads across the border into Mexico. It was entertaining enough to keep me reading but pretty forgettable at the same time.

The novelette “Lightning in Levis” is by Harry F. Olmsted, one of my favorite Western pulp authors. Some have claimed that Olmsted farmed out all of his work and never wrote anything on his own, but I don’t believe that. I don’t doubt that he might have gotten some help from other authors from time to time. That’s common among high-producing writers, and although I haven’t counted them, I read somewhere that Olmsted is credited with more than 1200 stories. The voice in the ones I’ve read is pretty consistent. That said, the tone in “Lightning in Levis”, which features a number of colorfully named characters and a convoluted plot, seems a little goofier than the usual Olmsted yarn. So I guess it’s possible somebody else contributed to this one, or maybe Harry was just feeling a little more whimsical than usual when he wrote it. At any rate, it’s an entertaining tale that finds the Wild Bunch (Butch, Sundance, and the rest of the boys) clearing their names after being framed for some robberies and killings they didn’t commit.

Arthur H. Carhart (sometimes billed as Arthur Hawthorne Carhart) is a name I’ve seen on a lot of Western pulps, but I don’t recall ever reading by him until now. “A Streak of Powder” is the story of two rival ranchers trying to capture the same outlaw so they can use the bounty on him against each other. It’s not a bad plot, but the writing is very bland and never hooked me. I finished this one, but it took some effort to do so.

Carson Mowre is another author I haven’t read before. His story “Timber Foot” is about a ferry operated by an ex-outlaw who helps other owlhoots escape from the law, all while waiting to take vengeance on an old enemy. It’s an intriguing idea, and Mowre does a fairly good job with it. The twist ending is pretty predictable but the story overall is enjoyable.

I like S. Omar Barker’s Western poetry and non-fiction, but his humorous short stories don’t appeal to me. “Two Tough Tails”, in this issue, is part of his Boosty Peckleberry series, which involves cowboys with colorful names sitting around the bunkhouse telling shaggy dog stories. I didn’t care for it.

There are some good stories here from Roan, Olmsted, Overholt, and Mowre, but taken as a whole, this is probably the weakest issue of ALL WESTERN I’ve read so far. Still, I’m glad I read it, of course. I’ve never read a Western pulp that didn’t provide some entertaining yarns.

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. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Action-Packed Western, December 1938

Based on the cover by A. Leslie Ross, this probably is an action-packed issue of ACTION-PACKED WESTERN. As usual with this publisher, Chesterfield Publications (later Columbia), we get some stories by house-name authors Cliff Campbell and Mat Rand, but the prolific Ed Earl Repp (or one of his ghosts) and S. Omar Barker are on hand, too, so I'll bet there's some good reading to be had here. Heck, I've liked most of the stuff I've read by "Campbell" and "Rand".

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, June 1936

Since Robert E. Howard Days is going on in Cross Plains, Texas, this weekend, here's a pulp featuring one of his stories. As I understand it, the dates on pulp magazines were actually off-sale dates, not on-sale dates, so this issue of COWBOY STORIES would have been on the newsstands before Howard's death on June 11 and unsold copies would have been pulled a few days before that. Howard's name isn't on the cover, but inside is his story "A Man-Eating Jeopard", featuring his character Buckner Jeopardy Grimes. This issue also features a novella by Luke Short and stores by S. Omar Barker, Archie Joscelyn, Hapsburg Leibe, and Alfred L. Garry.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, August 1936

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is from the copy I read. Arthur Mitchell, who was a pretty prolific pulp cover artist, mostly in the Thirties, painted the cover. ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, from what I’ve read of it, was a pretty good Western pulp.

It opens with the novella “Deuce of Diamonds” by Charles M. Martin, who also wrote a great deal for the pulps under the name Chuck Martin. This one features drifting cowpoke and gunman “Roaming” Reynolds, as well as his sidekick, young Texas Joe. There are three stories in this short-lived series, all appearing in ALL WESTERN, and this is the middle one. Reynolds and Texas Joe find themselves helping out a couple of old ranchers (one of whom has a beautiful daughter, of course) who are being plagued by rustlers. Reynolds suspects that local cattle baron Griff Tyson, owner of the Deuce of Diamonds spread, is behind the trouble. Tyson is quite a gunfighter himself and likes to shoot playing cards out of the air, his favorite being the two of diamonds, hence the name.

This story is very heavy on the “yuh mangy polecat” dialect, and there’s nothing in the plot or characters you haven’t seen many, many times in Western pulps, but Martin, like Walt Coburn, was an actual cowboy and the background details of his stories always ring true now matter how standard the plots are. Also, he writes in a very terse, clipped style that I like quite a bit. Martin was something of an eccentric and had a “cemetery” in his back yard where he planted miniature tombstones bearing the names of the villains he killed in his stories. And also like Coburn, he came to a bad end, committing suicide when he had played out his string as a writer. I enjoy his work because of his distinctive style, but I wouldn’t put him in the top rank of Western pulpsters. I never hesitate to read one of this stories, though.

Sam H. Nickels was the author of the Hungry and Rusty series that ran in WILD WEST WEEKLY. I haven’t read any of those, but I suspect, based on the characters’ names, that they’re humorous yarns. The protagonist of Nickels’ story in this issue of ALL WESTERN, “Mud in Mooney’s Eye” is Mournful Mooney, and while it’s not full-fledged slapstick and has some decent action, it’s definitely on the lighter side. Mooney is a sad-sack character who always attracts bullies, but actually he’s a dangerous gunman and a whirlwind with his fists, as he proves in this story when he’s hired to pin on a lawman’s star and clean up the border town of Vacaton. This story is okay, readable but nothing special.

“Empty Shells” by Harry F. Olmsted is definitely a cut above that. This is a tense, well-written yarn that finds a killer known as the Montana Kid searching for a young man who has left the owlhoot trail behind him and returned home to try to reclaim his late father’s ranch. There’s an air of brooding vengeance about this one that shows why Olmsted is one of my favorite Western pulp authors.

I enjoy S. Omar Barker’s cowboy poetry and Western non-fiction, but his short stories usually don’t appeal to me. I’ve mentioned many times that with few exceptions, I’m not a fan of comedy Westerns, and the blurb on the Table of Contents for “All Ears”, Barker’s story in this issue is “A Boosty Peckleberry Laugh Riot”. (I think the editor misspelled “Laff”.) This is one of a series of tall tales spun by the old cowpoke Boosty Peckleberry to entertain the other cowboys in the bunkhouse. It concerns a mule that created the Grand Canyon. I didn’t care for it.

J.E. Grinstead wasn’t a cowboy himself, but he came from pioneer stock and was a newspaperman in Oklahoma and Texas not long after those places were still the frontier. After retiring from newspaper work, he became a prolific Western author, and his fiction has the same air of authenticity as that of Coburn and Martin. His story in this issue, “Six-Gun Music”, is about a tramp who comes stumbling from the desert into the wild border town of San Tomas and finds himself in the middle of some sinister goings-on. It’s a tough, well-written yarn and I really enjoyed it. I think I need to read some of Grinstead’s novels. I read one, WHEN TEXANS RIDE, many years ago but none since, although I’ve read some of his pulp stories.

The final story in the issue is “Death Takes the Trail” by Galen C. Colin, a vengeance tale in which a young cowboy tries to track down the men responsible for killing his foster father. It has some nice action and moves right along, but the plot is pretty thin and seemed to need at least one more twist.

Overall, this is a good but not great issue of ALL WESTERN. The stories by Olmsted and Grinstead are excellent, with the novella by Martin worth reading if not quite up to the level of those other stories. None of the others really impressed me. But still, good enough that I won’t hesitate to read another issue sometime.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Adventures, June 1942

There were always a lot of good authors in WESTERN ADVENTURES. In this issue, that includes Norman A. Fox, Giff Cheshire, S. Omar Barker, Gunnison Steele, Hapsburg Liebe, Rolland Lynch, C.K. Shaw, and Ralph Yergen. I've always found the covers on WESTERN ADVENTURES a little lacking, but the authors are consistently very good.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Super Western, December 1937

An action-packed Norman Saunders cover graces this issue of SUPER WESTERN, a pulp that lasted only four issues before its name was changed to VARIETY WESTERN (which wasn't that successful, either, running only eight issues before another name change). But SUPER WESTERN had some excellent covers while it lasted, and stories by some good writers, too, including in this issue Tom Roan, S. Omar Barker, George Bruce Marquis, and Kenneth L. Sinclair.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Adventures, February 1942

WESTERN ADVENTURES may have been Street & Smith's third-string Western pulp, behind WESTERN STORY and WILD WEST WEEKLY, but I've always thought it had some pretty strong issues. I like the cover on this one, and there's a fine line-up of authors inside including Cliff Farrell, Norman A. Fox, Gunnison Steele, Jim Kjelgaard, S. Omar Barker, and Charles N. Heckelmann.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, December 26, 1942

This is the Christmas issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY from 1942. There's a Christmas poem by S. Omar Barker and a Christmas story by Norman W. Hay writing under the house-name William A. Todd, but judging by the titles, that's the extent of the holiday content. Although "Border Blizzard" by Lynn Westland (Archie Joscelyn) might be a Christmas story, I don't know. Other authors include Walker A. Tompkins with a White Wolf story under the Hal Dunning name, James P. Webb, and Wayne D. Overholser.