The artist for this cover is unattributed in the usual online sources. The presence of a space babe in a skimpy outfit makes me think immediately of Earle Bergey, but something about this one seems like it's not Bergey's work. If anyone has any more information, it will be much appreciated, as always. Whoever painted it, it's a great cover and I really like it. FANTASTIC STORY MAGAZINE was edited by Samuel Mines at this point in its run, and the contents are a mixture of new stories and reprints. The reprints in this issue are by David H. Keller (one of the early big names in science fiction), Wesley Arnold (don't know that name at all), and Gordon A. Giles (who was really Otto Binder). The new stories are by L. Sprague de Camp, Mack Reynolds, Robert Moore Williams, and H.B. Fyfe. That's not a bad line-up, although hardly a star-studded one. The whole issue is on the Internet Archive, if you want to check it out for yourself.
That's a pretty lurid cover. I don't know the artist. This is the second issue of a very short-lived pulp. EXCITING MYSTERY lasted only three issues. There are some good authors in this issue, including Norman A. Daniels (twice, once as himself and once as Lew Martin), my old mentor Sam Merwin Jr., Dixon Wells (actually writer/editor Samuel Mines), and house name Robert Wallace, who could have been any of those three or somebody else entirely. I'm not sure why EXCITING MYSTERY wasn't as successful as the other Thrilling Group pulps. Looks like good reading to me.
More proof, as if we needed it, that sitting down to a "friendly" game of cards was just about the most dangerous thing you could do in the Old West. This is a Sam Cherry cover and quite a dynamic one. As usual in THRILLING WESTERN during the Forties, there's a Walt Slade yarn by Bradford Scott (A. Leslie Scott) and another appearance by Syl MacDowell's Swap and Whopper, plus stories by the great W.C. Tuttle, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Dixon Wells (author/editor Samuel Mines), and a couple of prolific but lesser-known pulpsters, Hal White and John A. Thompson. (Sorry I'm running late today.)
This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The scan is from my copy, and the cover art is by Sam Cherry.
W.C. Tuttle’s series about range detectives Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens is justifiably more famous and successful than his series about another Mutt-and-Jeff pair of range detectives, Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith, which ran for more than three dozen novelettes and novellas during the Forties and early Fifties, mostly in EXCITING WESTERN. I’ve always found the Tombstone and Speedy yarns reliably entertaining, though. Unlike Hashknife and Sleepy, Tombstone and Speedy are not, shall we say, the sharpest rowels on the spur. But while they may not be smart, they’re top-notch when it comes to fighting with gun or fist, and they solve plenty of complicated cases with a combination of luck, instinct, and cow country savvy. In “Six-Gun Cyclone”, the novelette in this issue, they’ve been fired by the Cattleman’s Association that usually employs them, but despite that they wind up in the middle of a case involving rustling, brand blotting, and a bank robbery, and of course they win their jobs back by bringing the bad guys to justice after a fast-paced blend of action and broad humor. Some of Tuttle’s stories are better than others, but I don’t think he’s ever let me down and this one is great fun.
Noel Loomis is best remembered these days as a science fiction author, but he wrote a considerable number of Westerns, too. His story in this issue, “Pitchfork Country”, is about a young couple trying to establish a farm in Colorado and clashing with their brutal cattleman neighbor. The history is a little shaky in this one, but it’s well-written and there’s an unusually violent fight at the end.
The novelette “No Peace for a Prodigal” is by Leslie Ernenwein, one of the old pros in the Western genre, and is a reprint from the First July Number, 1945 issue of RANCH ROMANCES. Like a lot of stories from RANCH ROMANCES, there’s not much actual romance in this one but plenty of action. A small rancher gets caught between the two sides in a range war, is framed for a murder, and has to fight his way out of trouble and expose the actual bad guys. This is a good, hardboiled Western action yarn by an author who knew how to keep a story moving along.
The next story, “Belled Cunning”, is by an author I don’t really care for, Harold F. Cruickshank, and is an animal story, with no human characters, and I’m not fond of those, either. So . . . I passed on this one.
“Jerk Line” by Willard Luce is a railroad yarn, and I do like those, so I enjoyed this tale of bank robbers trying to use a train for their getaway. This is a reprint and originally appeared in the January 1946 issue of RIO KID WESTERN.
Samuel Mines is best remembered, if at all, for being the editor of STARTLING STORIES and THRILLING WONDER STORIES for a while, but he also wrote a good number of Western stories, including a few of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS. His novelette in this issue, “Run, Sheep, Run”, is also a reprint, originally appearing in the May, 1944 issue of POPULAR WESTERN. It’s a very traditional cattlemen vs. sheepherders yarn, with the protagonist being the government man caught between the two factions, trying to resolve their differences without an all-out range war. The elements may be familiar, but Mines handles them well and the action scenes are very good.
When I started attending the Western Writers of America conventions on the mid-Eighties, Francis L. Fugate was one of the elder statesmen of the organization. He and his wife also wrote a well-regarded book about Erle Stanley Gardner. Unfortunately, his story that wraps up this issue, “Son of a Gun Stew”, about a chuck wagon cook’s encounter with an old enemy, never really caught my interest and I didn’t finish it.
Overall, I’d say this is an average, or maybe even slightly below average, issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The stories by Tuttle, Loomis, Ernenwein, and Mines are good but not outstanding, and the others range from just okay to didn’t-finish level. As always, though, I’m glad I read it.
One of the things I really like about Western pulp covers is that while there are plenty of "damsel in distress" type covers, there are also a lot that feature women who are just as tough and competent as the men. This cover by Sam Cherry from the July 1948 issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES is a good example. There's not even a guy in sight, other than the hand of the one holding the gun, and that blonde is about to make him wish their trails had never crossed. Inside this issue are stories by some fine writers: L.P. Holmes, Giles A. Lutz, Stephen Payne, Samuel Mines, Joe Archibald, Cliff Walters, and Gladwell Richardson. The so-called Western romance pulps had plenty to like for traditional Western readers.
