Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, May 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. A hat that big has to have been painted by A. Leslie Ross. I don’t have any confirmation that he’s the cover artist, but I’m pretty confident in that opinion.

In “Winchester Express to Boothill”, the lead novella by Lee Floren, his pair of drifting heroes, Buck McKee and Tortilla Joe, are on their way to help an old friend who has run into trouble and summoned them. That’s a common set-up in Floren’s novels and stories. Blackbeard Smith has a horse ranch in Montana, and he’s been bushwhacked and confined to a wheelchair by his injury. Not surprisingly, he has a beautiful daughter. A range war is brewing with a neighboring spread that’s owned by another beautiful young woman. Not far away is a mining boomtown, and that’s connected somehow, too. Our intrepid pair hasn’t been on hand long when somebody takes a shot at Buck and tries to kill him.

Floren was a regular contributor to DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN. My opinion of his work has improved slightly in recent years, but this particular yarn is maddening in its inconsistency. I actually like Buck and Tortilla Joe quite a bit. As a cowboy detective, Buck is a very low-rent version of Hashknife Hartley, and Tortilla Joe, despite the stereotypical way in which Floren writes him, is a pretty smart, tough, capable hombre. The plot is interesting and so are the characters. There are some nice action scenes. But man, the whole thing is really muddled, as if Floren forgot what he was doing from scene to scene. Some bits are vivid and well-written, and some are so clunky and repetitive that they’re wince-inducing. And those two opposites can be on the same page! By the time I got to the end of this one—and I did finish it, no problem—I still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Call it an interesting misfire, which, unfortunately, describes all too much of Floren’s work.

Fortunately, next up in this issue is a long novelette by Roe Richmond, usually a dependable author when he’s not doing series characters. “War on the Chippewa” is a timber Western, a sub-genre where I haven’t encountered Richmond so far. It’s about two brothers, prodigal sons who return to help out their father in a rivalry with another timber baron. This is an excellent yarn with a lot of colorful background, emotional heft, and gritty action. At times it reminded me of Dan Cushman’s timber Westerns, and that’s a good thing. My only complaint is that the ending is maybe a little less dramatic than it could have been. But still a very good story.

Noel Loomis is a well-regarded author in both Westerns and science fiction. I haven’t really read that much by him in either genre, but he seems pretty consistent. “There Are No Trees in Kansas” is kind of an odd title, but it works in this story of a crusading newspaper editor’s clash with a crooked saloon owner who has a distinctive feature: his right hand is missing, cut off by Indians when he was a young man, and instead of a fake hand or a hook, like you usually find with characters like this, he has a short length of chain with a two-pound iron ball attached to it. That’s a pretty vicious weapon in a hand-to-hand fight! That colorful bit of business is probably the best thing about this story, but it’s an okay tale with some nice action and I enjoyed it.

I’ve always figured Harrison Colt had to be a pseudonym, but if that’s the case, no one has ever identified the author who wrote under that name, as far as I know. His story in this issue, “Gunsmoke Samaritan”, is about a rancher who’s framed for murder when, against his better judgment, he gets involved in a clash between two of his neighbors. This story moves along very nicely, is well-written, and has a likable protagonist.

Lauran Paine was an extremely prolific author of Westerns, especially novels. Although he published around a hundred stories in the Western pulps during the Fifties, he wrote more than a thousand novels, most of them published only in England under many different pseudonyms. Late in his life, quite a few of his novels were published in the United States by Walker Books under the name Richard Clarke and reprinted in paperback by Ballantine. I’ve read very little of his work. But his story in this issue, “The Challenge”, is excellent. It’s about a rancher who goes to work as an undercover deputy to infiltrate a gang of train robbers. The prose is straightforward and effective, the action is hardboiled. Just a good yarn.

W. Edmunds Claussen is a hit-or-miss author, for sure. Stories by him that I’ve read have ranged from okay to not very good. “Guns at La Paz” in this issue falls into the okay group. Set during the Civil War in Arizona, it's about a cavalry officer who’s being sent back to Washington, but before he goes, he and a friend of his who’s a civilian scout try to get to the bottom of an Apache ambush that wiped out a patrol. There’s some nice action in this one and a plot twist that’s predictable but still effective because it’s unusual for a Western pulp. It could have been a lot more unusual, but if it had, it probably would have rendered this story unpublishable. I don’t think Claussen will ever be one of my preferred authors, but so far he’s at least worth trying when I come across one of his stories.

Overall, this is a pretty decent issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN. While several of the stories have flaws, they’re all entertaining and held my interest just fine. I’ve read quite a few issues of this pulp over the past couple of years, and the reason for that is simple: most of my pulps are either in storage or hard to get to for other reasons, and I had a big stack of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN issues handy. I think there are four or five more unread issues in this batch, so I’ll continue spacing them out.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, January 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know who painted the cover. It’s not a great cover, in my opinion, but it’s not really a bad cover, either. And the map of Texas has El Paso not quite in the right place. They didn’t think they could slip that past a born-bred-and-forever Texan like me, did they? But on to the stories.

Seven Anderton is an unjustly forgotten writer who had a decent career in the Western, detective, and sports pulps from the late Twenties to the late Fifties, producing around a hundred stories during that run, many of them novellas or novelettes. But he never wrote an actual novel as far as I know, which is probably one reason he’s forgotten. His novella “Her Name is Battle” leads off this issue, and the title is literal: the heroine is named Esther Battle. She’s a Western girl born and raised who has been at an Eastern school the past few years, but as the story opens, she’s returning to claim the ranch she’s inherited from her uncle. During the trip, she makes some allies: a giant Swede who wants to become a cowboy, and an actual down-on-his-luck cowboy who winds up being hired as Esther’s foreman. Naturally, there’s an evil banker who wants to take over the ranch, even if it means kidnapping or killing Esther before she arrives.

As far as the set-up goes, there’s nothing in this story we haven’t read many times before, but Anderton populates his yarn with distinctive, well-developed, and even colorful characters. His writing is smooth and funny at times, tough and gritty at others. “Her Name is Battle” is just a well-written, very entertaining story with a few welcome twists. Unfortunately, it kind of limps to an ending that’s not as satisfying as it could have been, which is something I’ve noticed in other stories by Anderton. It’s like he pulls back rather than going for a big finish. However, that didn’t stop me from enjoying this story, and I won’t hesitate to read more by him.

During the Thirties, Cliff Campbell was a personal pseudonym for writer and editor Abner J. Sundell. In the Forties, it became a Columbia Publications house-name used by numerous authors on Western, detective, and sports stories. The actual author of “Killer From Texas”, a novella in this issue by-lined Cliff Campbell, hasn’t been determined as far as I know, but whoever it was did a pretty good job. Drifting cowpoke Homer Kale rides into a Wyoming settlement figuring on having a quiet drink, but before you know it, he’s been accused by a beautiful girl of murdering an old prospector, and he’s locked up in jail before being taken out by a lynch mob. Homer barely escapes that necktie party and goes on the run from the law, knowing that the only way he can save his life is by finding the real killer. It’s a time-worn plot, to be sure, but “Campbell” spins his yarn with skill and enthusiasm, combining some surprisingly lighthearted scenes with a grotesque and suitably evil villain, some other colorful characters, and enough gritty action to keep things interesting. I couldn’t even make a guess who actually wrote this one, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I’d read a couple of stories by W. Edmunds Claussen before and had a mixed reaction to them. One I thought was kind of okay, the other I didn’t like. His novelette in this issue, “Gun-Smuggler Trail”, falls into the kind of okay category. It has a pretty good plot: fiddlefooted adventurer Burt Moffat returns to his family’s ranch in New Mexico to find that his father and his brother (a U.S. marshal) have both been murdered, and outlaws are using the ranch to smuggle guns across the border to Pancho Villa in Mexico. The smuggling gang uses an old ghost town as its headquarters. The story is atmospheric and violent, but Claussen’s convoluted style can be hard to read and follow. So this is sort of a miss, but an interesting one that might have been a really good story in different hands.

“Gunslick Trio From Hell” is by Charles D. Richardson Jr., another author whose work I’ve found to be okay at best. In this story, a reformed outlaw who has become the respected mayor of a frontier settlement has his past crop up to haunt him in the form of three members of his old gang. Things play out about like you’d expect them to, but in rather bland fashion and nobody in the story is really all that likable. And overall, I didn’t like the story much.

Lee Floren’s work is hit-and-miss with me, but mostly I like his stories. “Triggers for a Texan” in this issue is another interesting yarn that’s not particularly well-written, but I liked it considerably better than Claussen’s novelette. It’s about a Texan who has sworn off using a gun because of violence in his past, but when he gets involved in a Wyoming range war, he has to choose whether to pick up a Colt again. We’ve all read this plot many times before, but Floren does a decent job with it, attempting a few stylistic tricks that don’t quite come off but don’t keep it from being an entertaining yarn.

Chuck Martin, who often wrote as Charles M. Martin as well, is another dependably entertaining Western pulpster. His story “Gun or Gallows” in this issue is about a young marshal working for Judge Isaac Parker, the famous Hanging Judge. He has to arrest an old friend of his for murder, but he doesn’t believe the man is guilty, so the two of them set out together to find the real killer. I didn’t like this one as much as the other stories I’ve read by Martin, but it’s not bad. The ending is a considerable stretch, though.

Lon Williams is a pretty well-regarded author because of his series of Weird Western stories about Deputy Sheriff Lee Winters. I’ve read a few of those, though, and I’m not really a fan. His contribution to this issue is a short stand-alone story called “Stolen Waters” about a crooked lawyer and forger getting his comeuppance. It’s a very minor story but reasonably well-written.

Overall, this issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN is probably a below average Western pulp, with the best story being the “Cliff Campbell” house-name yarn, and the Seven Anderton story is good, too. None of the others are terrible, but they’re not very memorable, either. Don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have this issue. If you do read it, go in with low expectations and it’ll probably provide at least some entertainment.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western Stories, August 1950

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross. The hat and the face look like Ross’s work to me, but maybe someone who is better than I am at artist identification can pin this down for us.

The lead novella in this issue is “Gun-Hung Range” by W. Edmunds Claussen. In a 12-year career from the mid-Forties to the late Fifties, Claussen produced around 80 stories for the Western pulps. Most of his output appeared in various Columbia Publications pulps, such as this issue of REAL WESTERN STORIES. But he also sold to some of the other publishers and authored half a dozen Western novels for Lion Books, Avon, Pocket Books, and Dodd, Mead, plus several volumes of historical non-fiction. I don’t recall reading anything by him before this novella, which uses the old plot of a villain trying to force out some small ranchers and grab their land because the railroad is coming through. The protagonist is a fairly interesting character, a rancher who is emotionally tortured because he’s married to a saloon floozy with whom he has a son but is actually in love with a beautiful schoolteacher. Unfortunately, the writing isn’t very good, with clunky prose that sometimes doesn’t flow very well and is hard to follow. The big battle at the end isn’t bad but doesn’t fully redeem the story. I have a couple of Claussen’s novels on my shelves, but I’m not going to be in any hurry to read them.

M.G. Baker published a dozen stories in various Columbia Western pulps in the late Forties and early Fifties. I suspect that the name might be a pseudonym or house name, but that’s all it is, a suspicion. Baker’s story in this issue, a novelette called “A Target For His Coffin”, is a first-person yarn, somewhat unusual for the Western pulps, narrated by the sheriff of a mining town who has 24 hours to uncover the identity of a killer and save a young visitor from the east from being lynched. It’s an okay story, a little predictable but reasonably entertaining.

T.W. Ford was a very prolific pulpster, turning out hundreds of Western, sports, and detective tales, as well as being an editor and writing a few novels, sometimes under the pseudonym Weston Clay. He has a novelette called “Boothill Brand” in this issue, and it’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which an outlaw answers a call for help from an old flame and returns to the town where he was betrayed and framed for rustling. Plenty of action, the writing is decent (Ford was never much of a stylist), and I enjoyed this one quite a bit, not surprising since Ford was pretty consistent in his work.

Allan K. Echols is another very prolific Western pulp author/novelist. His story “Renegades Die Twice” is another pretty hardboiled yarn about the meeting between an old outlaw who’s dying and wants to make amends for his crimes and a younger owlhoot who has a clever plan. As usual in this type of story, things don’t work out as either man plans. You can see the twist coming, but it’s still effective and makes this a good story.

C.H. Cogswell authored several dozen stories during the Fifties, all appearing in Columbia Western pulps. His story in this issue, “Just One More Raid!”, is a well-written, poignant tale about an honest rancher and his best friend, an outlaw who wants to go straight and settle down, but before he does, he has to pull one more job . . . You know this story isn’t going to end well, but Cogswell does a good job with it.

Lon Williams is best remembered for his long-running series of supernaturally tinged tales about Deputy Sheriff Lee Winters, but he wrote quite a few stand-alone Western stories, too, including “Poady Hangs a Multitude” in this issue. It’s about a meek little hombre who’s elected sheriff as a joke, but he comes up with a bizarre way to bring law and order to a wide-open mining camp. This one maybe stretches credibility a bit too far. It’s an interesting story but not a particularly good one.

“Gun Mission” by W.F. Day is about a young man who teaches himself to be a fast gun in order to get revenge on a man who humiliated him. But when he returns to his hometown to accomplish this, he finds himself mixed up in something more complicated and has to change his plans. Lots of action in this one, and it’s pretty well-written. Day published only a handful of stories and I don’t know anything about him, but based on this yarn, he was a decent writer.

The issue wraps up with “Boothill Medico” by Brett Austin, a pseudonym for Lee Floren. This is a short-short about a doctor having to operate on a patient he has a grudge against. The writing is decent, but it seemed to lacking a final twist it should have had.

Overall I’d say this is a below-average issue of a Western pulp with a few good stories but nothing outstanding, and some mediocre but not terrible stories. I don’t consider the time spent reading it wasted, but it’s probably the weakest issue of a Robert Lowndes-edited pulp that I’ve read so far, proving that he couldn’t always work miracles on an almost non-existent budget.