Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, September 10, 1927

William Reusswig did some nice covers, and I like the one on this issue of WEST, when it was still being published by Doubleday and coming out every week. The authors are a mix of familiar names and ones I don't recognize. The familiar: Stephen Payne, Ralph R. Perry, Oscar J. Friend, Kenneth Gilbert, and Homer King Gordon. The ones I don't know: William West Winter, Edwin Hunt Hoover, and Robert V. Carr. Perry wrote a really fine Western novel called NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY. Friend is best remembered probably as an agent and editor, but I've enjoyed the fiction by him that I've read, too. Payne had a long, productive career as a Western pulpster. I don't recall reading anything by Gilbert or Gordon, but they published steadily, too. This looks like a pretty good issue. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Stirrup HIgh/Western Word Wrangler - Walt Coburn

I’ve discussed Walt Coburn’s work here before. He’s one of my favorite Western authors, while at the same time being one of the most maddeningly inconsistent. Today, though, I’m talking about his non-fiction, not his hundreds of pulp stories and dozens of novels. Coburn is the author of two memoirs, STIRRUP HIGH and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER, and they’re both well worth reading.

STIRRUP HIGH is the better of the two. It’s the story of Coburn’s life as a boy growing up on his father’s vast ranch in Montana around the turn of the Twentieth Century. Although there were a few modern conveniences, such as cars and telephones, ranch life in Montana at that time hadn’t changed much from the Old West days (which weren’t so old then, only a couple of decades past). Young Walt was a high-spirited kid, and STIRRUP HIGH is full of his adventures, many of them in tandem with the old cowboy who served as his father’s foreman. Even in Coburn’s worst pulp stories, there’s an air of authenticity, a feeling of “this is the way it really was” when it comes to ranch life, and when you read STIRRUP HIGH, you can see why that’s true. Now, you have to remember that Coburn was a born yarn-spinner, and like a lot of fiction-writers who turn their hands to non-fiction, he can’t resist embellishing a little bit. Some of the dates that he gives don’t quite add up, and some of the stories he tells in this book don’t quite jibe with established facts . . . but I’m not sure either of those things matter. The spirit is true, and STIRRUP HIGH is vastly entertaining.

WESTERN WORD WRANGLER covers some of the same ground but also carries the story on into Coburn’s later life and is fairly unstinting in dealing with some of the mental problems that plagued him throughout his adult years, along with the physical problems that made him give up cowboying and turn to writing. Much of the material in this volume is drawn from “The Talley Book”, the long-running column that Coburn wrote for the magazine TRUE WEST. That makes for a pretty episodic narrative, and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER is not nearly as polished as STIRRUP HIGH. It also doesn’t go into the amount of detail about his writing career that I wish it would have. But it’s still entertaining and filled with information.

Walt Coburn came to a bad end, tormented by alcoholism and finally dead by his own hand because he couldn’t sell his work anymore. His stories have made a small comeback in recent years, with several paperback collections of his pulp stories from Leisure, as well as a number of hardback and large print reprints of his novels. Everything he wrote in the Twenties and Thirties is worth reading, at least based on what I’ve read so far, and good stories can be found in his work from the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, as well, although you might have to dig a little harder for it. He deserves to be remembered, and STIRRUP HIGH and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER are pretty good places to start.

(This post originally appeared on February 27, 2009. I've continued to read novels and stories by Walt Coburn, although not as frequently as I was doing back then. I still consider him one of my favorite Western writers, though, despite the inconsistency of his later work. I once had him make a cameo appearance in a house-name novel set in the early 1900s. The protagonist was a friend of Coburn's father, so he stopped at the family ranch while passing through Montana. Mention was made of young Walt, who was already quite a yarn-spinner. I hope some reader, somewhere, caught that reference. I never saw any comment about it in any of the Amazon reviews of the book.)

Review: Just a Johnny Reb - Kirk Hamilton (Keith Hetherington)

Keith Hetherington was one of the best and most prolific of the Australian Western writers who turned out hundreds of books for Cleveland Publishing Company, and the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing are doing a top-notch job of making his books available for a new generation of readers as well as for long-time fans of Hetherington’s work like myself.

One of the latest releases I read as an ARC is JUST A JOHNNY REB, which will be available August 1 as half of a double volume along with LEGACY OF THE COUGAR. It was published originally by Cleveland in 1996 under Hetherington’s most common pseudonym Kirk Hamilton. The Johnny Reb of the title is Laramie Coyle, a former Confederate soldier who would be content to leave the war behind him, but not everyone is willing to do that. A clash with a Northerner results in a gunfight that leaves a man dead and earns Coyle a mortal enemy whose efforts at revenge dog his trail.

Eventually, to repay an elderly couple who help him out, Coyle takes on the job of finding another former Confederate who was a prisoner of war in a Union prison camp. The trail leads him to San Antonio, Texas, where he runs into more trouble from the Reconstruction forces occupying the town, as well as getting mixed up with a rancher who’s determined the South will rise again, even if it means restarting the war.

As always in a Keith Hetherington novel, there’s plenty of well-written action. He was one of the best at fistfights and shootouts, giving them a suitably gritty and realistic feel. The plot is solid, and Laramie Coyle is a good protagonist. The little bit of romance that crops up in the novel is handled well, too.

I enjoyed JUST A JOHNNY REB, and if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, I think there’s a good chance you will, too. You can pre-order it at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Bookshop.org.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, November 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a slam-bang cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve said it many times before, but I really like his work.

I also consistently enjoy the adventures of range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith as penned by W.C. Tuttle. This issue’s novelette is called “Lovable Liars”, and as it opens, the pair of them are a-foot, having sold their horses and saddles anticipating that their boss at the Cattleman’s Association will send them to their next assignment via train. The boss expects them to ride horseback to the settlement of Smoke Tree, however, and since they sold their mounts and Tombstone then lost all their money trying out his supposedly foolproof system for blackjack . . . Well, the boys wind up riding the train, but they have to hop an illicit ride on a boxcar to do so. And then what happens? Why, the train gets held up, of course, and through a series of coincidences, Tombstone and Speedy are blamed for the robbery!

Clearing their names and corralling the actual train robbers complicates their original mission, which was to solve a murder for which the son of an old friend of their boss has been arrested. Our intrepid duo manage to accomplish all of that, of course, through a combination of luck, banter, fast action, and detective work that’s more clever than anyone gives them credit for. This is a consistently entertaining entry in a series I really like.

Cliff Walters, a prolific contributor to the Western pulps who’s all but forgotten these days, is next up with a story called “Bone Bonanza”, in which a young rancher who fancies himself an artist goes east in search of a career in fine art, only to have things work out differently than he expected. This is a very mild, lightweight story with a few interesting angles, and it’s an easy read that I don’t think will linger very long in anyone’s mind. But it’s a pleasant enough way to pass 15 minutes.

I sometimes wonder if the readers who bought these pulps realized that A. Leslie, Bradford Scott, and Jackson Cole (part of the time) were all the same guy. Some of them must have suspected. Under the A. Leslie name, Leslie Scott contributes the novelette “Washed in Blood” to this issue. The first part of the tale is fairly standard as young cowboy Jim Wayne clashes with three crooked brothers who run almost everything in the county. A saloon shootout leaves one of the brothers dead and Jim on the run as a fugitive. It’s when he holes up in an abandoned mission still being tended to by an old priest that the story becomes one of ghost pirates and hidden treasure. As always with a Scott story, the action is plentiful and well-written, and the settings are vivid. I really enjoyed this one.

I’ve read a couple of stories by Harold R. Stoakes, another forgotten writer, and enjoyed them. “The Red Stallion” in this issue is a modern-day Western about a horse that can’t be ridden and the relationship between a young man and his stepfather. Honestly, this seems less like a Western pulp story and more like something that would have appeared in a slick or even a literary magazine. It’s got enough angst to it that it could have been mawkish, but Stoakes keeps things pretty low-key and makes it work in a well-written story that reminds me of something Larry McMurtry might have written early in his career.

“One Man Wrecking Crew” is a short (maybe 2000 words, tops) story by the always dependable Donald Bayne Hobart. There’s not much plot to it, just some conflict between a young cowboy and a crooked saloon owner and his henchmen, and that’s just an excuse for a brutal fistfight scene. Hobart probably didn’t spend much time on this and picked up a quick 20 bucks or so, but he was enough of an old pro to make it fun to read.

The Navajo Tom Raine series has become one of my favorites. The novelette in this issue, “Ranger Out of Bounds” drops the reader down in the middle of the action as the Arizona Ranger investigates a land-and-water swindle that also involves the kidnapping of a beautiful young woman. The only break in the action comes when Raine is knocked out cold for a while. It’s a bit more complicated plot than usual for Lee Bond, who wrote this entry under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond’s stories are pretty easy to identify: at least once in the story, the villains will stand around and explain the plot to each other, and the hero will face multiple enemies in a big, final gunfight. I thought this was an excellent story, and as usual, when I finished it I was eager to read more adventures of Navajo Tom Raine.

I don’t know anything about Clark Gray except that he published more than a hundred stories in various Western pulps and that he wrote the two worst Jim Hatfield novels in the whole series, “Lobo Colonel” (TEXAS RANGERS, January 1952) and “Warpath” (TEXAS RANGERS, June 1952). His story in this issue, “Tortilla Tenderfoot”, is about Pedro Gonzales, a reformed rustler who has lived a law-abiding life for years, only to be drawn back into a life of outlawry by the return of his former partner. This is a decent plot, but Gray plays it for laughs and the actual humor to be found in the story is pretty sparse. However, the writing isn’t bad, and although unimpressive, this is a much better story than either of Gray’s Hatfield novels.

All in all, this is a good solid issue of EXCITING WESTERN, due to top-notch series entries by Tuttle and Bond, a very good stand-alone by Scott, and some interesting short stories. It’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Review: The Outlaw and the Lady - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY by Chap O'Keefe (really our friend Keith Chapman) was published originally by Robert Hale in 1994 as part of Hale's Black Horse Western line. It's now available in newly revised e-book and paperback editions that include an entertaining foreword about how this book almost became a movie.

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY is certainly deserving of finding a whole new audience of Western readers. The protagonist is Tod Larraby, a former Confederate guerrilla who rode with Quantrill until he got sick of the violence and bloodshed. Although he tried to go straight after the war, he was charged unfairly with crimes he didn't commit and has spent nearly twenty years on the dodge, growing wearier all the time. Because of his status as an outlaw, he has to take whatever jobs he can, so when he's blackmailed by a corrupt lawman into helping an English nobleman find his missing son, Larraby is forced to shoulder this dangerous chore. It's made even more hazardous by the fact that the Englishman insists on coming along on the quest and bringing his beautiful young wife with him.

Chapman's work continues to remind me of the hardboiled Westerns published by Gold Medal during the Fifties and Sixties, and this one also has echoes of the early Lassiter novels by "Jack Slade" (really W.T. Ballard, Ben Haas, and Peter Germano, among others). The plot moves along at a suitably brisk pace, and the action scenes have a nice gritty feel to them. Larraby is a good hero, too, world-weary but not so full of angst that it leads to an excess of navel-gazing. As always, Chapman includes some effective twists and complications in the plot.

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY is lean, fast, and very entertaining, and as usual when I finish a Chap O'Keefe book, I'm eager to read more. If you're a Western fan I think you'll enjoy it, too.

(An earlier version of this review appeared on March 11, 2012. Keith Chapman is doing a fine job of making his novels available again, and Western readers who haven't yet discovered his work definitely need to check out his books. The Amazon links for this one are above, and you can find it for all the other platforms here.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Golden West Magazine, February 1937

That's a pretty graphic clinch for a Western romance pulp cover. It was painted by Harry Fisk, who did several dozen pulp covers and interior illustrations. I wasn't familiar with his name or work, but he seems to have been a decent artist. This incarnation of GOLDEN WEST MAGAZINE didn't last very long, only half a dozen issues in 1936 and '37. There's a later GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES from the Thrilling Group, but it also ran for only six issues in 1949 and '50. But to get back to this one, there are only four stories in it, three of them by fairly well-known Western authors: Charles M. Martin, W.D. Hoffman, and Kenneth Sinclair. The fourth story is by Lulita Crawford Pritchett, who published quite a few stories in RANCH ROMANCES among other Western romance pulps. I don't recall ever hearing of her, though. I was curious enough to do a little investigating and found that there's a website devoted to her and her work. Pretty interesting stuff, too. You never know what you're going to find when you start looking into the backgrounds of some of these pulp authors.

Review: On the Dodge - D.B. Newton

Jim Bannister rides into the town of Antelope, Colorado, on the morning of the Fourth of July, but he’s not there to celebrate. Bannister is a fugitive from the law, the victim of an unjust murder conviction and a death sentence. But he escaped from jail and is now on a quest to clear his name, and there’s a chance that a man he hopes to find in Antelope can help with that goal.

Unfortunately, there’s a range war brewing in the area, and even though the town is full of Independence Day festivities, trouble is lurking right under the surface and quickly crops up, catching Bannister right in the middle of it.

I’ve been a fan of D.B. Newton’s Western novels for more than forty years. I first discovered them in the late Seventies when he was writing hardback Westerns for Doubleday’s Double D line under the pseudonym Dwight Bennett (his first and middle names, of course). It wasn’t long before I found out that he was also a prolific contributor to the Western pulps and even wrote a few of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS under the house-name Jackson Cole.

Eventually, when I became a writer myself, my first Westerns were entries in the Stagecoach Station series, which was created by D.B. Newton, who also wrote a number of them. I’ve always liked the fact that I shared a house-name with someone who wrote Jim Hatfield novels.

In the Sixties, Newton wrote an eight-book series for Berkley featuring a hero named Jim Bannister who was a fugitive from the law but not really an outlaw. ON THE DODGE is the first of those novels, all of which are in the process of being reprinted by Piccadilly Publishing. I just read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Newton drops the reader down at a point where all hell’s fixin’ to bust loose, and I always appreciate an author who doesn’t waste any time getting the story going. Newton is from the same school of Western writing as L.P. Holmes and T.T. Flynn. He uses traditional plots but elevates them to a higher level with fine writing, well-developed characters, and moral and emotional complexity. ON THE DODGE has a real air of Greek tragedy about it, along with plenty of action and a very human and likable protagonist.

I had a paperback copy of the Berkley edition of ON THE DODGE for many years but never got around to reading it. That’s a good thing in a way because now I can read the new editions as they come out from Piccadilly. This one is a superb hardboiled Western that’s available in e-book and paperback editions. It gets a high recommendation from me. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, December 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my brittle, battered, and tattered copy in the scan. The dramatic, eye-catching cover, as usual, is by Sam Cherry, who never painted a bad cover as far as I’m concerned, although of course I like some better than others.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “The Timber War”, has been attributed to Tom Curry, but I believe that’s incorrect. I’m convinced this one is actually by Leslie Scott. The terms “skalleyhooting” and “big skookum he-wolf”, common in his work, are used numerous times. There are quite a few vivid descriptive passages, although maybe not as many as you often find in a Scott novel. My theory is that Scott could always fill a few pages with description when he needed to, but also that whenever an editor needed to cut a few pages, those lengthy portraits of the landscape would be his first target. The plot, which finds a hidden criminal pitting two opposing forces—in this case, loggers and cowboys—against each other for his own benefit, is also classic Scott. To be fair, that’s a common Western plot no matter who the author is. I’ve written a few loggers vs. cowboys yarns myself. But this one, including the villain’s identity and the motivation for his scheming, is pure Scott and easy to see coming if you’ve read as many of his novels as I have. As further evidence, most of Curry’s Hatfield novels feature a proxy hero who winds up with the pretty girl. That happens in “The Timber War”, too, but it’s pretty much an afterthought, not a major part of the plot like it usually is with Curry. That’s my reasoning, but basically it boils down to knowing a Scott novel when I read one, and that’s what I think this is.

But is “The Timber War” any good, you ask? Oh, heck, yeah. Hatfield is sent to get to the bottom of the trouble brewing between Justin Flint’s logging crew and Clyde Cranley’s Double C ranch outfit. Sabotage has taken place on both sides. Tensions are running high and threaten to break out into open warfare. Hatfield gets ambushed a few times, helps out both sides, and figures out what’s really going on. There’s plenty of well-written action, and the pace never lets up for long. It’s formulaic, but nobody ever worked that formula better than Scott. I had a great time reading this, as I nearly always do with his work.

“Tenor on Horseback” is the only credit in the Fictionmags Index for Matt Sprague. Was that a pseudonym, or just the only story that Matt Sprague managed to sell? I don’t know, but I can say that this story about a couple of ranchers getting mixed up with an opera company touring the West is pretty polished and entertaining. It’s a humorous yarn without ever descending into slapstick, and there’s a nice twist at the end. I liked this one more than I expected to.

The issue wraps up with a story by an author I always expect to enjoy, Johnston McCulley. “Merry Christmas, Ranger” is about a Texas Ranger’s encounter with two outlaws when all he wants to do is make it home for Christmas so he can propose to the girl he wants to marry and then resign from the Rangers. The plot is pretty simple, but McCulley executes it very well and his fast-moving prose is always fun to read. The holiday is just a minor plot device; the story could have been written just as effectively without it. But the whole thing is enjoyable, and I’d say it’s another winner for McCulley.

This whole issue is a winner, in fact. All three stories are top-notch, and I greatly enjoyed reading this pulp. It’s well worth your time if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Six-Gun Western, April 1950

We're still dealing with medical issues here, but I'm trying to get things back on track as much as I can. What better way than with a rather risque cover from a Trojan Western pulp? I feel like I should know who did the lurid artwork on this SIX-GUN WESTERN cover. Joe Szokoli, mebbe? I just don't know. The lead novella by E. Hoffmann Price is actually a reprint from the January 1939 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. Ray Gaulden, another consistently good writer, is also on hand, along with house-name Ralph Sedgwick Douglas, Frank Morris (who might well have been Mickey Spillane), and little-known Charles Getts and John White. I hope to read another Western pulp and write an actual review of it soon.

Review: Liberty and a Law Badge - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

For those of you who don’t know, prolific Western author and occasional commenter on this blog Chap O’Keefe is really Keith Chapman, who’s been writing and editing a wide variety of genre fiction in comics, magazines, and books for many years now, in addition to his work as a journalist. LIBERTY AND A LAW BADGE is another adventure of range detective Joshua Dillard, a former Pinkerton’s operative with tragedy in his past that drives him to fight outlaws of all stripes.

As the book opens, Dillard is on his way to his latest assignment, stopping a range war in Montana and finding out who’s been rustling cattle from his employer’s ranch. Pretty standard stuff, you say? Well, maybe at first glance, but not by the time Chapman gets through throwing twist after twist into the complex plot. The Liberty of the title is actually a young woman who’s been blackmailed into a sordid affair with a crooked sheriff, who’s the brother-in-law of the cattle baron who hired Dillard, who owns the cattle that Liberty’s husband is accused of stealing. Got that? Then there’s the cattle baron’s sister, who’s married to the crooked sheriff, and she goes on a rampage when she finds out about her husband’s adulterous affair with Liberty (said affair really being nothing more than a series of rapes). Add in a brutal deputy with an agenda of his own, and there’s a whole lot for Dillard to untangle before he can straighten everything out. Naturally, that untangling involves a number of fistfights and shootouts.

This book is a lot of fun, pulpish but with a sharp, contemporary edge. The dark, complex plot, the emotional angst, and the gritty storytelling remind me very much of many Westerns published in the Fifties by Gold Medal, by authors such as Lewis B. Patten, Dean Owen, and William Heuman. The pace is very fast, the action scenes are handled well, and Joshua Dillard is a very likable hero, tough and competent enough to handle just about any situation, despite his occasional self-doubts, but not a superman by any means. You can order LIBERTY AND A LAW BADGE here or at Amazon, and if you’re a fan of hardboiled action Westerns, I definitely think you’ll enjoy it.

(This review originally appeared in a somewhat different form on December 21, 2009. I'm rerunning it now because there's a brand-new edition of LIBERTY AND A LAW BADGE available with an entertaining bonus essay about how and why the book came to be written. You can order it at the links above, they're the current ones, and I can only second my own recommendation from 2009. It's an excellent Western action yarn.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, November 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. Like all the Western pulps from Popular Publications, NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE consistently delivered good authors and stories, and most of the covers were pretty good, too. I have no idea who painted this one. It’s not one of my favorites, but it’s certainly not bad.

I’m not sure why I haven’t read more by George C. Appell. Every story I’ve read by him was very good. I own several of his novels but haven’t gotten around to any of them. His novelette “Hired Gun!” leads off this issue, and it starts off as a very standard story about a gunfighter, in this case a Texan named Hayes Hockaday, going to work for a corrupt saloon owner/cattle baron but having second thoughts about it when he starts falling for a girl who works in the local mercantile. Appell has a very effective twist up his sleeve in this story, though, and he enlivens the plot with some gritty action scenes and some good descriptive writing. This is a top-notch yarn.

Leonard Huish published only three stories, according to the Fictionmags Index, and I don’t know a thing about him. “The Terror of El Toro Blanco” in this issue is a humorous story about a widow with an axe destroying the various saloons where her late husband quenched his thirst for tequila. El Toro Blanco is one of those saloons, located in a Texas border town. There’s also a bet between a couple of Mexicans with murder as the stakes. My tolerance for comedy Westerns is pretty low, as I’ve said many times, but this one isn’t bad. The author avoids goofy slapstick for the most part and even manages to strike a poignant note or two. This story surprised me by being worth reading.

When you see a story in a Western pulp bylined “Doc Winchester”, your first thought is that the name has to be a pseudonym or house-name. Mine certainly was. But that turns out not to be the case. The author of the novelette “Pit of the Living Dead” in this issue is actually Charles Ward “Doc” Winchester, born in Nebraska in 1888, who appears to have spent most of his life in Wyoming and then died in New Mexico in 1954. Other than that, I don’t know anything about him. Was he actually a doctor, or was that just a name he or someone else hung on him? If anyone knows I’d be happy to learn more. As for the story itself, which is the first one I’ve read by Doc Winchester, it’s about a couple of men doing some scouting, surveying, and mapping for the government who run into an archeologist and his beautiful daughter who claim to have found Cibola, the fabled lost city of gold. It’s an interesting plot, and there’s even a Lost Race to liven things up (I love me some Lost Race yarns), but the whole story is rather muddled and the prose just isn’t very good. I wanted to like this story just because it’s by somebody called Doc Winchester, but unfortunately, I didn’t.

Hascal Giles was a long-time newspaperman in Tennessee who wrote more than 60 stories for various Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties, including several Masked Rider and Range Riders novels. After retiring from newspaper work, he wrote several more novels published as paperback originals in the Nineties. I haven’t read much by him. His story in this issue, “Reunion in Blackjack”, finds two ex-cons, recently released from Yuma Prison, heading back to the town where they have a grudge against the sheriff. They have very different plans on how to proceed once they get there, however. This is a well-written story, and I admire the way Giles tries to give its resolution a fresh angle, but I’m not sure it really works. I really ought to read one or two of his novels, though.

Bruce Cassiday wrote dozens of Western and detective stories for the pulps in the Forties and Fifties, but I know him mainly for the many paperbacks he turned out later in his career. He wrote some of the Nick Carter, Killmaster novels, entries in the Phantom and Flash Gordon paperback series under the name Carson Bingham, and quite a few softcore novels, also under the Bingham name. His novelette in this issue “The Bigger They Are—” is interesting in its approach. For once, the point-of-view character is the bad guy, a cattle baron/town boss who brings in a town-taming lawman to enforce his will, only to have things not go the way he’s expecting. It’s kind of a gamble to tell a Western pulp story like this, but Cassiday makes it work for the most part with interesting characters and top-notch writing. I read some of his Carson Bingham books years ago and enjoyed them. He’s a mostly forgotten writer, but I think his work is worth reading. (Bold Venture Press has reprinted some of his mystery novels, and I really need to read them.)

“Nobody’s Pardner” by Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount) is a reprint of a story published originally as “A Maverick Fights for a Brand” in the July 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. Mount was a top-notch Western author who has become one of my favorites in recent years. This story is about a young tinhorn gambler who has to decide whether he wants to continue his shady ways or reform and make something of himself, even though the process is definitely a reluctant and unpleasant one. While not as good as Mount’s Silver Trent or Five Mavericks stories, this is a fine yarn that I really enjoyed.

This issue wraps up with a novelette, “Last of the Llano Kid!”, from another favorite, C. William Harrison. In this story, a bloody Texas feud reaches out with its violence all the way to Arizona, and as a result, an Arizona lawman trails a killer back to the Lone Star State for a showdown and gets involved with the fugitive’s beautiful sister along the way. This is a very good story marred only by an ending that’s not as dramatic as it could be.

In fact, several stories in this issue featured endings that were a bit of a letdown. I don’t know if this was something the editors at Popular Publications wanted in order to increase the realism of the stories, but if so, I’m not sure it worked. These are Western pulps! I want leather to be slapped and powder to be burned. Despite that, this is a decent issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. Not one to seek out, maybe, but worth reading if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Max Brand's Western Magazine, October 1950

MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE was a reprint pulp, but it had new covers including this dandy one by Norman Saunders. Once again, trouble has reared its ugly head at an Old West poker game! MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE usually included a story by Max Brand, naturally, but not this time around. The stories are reprints from various 1920s and '30s issues of ARGOSY and ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY. The best-known authors are Bennett Foster and Kenneth Perkins. Also on hard are Christopher B. Booth and Carroll Lichty, neither of whom is familiar to me. Even though the stories are reprints, chances are few if any of the readers of this pulp had read them in their original appearances, so they probably got their quarter's worth.

Review: Boss of the Chisholm Trail - Guy L. Maynard

Guy L. Maynard wrote thirteen stories starring red-headed, gunslinging trail boss Flame Burns for the pulp WILD WEST WEEKLY in 1936, ’37, and ’38. But Flame also starred in BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, a Big Little Book published in 1939. Most of you are probably familiar with Big Little Books, those small, thick, chunky juvenile novels that featured text on the left-hand pages and illustrations on the right-hand pages. That wasn’t always the case—there are a couple of places in this book where text appears on both pages—but for the most part the books are about half as long as they appear to be, and the print is pretty big, so BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL is more of a novella than a novel.

The question is, did Maynard adapt it from any of his Flame Burns stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY? That certainly seems possible. Most of the Flame Burns pulp stories also feature Billy the Kid as a character, and in BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, Flame meets Billy for the first time, suggesting that this Big Little Book may have been taken from “Trail Pardners”, Flame’s debut novelette in the February 29, 1936 issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. Not having a copy of that issue, I can’t check for sure.

But what about BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, you ask? Is it any good? Well, I enjoyed it quite a bit, for whatever that’s worth. As the book opens, Flame has just arrived in Santa Fe with a trail herd he had to take over and bring in when the regular trail boss was killed. This is the first time Flame has acted as trail boss, but it won’t be the last. He soon meets the famous rancher known as “Old Man” Chisholm, whose bodyguard and closest ally is Billy the Kid. Chisholm hires Flame to ramrod a trail drive from the Texas Panhandle to Abilene.

This is as good a place as any to mention that Maynard totally mixes up Jesse Chisholm, who laid out the route that came to be known as the Chisholm Trail, and John Chisum, the New Mexico rancher who was both friend and enemy to Billy the Kid at different times. However, is strict historical accuracy all that important in a book like this? Probably not.

Flame sets out to deliver Chisholm’s cattle to Abilene, but trouble lurks along the way in the person of the evil Whiskey Dick Slavens and his gang of rustlers. Flame has a personal run-in with Slavens even before leaving Santa Fe, so the varmint has a grudge against our hero to start with. Stampedes and gunfights ensue as Flame tries to meet the challenges of his first real job as a trail boss.

Despite being aimed at a juvenile audience, BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL is no namby-pamby, “nobody dies” kid’s book. On the contrary, guns blaze a lot, and hombres both good and bad get ventilated on a regular basis. The violence may have been toned down a little, but this is a pretty hardboiled yarn. Obviously, kids in the Thirties were expected to be tough enough to take it. The story races along and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

My copy is missing the spine and is in fairly rough shape, but the text is all there and easy to read. The cover is truly ugly. The interior illustrations are by Ralph Hitchcock, and while most of them are pretty crude, some are not bad and do a good job of capturing the action. I’m not a collector or a regular reader of Big Little Books, although I read a lot of them as a kid when they were easier to find. But when one comes my way, I’m not going to hesitate to pick it up if it looks interesting.

I had read one of the later Flame Burns stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY and thought it was okay but nothing more than that. I think I actually enjoyed this version more. It’s an oddity, sure, but an entertaining one.

Now Available: Johnny Colt #2: No Tears in Hell

The second exciting adventure in a brand new Western series from James Reasoner!

The path to justice winds through the Gateway to Hell. Fourteen soldiers are dead, the shipment of rifles they were guarding is gone, and those responsible are hiding behind whiskey, cards, and dirty money. Johnny Colt arrives in Harker City, where nobody asks too many questions—unless they're prepared to pay for the answer. He is supposed to track down the killers and uncover the truth, but first, he needs to make them believe he is one of them.

Every man he meets seems meaner than the last, and a knife might be hiding behind every pretty smile in town. No Tears in Hell is a gritty Western about stolen guns, border bloodshed, and a Texas Ranger risking everything under an outlaw’s name. On the border, the truth often comes out with a gunshot!

(I realize I'm hardly an unbiased observer here, but I think this novel is a really good Western yarn with lots of interesting characters and plenty of fast-paced action. I had a great time writing it, and I hope many of you will have a great time reading it. It's available now on Amazon in very affordable e-book and paperback editions. I don't promote my stuff often, but if you've been thinking about buying this one, today would be a great day to do it. Release day sales always bump up the Amazon rankings, which help a lot.)

Review: Ezra Flint, U.S. Marshal: Gunfighter's Grave - Paul L. Thompson and Scott McCrea

I read one of Scott McCrea’s Ezra Flint novels a while back and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I wanted to try another book in the series. The most recent one, GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE, finds Flint teaming up with another U.S. Marshal, Shorty Thompson, the star of his own series of novels from Paul L. Thompson, who collaborates with McCrea on this novel.

The pair of lawmen prove to be a very potent duo as they set out on the trail of a man who just may be Billy the Kid, although as far as the world knows, the notorious outlaw is dead, gunned down in New Mexico by Pat Garrett. Flint and Shorty, who are old friends, are out to rescue a young woman they both consider a niece/little sister, who has recently married this mysterious stranger who may be one of the West’s most deadly killers.

Thompson and McCrea spin a really entertaining yarn in GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE, a story that brings in historical characters such as Dirty Dave Rudabaugh and Pat Garrett himself, retired now from being a lawman. The plot and the writing remind me a little of Bob Randisi’s long-running and legendary series The Gunsmith as the book races along in a blend of Old West history and fictional action.

What really makes GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE stand out, though, are the characters, especially the two protagonists. I already knew I liked Ezra Flint, a brooding, stoic philosopher who enforces the law while quoting Marcus Aurelius. He always puts me in mind of John Carradine. I hadn’t encountered Shorty Thompson before, but I’m glad I have now. Small in stature but mighty tough and feisty, he reminds me of a young Bob Steele. What a great series of B-Westerns those would have been, had these books been written ninety years ago.

You can count me as a fan of both series now, and I definitely plan to read more. In the meantime, if you enjoy gritty, fast-paced Western action, I think GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE is well worth reading. It’s available on Amazon from Dusty Saddle Productions in e-book and paperback editions.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, March 12, 1938

I don’t own this pulp, but thanks to the kindness of my friend Cullen Gallagher, I was able to read a PDF of its lead novelette, “Feud of the Haunted Corral”, featuring T.W. Ford’s best-known series character Solo Strant, also known as the Silver Kid. The cover on this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY is by H.W. Scott, and it’s an excellent illustration of the Silver Kid in action.

Solo Strant is a drifting gunfighter. He doesn’t hire out his gun, but he’s quick to pitch in when he sees someone being taken advantage of or an innocent person being threatened. As this yarn opens, that’s what happens when a gang of gun-wolves attacks a small ranch. Solo rides to the rescue, but as it turns out, he may not have done the right thing after all, since it looks like the rancher he rescued may be a murderer!

That’s the first mistake Solo makes in this story, but it’s not the last one. In fact, he seems uncharacteristically prone to making the wrong decisions. But that may have something to do with the extremely complicated plot Ford comes up with, which deals with a generations-long feud between two ranching families, assorted murders, mistaken identities, and the Haunted Corral, which is not a corral at all but rather an area of badlands where folks go in, but they seldom come out alive. The whole “shadow of the past” element in this novelette reminds me of many of Walt Coburn’s novels and stories.

“Feud of the Haunted Corral” is a fast-moving, entertaining story. Solo Strant is a likable protagonist, and I’ve enjoyed every story I’ve read about him. It’s pretty easy to spot the evil mastermind in this one, but that doesn’t take away from the pleasure of reading it. My thanks to Cullen for making that possible.

Elsewhere in this issue are stories by a number of WILD WEST WEEKLY stalwarts. Norman W. Hay, writing under the house-name William A. Todd, contributes a Risky McKee yarn. (All the Risky McKee stories are by Hay, and while William A. Todd is considered a house-name, it’s possible Hay wrote everything under that by-line. We’ll probably never know for sure.) There’s a Calamity Boggs story by Lee Bond. Guy L. Maynard pitches in with a Reckless Blaine story. (There are six Reckless Blaine stories, published in six consecutive issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY. I’d be surprised if Maynard didn’t cobble them together into a fix-up novel, but if he did, I can’t find any record of it.) J. Allan Dunn, Charles M. Martin, and Carl Raht contribute stand-alone stories. This appears to be a very good issue of one of my favorite Western pulps.

Review: Chainlink - Owen Evens (Dudley Dean McGaughey)

A friend of mine recommended this Western novel, so I hunted up a copy and read it. The author, Owen Evens, was actually Dudley Dean McGaughey, one of my favorite hardboiled Western writers, best known under his pseudonym Dean Owen. He also wrote as Dudley Dean, Owen Dudley, Dean McCoy, and Hodge Evens. As far as I know, CHAINLINK is the only novel on which he used the name Owen Evens. It was published as a paperback original by Ballantine in 1957 with a good cover by Mel Crair.

Purely coincidentally, this is the second novel I’ve read this month in which a ranch is named Chainlink. The other was in T.V. Olsen’s RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN. And like the Olsen novel, this CHAINLINK is pretty bleak and grim. In the days following the Civil War, former Union officer Griff Jordan returns to the Big Bend in Texas as the partner of former Confederate Major Milo Clay, who has just bought the Chainlink ranch.

Chainlink formerly belonged to brother and sister Clyde and Lisa Benbow. Clyde has vowed to reclaim the ranch, no matter what it takes, and he’s willing to kill to accomplish that goal. Making him an even more despicable villain, he has feelings for Lisa that are anything but brotherly. Also complicating matters is Major Clay’s niece Maydelle, who’s become the madam of the local whorehouse after being seduced by Clyde Benbow when she was sixteen. And no one in the area knows that Griff fought for the Union despite being a Texan, a secret that would cause plenty of trouble if it ever came out.

It’s a set-up that’s ripe for violence, angst, lust, and tragedy, and McGaughey provides plenty of all of those as Clyde Benbow sets out to take over Chainlink again. But Griff is plenty tough and fast on the draw, so he’s well-matched in this clash with the brutal Benbow and his minions. There’s plenty of gritty action, and as in Roe Richmond’s MONTANA BAD MAN, which I wrote about last week, the sexual elements are surprisingly graphic for a paperback Western published in 1957.

McGaughey was an excellent writer, able to spin a yarn with a relentless pace and interesting, if not always likable, characters. CHAINLINK is a fine example of his work. There was a large print edition in 2001, but other than that it hasn’t been reprinted. Reasonably priced copies of both editions can be found on-line. If you’re a fan of hardboiled Westerns, I recommend it and any of the other books by McGaughey, under all his pseudonyms.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, February 1941

This fine cover by Albin Henning is another prime example of how you couldn't sit down to enjoy a game of poker in the Old West without a gunfight breaking out. The hombre swinging in on a rope with his gun blazing is a nice twist, though. Some good authors are on hand in this issue of .44 WESTERN MAGAZINE: Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount), John G. Pearsol, Eli Colter, J.E. Grinstead, Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), and the lesser known Archie Giddings and Jay A. Constant, whose story in this issue is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index.

Review: Montana Bad Man - Roe Richmond

A friend of mine recommended this book to me recently, citing an unusual degree of sexual obsession and angst for a paperback Western published in 1957. Well, I found that intriguing enough to scout out a copy, and that’s it in the scan. I’ve read it now, and my friend was right. MONTANA BAD MAN isn’t as graphic as the Adult Westerns that began appearing a decade or so later, but it’s certainly got a lot more sex in it than you’d expect from a book of its vintage.

The protagonist of this novel (it’s hard to call him the hero) is Faris Dodrill, one of many characters who have somewhat odd names. I don’t know if author Roe Richmond was trying to be more realistic in naming his characters, but if he was, he went a little overboard. That said, I got used to it and it didn’t really bother me. As the book opens, Dodrill is working as the driver of a freight wagon. He and his brother were raised on a ranch in Montana, but after their father was killed by outlaws, they set off on an unsuccessful vengeance quest after the owlhoots. Eventually, they wind up marrying half-sisters whose father owns the freight company. Faris goes to work for his father-in-law while his brother Tucker returns to the family ran to try to keep it going. Faris hates the job, he and his wife have come to despise each other, and she regularly cheats on him with the local deputy sheriff.

Then, in the first of many tragic twists, Faris finds himself on the run from a murder charge with a big bounty on his head. He’s not really guilty, but circumstances keep pushing him farther and farther over the line into becoming an actual rustler and outlaw.

Even though it’s a relatively short book, maybe 60,000 words, MONTANA BAD MAN takes on an epic scale as it covers a year in the life of Faris Dodrill. Faris covers a lot of ground during that time, too, around Montana and Wyoming, visiting Devil’s Tower, the Hole in the Wall, and Cheyenne. He makes friends and enemies, buries murdered friends and loved ones, engages in numerous shootouts, cavorts with several women, and even winds up back on the other side of the law for a time, working for the cattleman’s association as a range detective. It’s all building up a final showdown with the mortal enemies who have harmed him the worst.

Although it’s not quite as much of a kitchen sink book, MONTANA BAD MAN reminds me a little of my favorite Louis L’Amour novel, TO TAKE A LAND, which has that same epic feel and numerous plotlines. Roe Richmond’s work is hit or miss with me, but most of his stand-alone novels and stories are excellent. This novel certainly falls into this category. Only an ending I found somewhat dissatisfying keeps it from being one of the top two or three books I’ve read this year. Richmond’s hardboiled prose is relentless, and his characters, although mostly unlikable, are compelling. Like the T.V. Olsen novel I read a few weeks ago, MONTANA BAD MAN is a thoroughly bleak and grim yarn, but that’s all right some of the time. If you’re a reader of Western noir, this is one of the best I’ve come across, and I give it a high recommendation. It's never been reprinted as far as I know, and I appear to have gotten the last reasonably priced copy on-line, but it's worth keeping your eyes open for one.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second August Number, 1957

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, and it’s in halfway decent shape for a change. The cover art is by Sam Cherry. Most of his covers aren’t signed, but you can see his signature in the lower right corner of this one, although it’s backwards, meaning the art was flipped.

Edwin Booth is a familiar name to me because he wrote at least a dozen Western novels, many of them published in the Ace Doubles line. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. He’s the author of this issue’s lead novella, “Once a Killer”, which finds the protagonist, Fred Irwin, returning to the hometown he left ten years earlier after killing a man in a gunfight. Everybody figured that meant he had turned into an outlaw, but in reality, he’s become a hard-working cowboy and finally saved up enough money to buy a ranch of his own. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of trouble orchestrated by a crooked saloon owner who wants to take over the town and all the surrounding ranches. Naturally, Irwin comes to the aid of an old rancher and the man’s beautiful daughter, and more trouble ensues. This is a very standard plot, but Booth provides some nice action scenes and a few well-developed characters. Overall, though, his style is definitely on the bland side, and that keeps this story from having the impact it might have had otherwise. It’s not bad, and I would read Booth’s work again, but I’m not going to be on the lookout for it.

Frank C. Robertson was a long-time, very prolific Western pulpster and novelist. His short story in this issue, “Practical Woman”, is a contemporary Western set in the Fifties, a domestic drama about the marriage of a spinster schoolteacher and a hard-headed rancher. It’s well-written, as all of Robertson’s work that I’ve read is, but it’s very low-key and unexciting and really peters out in the end. Robertson was a good author, but this isn’t a very good story.

Thankfully, old reliable Walker A. Tompkins comes along next with the novelette “The Deputy’s Daughter”. In this one, a young cowboy who buys a ranch finds himself framed for murder by the local cattle baron who wants to take over his spread. His only hope is the deputy sheriff’s beautiful blond daughter, who takes a likin’ to him and believes he’s innocent. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining yarn that suffers a little from the fact that it’s not a novella or even an actual novel. I felt like it could have used some room to develop the plot and characters more, and because of that, the ending feels a little rushed. I still liked it quite a bit, though.

“Heritage of Wrath” by M.E. Bradshaw (Marjory Bradshaw) is a Mountie story about a young RCMP officer who has to arrest the father of the girl he loves for murder, which makes her break off their engagement because she refuses to believe he’s guilty. Our Mountie hero has to dig deeper into the case to find out what really happened. This is an okay tale with a somewhat disappointing ending. Bradshaw published two dozen stories during the Fifties, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES.

Stephen Payne was very prolific, turning out several hundred stories for various Western pulps and digests between 1925 and 1970, along with a handful of novels. “Killer’s Conscience” in this issue is narrated by a 14-year-old ranch kid whose father was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sent to prison. The narrator’s encounter with an outlaw may hold the key to clearing his father’s name. This is a solid, well-written story that I enjoyed.

There’s also an installment of a serialized novel, Philip Ketchum’s THE STALKERS, that I didn’t read. I may have the book version of that one. I’ll have to check my shelves.

I should mention, as well, that there are several excellent interior illustrations by Everett Raymond Kinstler. I don’t talk about interior illustrations much, and I probably should. Kinstler was one of the very best at those.

Overall, considering how highly I rate many of the 1950s issues of RANCH ROMANCES, this one is probably a little below average. All of the stories kept me reading, but none of them really stood out as being top-notch, either. The ones by Tompkins and Payne are easily the best of the bunch, and the one by Booth is worth reading. Maybe don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy, though.