Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, March 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who did the cover. It might be A. Leslie Ross. The hats look like his work, and so does the sketchiness of some of the details. But I’m not completely convinced it’s by Ross. As always, I’d love to hear what some of you think. NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE lasted only two more issues after this one, so it was on its last legs, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t still a good Western pulp.

I’ve come to realize that Roe Richmond was a pretty good hardboiled Western author despite my dislike for his Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS. His novelette “Bullets Speak My Name!” leads off this issue. The first half of this story is mostly domestic drama as Marshal Jim Elrod tries to reform his wastrel best friend Tucker Brody. Jim and Tuck grew up together, but then Tuck married the girl Jim might have. Now Tuck neglects his family to gamble and carouse with the bad element in town. A murder for which Tuck is blamed raises the stakes even more and leads to several gritty action scenes. Richmond keeps things moving along at a reasonably fast clip and wraps things up in a satisfying way. This is a solid story, nothing special but definitely entertaining.

Will Cook has a solid reputation as a Western writer, but I haven’t been impressed by what I’ve read from him. His story “The Devil’s Double” resembles Richmond’s novelette in that it’s mostly domestic drama. Instead of best friends, we have brothers clashing in this yarn. One is stalwart, the other a ne’er-do-well. The action is sparse, nobody in the story is particularly sympathetic, and I didn’t care for it. So it didn’t change my opinion of Will Cook’s work. Maybe the next one I encounter will.

“Death Rides My Guns!” is the cover story by Richard Ferber. It’s almost entirely very gritty action as a young man fights to reclaim the ranch that’s been stolen from him by his three half-brothers. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but this is the second story in a row in this issue in which the conflict is between brothers. I liked Ferber’s story considerably more than Will Cook’s.

H.A. DeRosso is well-known for the emotional, and sometimes physical, torment he heaps on his characters. In “Two Bullets to Hell”, railroad troubleshooter Sam Lane returns to his home to seek revenge on the man he blames for the murder of his brother-in-law, while at the same time keeping the ranch going that his widowed sister now owns. It’s a very well-written yarn, as you’d expect from DeRosso, and has several twists and turns in the plot. The only real problem with it is that none of the characters are the least bit likable, even the ones you’d think would be sympathetic. It’s a bleak, bitter story. I admire the writing, but I didn’t find it particularly enjoyable.

William Heuman is one of my favorite Western authors, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a cavalry vs. Indians story by him. He generally wrote about lawmen, outlaws, and gunfighters. His story in this issue, “Dead Man’s Pass”, is a cavalry story with a slight twist. It’s set in Oregon instead of somewhere in the Southwest, as such stories usually are, and the Indians are Modocs, not Apaches or Comanches. A group of cavalrymen are pinned down and outnumbered, and the only way for them to escape involves a daring plan almost certain to result in the death of the officer who leads it. However, one of the lieutenants who would normally lead such a breakout is the son of the major in command of the troops. It’s a compelling moral dilemma, and Heuman comes up with an interesting way to solve it. The writing is excellent. I thought the ending might have been a bit too abrupt, but overall “Dead Man’s Pass” is a very good story.

Stone Cody’s novelette “The Kid From Hell” was published originally under the title “The Lost Gunman” in the November 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. Cody was actually Thomas E. Mount, who also wrote under the pseudonym Oliver King. Mount is one of my favorite Western pulpsters and was also a pretty interesting character in real life. You can read more about his background here in my review of his novel THE GUN WITH THE WAITING NOTCH. “The Kid From Hell” is an amnesia story, something that you come across now and then in the pulps. Young Dave Walker and the old-timer who raised him are gunned down by hired killers working for the range hog who wants their ranch. The old-timer is killed, and Dave is thrown into an empty boxcar on a passing train. The gunmen figure he’ll be dead by the time he’s found. But he survives, of course, except he doesn’t remember who he is or how he got shot. And when he recovers, he falls in with a gang of outlaws . . .

Mount packs enough plot into this novelette for a novella or possibly even a novel. In fact, I think it would have been even better at a longer length since he has to cover quite a bit of ground in a hurry at times. But it’s still a very, very good yarn. I really like the way Mount writes. The characters are interesting, the dialogue is good, the action is plentiful, and even his shorter stories have an epic feel to them. I definitely intend to read more by him.

The stories by Mount and Heuman are certainly the highlights of this issue, but Richmond and Ferber turn in pretty good stories, too. The DeRosso was slightly disappointing but still readable, and the one by Will Cook was the only story I didn’t like. So I’d say this is a good issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE, worth reading if you have it on your shelves.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, May 1967

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. As usual with RANCH ROMANCES during this era, calling it a pulp is a wee bit of a stretch (it has trimmed edges and slightly smaller dimensions than a traditional pulp), but it’s certainly not a digest so pulp is the term that fits it the best, I think. And it’s certainly in the pulp tradition, having been published, at that time, for 43 years as the masthead indicates. I don’t know who did the cover, but it’s a good one.

By the time RANCH ROMANCES’ run ended in 1971, it was pretty much all reprint, but four years earlier in this issue, there are only two reprints and most of the stories were new. The issue leads off with one of those new entries, a short story by William Heuman called “Lady Killer”. Heuman was one of the great hardboiled Western pulpsters and paperbackers, but this story isn’t hardboiled at all. It’s a lighthearted tale about the town handyman courting the new schoolmarm and having to fight one of the other townies in order to take her to a dance. I don’t think Heuman was capable of writing a story that wasn’t entertaining, so this one is enjoyable to read, although a very minor piece in his body of work.

Next up is “Perris” by Lee Martin, an author who contributed several dozen stories to RANCH ROMANCES and other magazines during the Sixties. It’s about a young, pregnant woman trying to escape from the father of her child, a gunslinging killer recently released from prison. The fact that she’s pregnant and unmarried is a definite nod to the loosening of moral strictures in the Sixties, I think, although a venerable pulp like RANCH ROMANCES is kind of an odd place for that to show up. This story is okay at best. There’s not much to it and it never generates much suspense or drama.

The first reprint in this issue is the novelette “Where the Hangman Waits” by Eric Allen. It appeared originally in the First July Number, 1954 of RANCH ROMANCES. I recognize Allen’s name as the author of several Western novels set in Arkansas that I haven’t read. This story takes place next door in Indian Territory, where a town-taming lawman returns to his old stomping grounds to find out the truth when his brother is accused of murder and save him from Judge Parker’s gallows. This is the first thing I’ve read by Allen, and I found it to be okay without being overly impressed by it. He does a good job with the setting, but he has a habit of having his characters constantly call each other by name when they’re talking, a stylistic touch that always annoys me. I enjoyed this story enough that I would read more by Allen, but I’m not going to seek out his work, either.

The short story “Golden Girl” is the only credit in the Fictionmags Index for author Ken Clayton. The prose is fairly polished, though, leading me to suspect that name may be a pseudonym. This is a good contemporary Western about a former G.I. who’s prospecting for gold in Arizona. He comes across a beautiful young female rancher and her foreman, and eventually the two men clash over the girl, as you’d expect. The contemporary setting and the good writing make this one worth reading.

Gordon Redmond published four stories in RANCH ROMANCES in the mid-Sixties. That’s all I know about him. His story in this issue, “Kirby’s Woman”, is the last of those four. It’s a tale about a drifting cowboy who encounters a notorious outlaw’s woman and falls for her even though he’ll be risking his neck to do so. I thought this was going to be one of those stories with a really obvious twist ending—and it is, but it wasn’t the ending I was expecting. That elevates it a little from the average to the slightly above average.

This issue wraps up with the cover-featured novel “Fury at Painted Rock” by Will Cook. This is also a reprint, appearing originally in the Third September Number, 1954. For much of its run, RANCH ROMANCES had an odd dating system, usually two issues a month called the First and Second Numbers for that month. It’s rare for the dates to work out so that there was a Third Number some months. But to get to the story itself, which is actually a novella, I think this is the first thing I’ve read by Will Cook, although I’ve seen his name on paperbacks and in pulp TOCs for many years. He also used the pseudonyms James Keene, Frank Peace, and Dan Riordan. Like Eric Allen’s story, this one is also about a lawman returning to his hometown. In this case, the protagonist is a U.S. Marshal sent in to try to keep the peace between an old cattle baron and a bunch of homesteaders who are moving in. I wanted to like this one since it would have been good to find another new-to-me author whose work I like, but I’m afraid I found it pretty disappointing. The plot just kind of trudged along, and the writing never seemed to generate much excitement. I think I must have missed something because Cook was a popular author for a long time, and I might try something else by him, but I won’t be in any hurry to do so.

Considering that the best story in the issue is a short, very lightweight entry by William Heuman, I’d say this is a below-average issue of RANCH ROMANCES. However, I’m glad I read it because I came across something very unexpected in it. For most of its run, RANCH ROMANCES had a feature entitled “Our Air Mail” in which readers wrote in seeking pen pals. They would describe themselves and their interests and say whether they were seeking male or female pen pals, or both. The second letter in this issue’s column is from a young lady named Charlene, who was 20 years old, 5’5”, and 125 pounds, and interested in all sports including boxing and car racing. Since it really was a different world back then, people didn’t think twice about having their home addresses published in a national magazine. Our young friend Charlene was, in fact, from the same little town where I grew up and still live. Her street is about three miles from where I’m sitting at this moment. And since she was 20 years old in 1967, it’s entirely possible she’s still alive. Charlene, if you’re out there, I hope you found some good pen pals.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story Magazine, August 1953

Once again, an Old West poker game is about to end badly. This is from the usually forgotten Popular Publications incarnation of WESTERN STORY, after it was cancelled at Street & Smith four years earlier. The magazine lasted only about a year and a half at Popular, but its lack of success didn't have anything to do with its quality, in my opinion. It generally had good covers, such as this one by Charles Dye, and excellent authors. This issue contains stories by Will Cook (twice, as himself and as Frank Peace), George C. Appell, William Heuman (a reprint from FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES), Fred Grove, Leslie Ernenwein, Bruce Cassiday, lesser-known pulpster Frank Scott York, and Richard H. Nelson, who was really William L. Hamling, science fiction fan, editor, and publisher of the SF digests IMAGINATION AND IMAGINATIVE TALES, as well as the publisher of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soft-core novels in the late Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, August 1953

This is a pretty sedate cover, but I like it a lot anyway. There's a nice sense of impending menace to it, and that's a really beautiful woman. I don't know the artist. The authors inside this issue of STAR WESTERN are good ones, as well: Joseph Chadwick, Will Cook, Frank Castle, J.L. Bouma, Van Cort (Wyatt Blassingame), Kenneth L. Sinclair, and Cy Kees. Even this late in the game, STAR WESTERN was a very good Western pulp.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, April 1953

It's not often you see the Old Geezer on a Western pulp cover without his pards, the Stalwart Cowboy and the Angry, Gun-Totin' Redhead, but here he is on this 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE cover by Norman Saunders. I like the way he can shoot it out with the bad guys and continue smoking his pipe. He's a tough old bird. This is probably a pretty tough-minded issue, too, with stories by H.A. DeRosso and Jonathan Craig, along with Lee Floren, Robert Trimnell, Will Cook, Bill Burchardt, and some lesser-known Western pulpsters including Doc Winchester, a by-line that has to be a pseudonym or house-name, although it hasn't been identified as such.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, April 1954

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