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: Frontier Stories, Summer 1945

I don't own this issue of FRONTIER STORIES, so I haven't read it. But it has a dramatic cover by Richard Case and a fine group of writers inside. The lead story by Les Savage Jr., "The Lone Star Camel Corps", may have been cannibalized for Savage for his novel ONCE A FIGHTER. It was reprinted in one of the Les Savage Jr. collections packaged by Jon Tuska and I have a copy of that book on order. I'm looking forward to reading the story. Also on hand in this issue of FRONTIER STORIES are William Heuman, Tom W. Blackburn, William R. Cox, R.S. Lerch, Fairfax Downey, and the lesser-known Ben T. Young and Raymond L. Hill. Lots of good reading there, I have no doubt about that.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, February 1948

I don't own this issue, so the information about it and the cover scan come from the invaluable Fictionmags Index. .44 WESTERN MAGAZINE, like all the other Popular Publications Western pulps, had good covers and good authors filling its pages. Robert Stanley did the excellent art on this cover (thanks to Robert R. Barrett for the artist ID), and I think it's the first one I've come across where a pocket watch gets shot, instead of some hombre's hat. Inside this issue are stories by William Heuman, Harry F. Olmsted, Dan Cushman, Tom Roan, Lee E. Wells, Clee Woods, Ben Frank, James Shaffer, and Harrison Colt. I'm not a fan of Ben Frank's work and don't really know anything about Shaffer or Colt, but the others are all dependable Western pulpsters. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Summer 1944

Since we had a little snow here recently, this seemed like a good time to post the cover from an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. And of course, it's always a good time to post a Norman Saunders cover, although I wouldn't put this one in the absolute top rank of his work. It's still dynamic and eye-catching, though. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one with stories by William Heuman, Archie Joscelyn, and Curtis Bishop (all best remembered for their Westerns but perfectly capable of writing excellent Northerns, as well), along with lesser-known authors Paul Selonke, Michael Oblinger, William Rush, Francis James (who was really the very prolific James A. Goldthwaite), and Q.C. Nindorf. I always enjoy Northerns and really need to read more of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, October 1944

That is one rough-looking hombre on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE. I'm not sure if that cover is by Sam Cherry or Robert Stanley, but it's a mighty good one no matter who painted it. I don't own this issue, but if you do, it looks like a good one to read since it includes stories by L.P. Holmes, Norman A. Fox, Tom W. Blackburn, Philip Ketchum, William Heuman, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), William R. Cox, and lesser-known authors Morgan Lewis and Joe Payne. It would be hard to find a better lineup of authors in a Western pulp from the mid-Forties.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, May 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know who did the cover art, but I’m not very impressed with it. I don’t guess they can all be by Norman Saunders or Robert Stanley or Sam Cherry, can they? Not that I could do any better, I hasten to add. I have no artistic ability whatsoever, so maybe I shouldn’t be complaining.

Anyway, this is the next to last issue of NEW WESTERN, a run that lasted twenty years. It’s also a pulp that was on the stands after I was born, although being less than a year old at the time, I doubt if I ever saw a copy back then. It leads off with a short story, something of a rarity since most pulps had a novella or novelette in the first position. “Blood Star for Satan” is by William Heuman, one of my favorite Western authors. The title doesn’t fit the story at all, and neither does the blurb that some editor at Popular Publications came up with. However, the story itself is a taut little tale about an inexperienced lawman having to deal with a trio of train robbers who ride into his town. Heuman has never disappointed me and he does a fine job with this suspenseful story.

Next is “Blast a Red Trail!” by Robert L. Trimnell, billed as a novelette on the Table of Contents but closer to novella length in my opinion. And it packs in enough plot that it could almost have been a novel. The story opens with the protagonist, Blaine Sandford, in jail, charged with murdering a man he hired to help him on his freight line. Sandford is innocent, of course, and the man who was killed had dropped some hints about having enemies back in the town where he came from, two hundred miles away. So when Sandford escapes, that’s where he heads, determined to dig up the secrets of the murdered man’s past and uncover the real killer.

He winds up in the middle of a war between a freight line operated by a beautiful young woman known as The Wench and some hired killers and corrupt businessmen working with the railroad that wants to extend into the area. If that’s not enough, there’s a lot of psychological drama going on behind the scenes and the sort of family secrets that often show up in the work of Ross Macdonald, Walt Coburn, and Max Brand. In fact, this offbeat story reminds me quite a bit of some of the stories by Max Brand (Frederick Faust).

“Blast a Red Trail!” took me completely by surprise. I’d read only one other story by Robert L. Trimnell in the past, as far as I recall, and it was a humorous Western I didn’t like very much. But this story is an absolutely terrific hardboiled Western yarn with fascinating characters and a terse, fast-moving style. Trimnell wrote about 120 stories in a pulp career that lasted only eight years from 1948 to 1956. After that, he wrote one historical novel published by Lion Books and a number of soft-core novels published by Beacon/Softcover Library under the pseudonym Brian Black, before turning out a Western series called The Loner in the Seventies. Those three novels were published under his real name by Manor Books and are expensive if you can find them. I don’t think I have any, but I’m going to check my shelves. And I’m certainly going to keep my eyes open for his name on Western pulp TOCs in the future. I want to read more by this guy.

“A Man Must Fight” is a short story by Roe Richmond, not one of my favorite Western authors but one who usually can depended on for a decent story. This one is very reminiscent of the movie HIGH NOON, with a lawman who is reluctant to seek help from the townspeople when a couple of outlaws show up intent on killing him. It’s set up as a moral dilemma story but is resolved pretty easily. Other than that, it’s okay but not very memorable.

“The Rider From Hell” is another title that must have been slapped on by an editor at Popular Publications, because it doesn’t fit J.L. Bouma’s story at all. This is another lawman story as a young deputy with new-fangled ideas about keeping the peace clashes with a hard-nosed old town-taming marshal of the “shoot ’em all and sort it out later” school. It’s a low-key tale without much action, and the drama comes more from the characters than from gunplay. It’s very well-written, and although this kind of story normally isn’t really in my wheelhouse, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Bouma is one of those authors who did mostly good work, published steadily for a long time, never achieved any real fame, and is mostly forgotten these days. He’s almost always worth reading, though.

Walt Coburn’s “The Death Dealer” is a long novelette that’s a reprint. It appeared originally in the July 1938 issue of DIME WESTERN MAGAZINE as “Signed On to Die”. That title makes a little more sense than “The Death Dealer”, although quite a bit of death is dealt in this yarn. As usual with Coburn’s work, there’s a ton of back-story and a plot that’s almost too complicated to follow and difficult to describe. What we have is a stalwart young cowboy from Montana who buys a spread in Arizona known as the Haunted Cave Ranch because, well, there’s a cave on it that may well be haunted. You see, a gang of outlaws used it as a hideout and there’s a rumor that a fortune in loot is hidden in it. There’s even supposed to be a map split up in a number of pieces that, if combined, will lead to the treasure. Throw in not two but three, count ’em, three feuding owlhoot families, a beautiful girl and her spunky twin brother, a crooked range detective, some false identities, and last-minute revelations from ’way out in left field, and you have a confusing but fast-moving, action-packed, and downright compelling tale . . . which accurately describes a lot of Coburn’s work. This one is goofy as all get-out, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

I’ve probably mentioned before how I met Fred Grove at the Western Writers of America convention in San Angelo, Texas, in 1990. Let me tell you, sitting and talking with Fred Grove for a couple of hours at an outdoor barbecue, under some giant pecan trees on the banks of the Concho River as the cool of the evening settled down over West Texas, is a pretty darned good memory. His short story “Satan’s Saddlemate” wraps up this issue. (What was it with the editor of this issue? This is the second story with “Satan” in the title, plus we also have “The Rider From Hell”.) This one is about a cavalry patrol in Texas coming on a family of settlers massacred by Comanches and trailing the war party back to their village for a showdown. There’s also a white girl captive to be rescued. Although there’s some nice action late in this story, most of it is rather low-key and introspective. Grove was a really fine writer and does a good job of capturing the time and place. He’s always worth reading, and this story is no exception.

This is a very solid issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. There’s not a bad story in the bunch, and several of them are very good to excellent. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s very much worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North*West Romances, Fall 1945

I like posting snowy covers of Northern pulps during the summer when the weather is hot. This one is by the always-excellent George Gross. This issue of NORTH*WEST ROMANCES also has some fine authors in its pages, most notably Dan Cushman, Les Savage Jr., and William Heuman. Those three are enough to make any pulp issue worthwhile by themselves. Also on hand are R.S. Lerch, Kenneth P. Wood, Larry McLane, R.A. Emberg, Paul Selonke, and Michael Oblinger. I like listing the authors' names, even the ones I've never heard of, because every so often somebody will be searching on-line for mentions of a relative, and then they email that So-and-So was their grandfather or great-uncle or something, and they're excited to see the name in a post. That always makes me feel good.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, October 1942

Wanted posters show up a lot on Western pulp covers. Usually, the outlaw depicted on the poster is standing there either shooting or about to shoot. You can't really tell if the fellow on the cover of this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES is also the one on the reward dodger, but there's a good chance he is. There are stories by some fine Western pulpsters in this issue: Philip Ketchum, William Heuman, Thomas Thompson, and Frank Bonham. Other well-known authors in this one include Joe Austell Small, R.S. Lerch, John Wilstach (better known for his adventure yarns in ARGOSY and elsewhere), Carl G. Hodges (best remembered for his mystery stories and novels), and Edwin K. Sloat. Then there are the ones I'm not familiar with--P.J. Delanoye, Roy B. Angell, and W.W. Montgomery--and house names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit. I'm going to name the hero in a Western novel Lance Kermit one of these days. I'm sure this is a good issue since the Popular Publications Western pulps were consistently top-notch.

UPDATE: As Paul Herman points out in the comments, this hombre is wearing a lawman's star, so he's not the outlaw on the wanted poster. And since there's powdersmoke coming from the barrel of his gun, I reckon we can figure he just ventilated the owlhoot in question. Dadgum it, I don't know how I missed that! Thanks, Paul.

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.

Hardcase Halloran - William Heuman

A solid hardboiled Ace Double Western from one of the most reliable authors in the genre. Gun-for-hire Thorpe Halloran sets out on a personal mission for a change, the search for the corrupt army officer responsible for the theft of a large payroll and the murder of sixteen soldiers, including Thorpe’s younger brother. Heuman mixes in a bit of a range war plot and a romantic triangle in this vengeance quest yarn and does a good job of bringing everything to a satisfactory climax with a nice shootout in a ghost town. A few bits get a little repetitive, which keeps this from landing in the top rank of Heuman’s work, but it’s still very entertaining and well worth reading. His books and stories usually have good opening lines and this one is no exception:  The way Thorpe Halloran had it figured out, a man was going to die this night. I kind of had to keep turning the pages after that.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western Stories, January 1946

Looks like H.W. Scott's work to me on the cover of this issue of SPEED WESTERN STORIES. Inside are stories by the consistently good authors William Heuman and Laurence Donovan, plus James W. Routh, who was a regular contributor to RANCH ROMANCES for many years, house name Paul Hanna (possibly Donovan since he has a story under his own name in this issue), and an author I haven't heard of, Warren Bean. Heuman's story is probably a reject from a better market, but I suspect it's still good.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, April 1954

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with the usual excellent, evocative cover by Sam Cherry.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue is “The Seventh Bullet”, written by Walker A. Tompkins under the Jackson Cole house name. Tompkins was the third-most prolific author of Hatfield novels after Leslie Scott (who created the series) and Tom Curry, who between them wrote a little more than half the series’ entire run. Tompkins wrote a bunch of them, though, and the ones I’ve read have ranged from very good to excellent.

By the Fifties, the Hatfield stories were a little grittier and more realistic than the ones from the Thirties and Forties, and “The Seventh Bullet” is no exception. As it opens, Hatfield is in a West Texas cowtown to pick up a prisoner: a member of a counterfeiting/smuggling ring that has been flooding the country with fake ten-dollar gold pieces. The prisoner also murdered the local sheriff, leaving the lawman’s beautiful blond daughter to pin on the badge and take the varmint into custody.

Hatfield’s mission seems simple: deliver the prisoner to Austin. But of course, things don’t work out that way. The prisoner is rescued by a shadowy gunman wielding a six-shooter that somehow fires seven bullets instead of the usual six. Naturally, Hatfield’s not going to let a prisoner get away, and in the process of going after him, the Ranger sets out to bust up the counterfeiting ring and discover the mastermind behind it.

Tompkins keeps things moving along at a brisk pace with plenty of action, and as usual, he throws in some clever plot twists, too, such as the method the villains use to smuggle the phony coins into the country. “The Seventh Bullet” isn’t in the top rank of Tompkins’ Hatfield novels, but it’s a solid, very entertaining yarn.

Moving on to the backup stories, first up is a short story entitled “The Brass Ring”, by an author whose work I’m not very fond of, Ben Frank. This is a stand-alone, not part of Frank’s two series featuring Doc Swap and Deputy Booboo Bounce. It’s a mild little comedy, the sort of thing Frank specialized in, featuring a good-hearted rancher who’s too much of an easy touch for hard-luck stories and is always broke because of it. It’s really predictable but pleasant enough that I read the whole thing.

“Ride to Tucson” by W.J. Reynolds couldn’t be more of a contrast. This is a grim, violent, suspenseful yarn about a man and woman trying to escape from a band of marauding Apaches in Arizona Territory. I’ve read several stories by W.J. Reynolds and been impressed by them. This is another good one. I don’t know anything about Reynolds except that between the mid-Forties and the early Seventies, he wrote about 120 Western and crime stories for assorted pulps, digests, and men’s magazines. I’m always glad to see his name in a Table of Contents.

George Kilrain was a pseudonym used by one of my favorite Western writers, William Heuman, for approximately 30 stories in various Western and sports pulps in the decade between the mid-Forties and the mid-Fifties. The Kilrain novelette in this issue, “Too Tough”, is, in fact, the final story to be published under that name. And it features one of the most unusual protagonists I’ve come across in Western pulps: a two-fisted, fast-shootin’ ventriloquist. Sad Sam Bones is a vaudeville performer, a comedian and song-and-dance-man as well as a ventriloquist, who travels the West performing with different theatrical troupes and also righting wrongs. In this tale, he helps out a theater owner in a mining boomtown whose shows keep getting sabotaged. This results in a number of fistfights and shootouts in which Sad Sam’s enemies keep underestimating him because, going by his description, he looks a lot like Don Knotts. And how I would have loved to see Don play the part on TV! Anyway, the ending of this story really makes it seem like Heuman intended it to be the first of a series, but as far as I know, it’s Sad Sam’s only appearance. That’s a shame, because this is a great story and I really enjoyed it. (Heuman also used the Kilrain name on two novels, SOUTH TO SANTA FE and MAVERICK WITH A STAR, both published as halves of Ace Doubles.)

You know Gordon D. Shirreffs’ work is nearly always good. He rounds out this issue with the short story “The Hollow Hero”, about a deputy marshal’s clash with a notorious gunman recently released from a 20-year stretch in Yuma Prison. The man claims he wants to go straight and even opens a law office, but are his old killer instincts still there just waiting to be unleashed? This one has a decent plot, some nice action, and a clever resolution. It’s minor Shirreffs, but that’s still pretty darned good.

Overall, this is an exceptional issue of TEXAS RANGERS with a good Jim Hatfield novel, a terrific story by William Heuman, and solid yarns by Gordon D. Shirreffs and W.J. Reynolds. Even the Ben Frank story is inoffensive and mildly entertaining. If you’re a TEXAS RANGERS fan and have this one on your shelves, it’s well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, November 1943

And so another Old West poker game comes down to a powdersmoke payoff on the cover of this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. Sam Cherry was doing most of the covers for FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES during this era, but this one doesn't strike me as being Cherry's work. Whoever painted it, it's effective, no doubt about that. Inside are some excellent authors, including William Heuman, Tom W. Blackburn, Rod Patterson, Lee E. Wells, M. Howard Lane, Glenn Shirley, James Shaffer, Thomas Calvert McClary, house-names David Crewe, Ray P. Shotwell, and Logan C. Claybourne, and lesser-known authors Edwin K. Sloat and Byron W. Dalrymple. That poker player's left hand seems oddly misshapen. I'd like to think that plays into one of the stories inside, but I doubt it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, July 1948

I like to think that if I'd been around during the pulp era, I could have written for LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE. This issue features another dynamic cover by Allen Anderson. Inside are stories by some top pros: William Heuman, W.T. Ballard, and Laurence Donovan, plus lesser-known but still prolific Al Storm, H. Frederic Young, and Costa Carousso. The lead novella is by William J. Hodgson, and the odd thing about that is that it's his only story listed in the Fictionmags Index. I'm not sure why a writer would get cover-featured with his first (and apparently only) story, but that happened some in the pulps. Or maybe Hodgson was actually a pseudonym for somebody else in that issue. Heuman, Ballard, and Donovan wrote a lot, under many different names. Likely we'll never know, but I always find these questions intriguing.

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.

Forgotten Books: Rimrock Town - William Heuman

The mining novel is a popular sub-genre of the Western. Sometimes it’s mixed with another sub-genre, such as the ranch novel, and in a book like that you’re nearly always going to have a big brawl between cowboys and miners somewhere along the way. William Heuman’s RIMROCK TOWN, published by Hillman in 1957, is a mining novel without a cowboy in sight, or a cow, for that matter. It’s set in Rimrock, Montana, a thinly disguised version of Butte, and centers around the bitter rivalry between two mining tycoons, Boyd Garrison and William Andrews.

Winding up in the middle of this brewing war is newcomer Harlan Craig, who owned a stage line in California that went out of business following the arrival of the railroad. Now at loose ends, Craig has drifted to Rimrock to see if he can make his fortune some other way. When he saves Boyd Garrison from an ambush, the mining magnate hires him as a bodyguard, which puts Craig in the thick of trouble, because Andrews has started importing gunmen to destroy Garrison’s operation.

Oh, and there are two beautiful women in the mix, as well, the daughter of the local judge (who is in Garrison’s pocket) and another newcomer to Rimrock, an ambitious redhead who opens a dress shop. There’s a nicely done romantic rectangle involving those two ladies, Craig, and Garrison, but Heuman doesn’t spent nearly as much time on that as he does on gunfights, ambushes, brutal fistfights, sabotage, explosions, and a harrowing battle deep underground.

Heuman is one of my favorite hardboiled Western writers, and he’s in excellent form in this novel, which I raced through and thoroughly enjoyed. If you like traditional Westerns and come across a copy, RIMROCK TOWN is well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, January 1944

We have a tough-looking hombre, courtesy of Sam Cherry, gracing the cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. The collection of authors inside is pretty good, too: William Heuman, Philip Ketchum, Les Savage Jr., Tom W. Blackburn, Chuck Martin, Rod Patterson, M. Howard Lane, James C. Lynch, James Shaffer, house-names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit, and lesser known authors Frederick Bales and Joe Payne. They always counted the features in FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES, so actually there are only thirteen stories in this one.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, June 1947

We can add another category to the things we see on Western pulp covers: Injury to a Saddle. This is a really nice, dynamic cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. And as was common with the Popular Publications Western pulps, a strong group of authors with stories inside, as well. In this case, Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden), William Heuman, Walker A. Tompkins, William R. Cox (twice, once as himself and once as house-name David Crewe), Joe Archibald, Barry Cord (Peter Germano), T.C. McClary, the mysterious Frank Morris, Wallace Umphrey, James Shaffer, and house-name Lance Kermit. A very entertaining issue, I suspect.

Saturday Afternoon Western Pulp: Ace-High Western Stories, July 1949

I'm going to be writing a book set in Death Valley later this year, but I won't be able to call it "Death Valley Gun-Devils". I would if I could! I'm sure this is a good story, though, since it's by William Heuman. Other authors in this issue of ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES are Tom Roan, Richard Brister, Larry Harris, and Harold F. Cruickshank. I don't know who painted the cover. Something about the guy's head looks just a bit off to me, as if it doesn't quite sit right on his body, but seeing as I have no artistic talent whatsoever, I feel a little bad about criticizing it. Overall I like it and think it's another exciting Popular Publications cover.

Forgotten Books: Ride For Texas - William Heuman

Despite the excellent Frank McCarthy painting and the cover copy, William Heuman’s 1954 Gold Medal novel RIDE FOR TEXAS is not a Western. Rather, it’s a historical novel, set in 1835 and opening on the Mississippi River, as Joel Barnett, a fledgling lawyer from Kentucky, and two of his friends are on their way to New Orleans on a flatboat. Joel intends to set up a legal practice there.

Then a sternwheeler riverboat roars past them, almost swamping them, but as the boat heads on downriver, Joel notices someone floundering around in the water and figures one of the riverboat’s passengers has fallen off. He jumps in to rescue the person, of course, and in what probably won’t be a surprise to many readers, that passenger turns out to be a beautiful young woman. Joel quickly figures out, as well, that she didn’t fall off accidentally but jumped instead, hoping to reach the flatboat, because she’s in danger.

Before you know it, Joel and his sidekicks are helping the girl fend off a kidnapping attempt in New Orleans, after which they promise to help her get back to her home in Texas, which is still part of Mexico at this time, although revolution is brewing there because of the dictator Santa Anna’s mistreatment of the American colonists who have settled Texas. There’ll be a lot of danger and double-crosses and battles before they can reunite the girl with her father, though.

If you don’t go into RIDE FOR TEXAS expecting a high degree of historical and geographical accuracy, you can appreciate this book for what it is: a rousing, fast-paced adventure novel. Heuman’s knowledge of Texas seems to be about on the same level as that of a B-Western movie, but he can sure spin an entertaining yarn, a talent honed during a couple of decades as one of the top contributors to the Western pulps. I really enjoyed this book. Joel Barnett is a very likable protagonist, as are his friends and allies. The battle scenes set in San Antonio, as the Texans try to drive General Cos’s army out of the city, are excellent and probably the most historically accurate part of the novel. The ending is a bit downbeat because we all know what’s going to happen next, but on the other hand, we don’t know what the fate of these particular characters will be, so there’s that bit of optimism.

The best pulp novels centered around the Texas Revolution that I’ve read are BOWIE KNIFE and TEXAS SHALL BE FREE!, both by H. Bedford-Jones, originally serialized in ARGOSY and reprinted in recent years by Altus Press. However, RIDE FOR TEXAS is well worth reading if you ever come across a copy of the original Gold Medal edition, which is likely the only one there’ll ever be.