Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, July 1943

"Ranny on the Rampage" describes my state of mind fairly often, but in this case it's the title of a story by one of my favorite Western authors, J. Edward Leithead. As usual, Leithead has a second story in this issue of WESTERN TRAILS under his most-used pseudonym, Wilson L. Covert. Several other good authors are on hand, too: Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), C. William Harrison, Orlando Rigoni, and Glenn Shirley. I don't know who did the action-packed cover art, but I like it. Appears to be another good issue of this underrated Western pulp.

Forgotten Books: Lone Rider - Ernest Haycox

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve come around to being a fan of Ernest Haycox’s work, especially the numerous novellas he published in various Western pulps during the late Twenties and early Thirties. LONE RIDER, published by Popular Library in 1959, reprints two of those novellas, “The Black Clan” from the June 10, 1931 issue of SHORT STORIES and “Lin of Pistol Gap” from the May 14, 1930 issue of WEST (which was published by Doubleday at the time, although later on it was one of the Thrilling Group pulps published by Better/Standard).

“The Black Clan”, which is retitled “Lone Rider” in this paperback reprint, finds drifting hardcase Jeff Rawlins taking a job on the right side of the law for a change: protecting an isolated horse ranch from a family of outlaws who have their own town high in the hills. Rawlins finds himself saddled with untrustworthy allies, plagued by crooked lawmen, and ultimately bushwhacked, only to be helped out by a mysterious young woman. It’ll come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the young woman is connected to the outlaw clan Rawlins is trying to bust up. There’s also an enigmatic gunman who comes in and out of the story, sometimes befriending Rawlins, other times opposing him, and I’ll admit, even with several decades of experience in plotting these things myself, I didn’t know what to make of this character or how Haycox was going to resolve the conflict between him and Rawlins. That sort of uncertainty is a nice change of pace, and overall this novella is a top-notch yarn with plenty of action and good writing.

“Lin of Pistol Gap” is a feud story. The war between the Merchant family and the Quarles family has been in an uneasy truce for four years, but the election of a sheriff sympathetic to the Quarles side brings the hotheaded fugitive Rainy Quarles back to the valley, ready to resume the bloodshed. Lin Merchant, the leader of his faction, wants to maintain the peace, but that won’t be easy to do, especially once he finds himself falling for his arch-enemy’s sister. There’s also a mysterious stranger in this one, like in “The Black Clan”, and the reader doesn’t know where he’s going to land. This is the weaker of the two stories, with a lot of scenes that are all talk and seem to go on and on (something that’s quite common in Haycox’s work), but when the action finally breaks out near the end, it’s well done and the climax is quite satisfying.

Overall, LONE RIDER is a nice little reprint package and a vintage paperback worth picking up if you’re a Western fan and come across a copy. I’ll continue reading these Haycox pulp novellas when I find them.

Happy Thanksgiving

I promise you, I won't be riding out in the snow this morning to bag a turkey, but that doesn't mean I can't wish all of you who celebrate it a very Happy Thanksgiving. That's the November 25, 1922 issue of WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE, by the way, with the usual big, clean stories of outdoor life. This issue has part of the serial "Wild Freedom" by Frederick Faust writing as George Owen Baxter (later published as a novel by Max Brand), plus a story by Frank Richardson Pierce and some other yarns by authors you've never heard of and most of them I haven't, either. My plans for the day include some work, plenty of good food, probably watching the dog show on TV, and some rest and relaxation. Best wishes to you all.

Overlooked Movies: Montana (1950)

I’ve always found it a bit odd that Errol Flynn made so many Western movies, but I have to admit, he generally works pretty well in them. The Old West was a little more cosmopolitan place that it’s usually given credit for.

MONTANA is one of Flynn’s Westerns that I hadn’t seen until recently. It’s also one of the two movies where he plays an Australian, his true nationality. DESPERATE JOURNEY, which I watched and reviewed a while back, is the other.

Flynn’s character, Morgan Lane, is a sheepman whose father was run out of Montana at the point of a gun years earlier by the cattle barons who rule the range. He’s determined to return and establish a sheep ranch there, gaining a measure of revenge for what happened to his father. The cattle barons, led by beautiful Alexis Smith and her smarmy fiance Douglas Kennedy, threaten to wipe out Flynn and his sheep before they’ll let them ruin the cattle range. There’s also a colorful peddler/medicine wagon owner, played by S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, who gets involved in the clash, plus various sheepherders working for Flynn and cowboys/gunmen working for Smith and Kennedy.

Naturally, Flynn and Smith fall for each other, despite being on opposite of this war. There are fistfights, cattle stampedes, sheep stampedes, and the occasional gunfight. Plus lots of talk. Since the script is based on a story by Ernest Haycox, you could expect that. (Not a pulp story but rather an original story written for Hollywood, from what I gather.)

There’s nothing here you haven’t seen many times before. But the movie looks pretty good most of the time, Flynn is his usual charming self, and director Ray Enright (with an uncredited assist from Raoul Walsh) keeps things moving along at a decent pace. MONTANA is about as generic a Western as you’ll ever see, but sometimes that’s exactly what I want and I enjoyed it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy-Adventure Stories, August 1941

"Tropic Hell" by Henry Kuttner? I'm ready to read that right now, and I might if I actually owned this issue of SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES, which also sports a nice cover by Allen Anderson. The rest of the issue looks pretty promising, too, with two stories by Victor Rousseau (one as by Lew Merrill and one as by Stan Warner, the latter of which is a reprint of a story originally published as by Clive Trent), two by E. Hoffmann Price (one as by Clark Nelson and one as by Arthur Cutler, both reprints of yarns originally published under Price's real name; the Cutler is one of his Don Cragston yarns), and other assorted house-names and one-shot or little-known authors. With their habit of reprinting stories under different titles and by-lines, all the Spicy pulps are a bit of a maze, but there's a lot of good reading to be found in them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1945

Here's an issue of THRILLING WESTERN with an action-packed cover. I don't know the artist. But the table of contents is full of Thrilling Group stalwarts: Leslie Scott with a Walt Slade novella, Syl MacDowell with a Swap and Whopper yarn, Donald Bayne Hobart, Ben Frank, Cliff Walters, and Mel Pitzer, all familiar names if you read the Western pulps published by Standard Publications. I'm not that fond of some of 'em, mind you, but I've found Scott and Hobart to always be worth reading.

Forgotten Books: Casca #2: God of Death - Barry Sadler

Almost a year ago, I read the first book in the Casca series by Barry Sadler and really enjoyed it. I didn’t mean for so much time to go by before I got back to the series, but that’s the way it happened. I’ve finally read the second book, GOD OF DEATH, which picks up the story of Casca Rufio Longinus, former Roman soldier who was present at the Crucifixion and was cursed with immortality because of it. Wounds or illness that would kill a normal man can’t claim him, and he’s doomed to wander the world, always making his way as a mercenary soldier.

As in the first book, this one opens with a framing sequence in which Casca talks to the sympathetic doctor who discovered his secret. The story begins some 250 years after Casca is cursed. He falls in with a group of Vikings and becomes their leader (because nobody is a better fighter than Casca, of course), but eventually he tires of this and decides to sail off with some of his Viking friends and seek adventure. Where do they wind up? In what’s now Mexico, where he’s taken prisoner by Teotec warriors and brought to their capital city. Casca is surprised to find such a huge civilization in this land that was previously unknown to him, and even more surprised when he figures out that they intend to sacrifice him, to rip his still beating heart out of his chest on an altar atop one of their mighty pyramids. Casca doesn’t care for this idea, naturally, so he decides the best way to stop it is to convince his captors that he’s the living embodiment of their god of death.

From what I gather, long-time fans of the series have a mixed reaction to this book. Some consider it a favorite while others didn’t care for it. While I think it’s worth reading, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the first book. Especially in its first half, GOD OF DEATH is slower paced and the plot just sort of meanders around. Sadler summarizes the action more than describes it, tossing away in a few paragraphs storylines that might have made compelling novels in their own right. The series just seems a little tired already.

However, the second half is much stronger, once the action shifts to the Teotec empire. The action is still rather skimpy until the last forty pages or so, but once things start to pop, it’s great. Sadler provides some big battle scenes that are excellent. The whole thing is over the top, but in a good way, and then to wrap things up, he hits some of the same melancholy notes that were so effective in the first book.

So while GOD OF DEATH may be a bit of a sophomore slump for the Casca series, it’s still not bad if you stick with it, and I’m glad I did. With any luck, it won’t be another year before I get around to reading the third book.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, April 1941

Now I understand why I never liked going to the barber shop. You never know when there might be some mug with a gat lurking there, ready to bump you off. However, if I'd ever seen a redhead like that in my local barber shop, I might have risked it anyway. The best known author is this issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE is probably Frederick C. Painton, who wrote a lot of serials for most of the major adventure pulps. Also in this issue are stories by author and literary agent Oscar J. Friend (writing as Owen Fox Jerome), pulp editors Charles S. Strong and Joseph Samachson (writing as William Morrison; Samachson's other claim to fame is creating the Martian Manhunter for DC Comics), Marvin Ryerson (not a pseudonym for Ryerson Johnson but an actual guy), Benton Braden (who appears to have been fairly prolific), and Cornelius Reece (who never published another story except this one, as far as the FMI knows). Not a stellar line-up, but I'll bet it's a fairly entertaining issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western, January 1944

That feller’s gonna read ’em from the book, shore enuff. He looks like he’s got almost as much bark on him as the varmint who was on last week’s cover. And speaking of reading . . . inside this issue of .44 WESTERN are stories by Fred Gipson (who was a prolific pulpster before becoming forever known as the author of OLD YELLER), John G. Pearsol, Lee Floren, John H. Latham, C.K. Shaw, and Harry Van Demark, all familiar names to readers of Western pulps.

Forgotten Books: High Lonesome - Jack Slade (Peter McCurtin)

My copy, complete with price sticker from the Used Book Warehouse in Rockport, Texas.

LASSITER by “Jack Slade” is the first true Adult Western series in the sense that we use the term now, meaning a Western with sex scenes in it. HIGH LONESOME is an early entry in that series, the sixth, and is also the first to be written by the man who was also editing it, Peter McCurtin. McCurtin is one of those writers whose prose is almost unmistakable. He has a distinctive style that is crude, profane, and violent, but it’s also very effective in moving the story along. There are few, if any, wasted words in a Peter McCurtin novel.

Lassiter (we’re never told his first name, as I recall) is very much an anti-hero, sometimes a bank or train robber, sometimes a hired killer, but a man who does operate according to his own standards and code. In HIGH LONESOME, he’s hired to kill a man. Simple enough, but by the time Lassiter tracks his quarry to the town of Socorro, New Mexico Territory, the gent is already dead. Since he can’t complete that job, Lassiter looks around for another way to make some money. He doesn’t have to look far. There’s a war going on around Socorro between a greedy rancher who wants to own everything in sight and a crooked businessman in town who has the same goal. Both sides are hiring gunmen. It seems simple enough for Lassiter to play them against each other and clean up . . .

As usual in these books, not everything goes according to Lassiter’s plan. He gets double-crossed more than once, and most of the book is a long, bloody series of shootouts, bushwhackings, and betrayals. The plot isn’t complex, but McCurtin isn’t trying to make the reader think. He’s more interested in achieving a visceral reaction, and he succeeds admirably in that. Lassiter is almost a force of nature, and in the midst of all the carnage, you can’t help but root for him, even though he’s not exactly likable.

As I mentioned above, HIGH LONESOME is McCurtin’s first Lassiter novel, and I think some of his later entries have better, more fully developed plots. But for hardboiled, amoral Western action, it’s hard to beat his work, and I enjoyed this novel. For fans of grittier Westerns, it’s well worth reading.