This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat battered copy in the scan. The cover art is by H.W. Scott, and it’s an excellent depiction of T.W. Ford’s series character Solo Strant, also known as the Silver Kid because of the silver conchos on his shirt and hatband, the silver-inlaid butts of his guns, and the silver death’s-head clasp on his hat's chin strap. Ford was tremendously prolific in several genres—Western, sports, detective, and aviation—as well as working in the pulps as an editor, but the Silver Kid series is probably his magnum opus. He wrote approximately 60 Silver Kid stories, all of them novella length, which is a pretty significant body of work. They appeared in WILD WEST WEEKLY from 1935 to 1941, then in various Columbia Western pulps from 1942 to 1952. Solo Strant is a small but deadly gunfighter/adventurer who’s not above selling his gun skills if he believes it's for a worthy cause.
In this issue’s lead novella, “Traitors Ride the Sundown”, Strant is hired to
find out who’s trying to murder a rancher who has a spread in the Sundown
Hills. On the way to take the job, he runs into trouble at an outlaw
roadhouse in Bad Man’s Pass but is helped out by a friendly old-timer who is
headed in the same direction. When Strant reaches his destination, he has to
deal with several bushwhackings and murders before he untangles what’s going
on. There are a couple of occasions where someone is about to give him some
vital information, only to wind up dead. The plot is pretty simple and
straightforward and doesn’t contain any surprises, but I really enjoy the way
Ford writes. His punchy, action-packed style really races along and Solo Strant
is a very likable protagonist. I’ve read several Silver Kid novellas before and
always enjoyed them. “Traitors Ride the Sundown” is also quite entertaining. If
somebody were to reprint this series, I’d certainly be a customer for it. Until
then, I’ll read ’em where I find ’em.
Ben Conlon is best remembered for writing the Pete Rice stories, which appeared
in the character’s own magazine and also in WILD WEST WEEKLY, under the
pseudonym Austin Gridley, but he wrote a couple of hundred Western, sports, and
adventure yarns for various pulps and under various pen-names over the years.
He has a stand-alone story, “Texas Blood”, in this issue under his own name.
It’s about a young former Texas Ranger starting a ranch in New Mexico and
running into rustling trouble. The stereotypical pulp Western dialect is really
thick in this one. Everybody talks that way. My Mangy Polecat Threshold is
higher than most people’s, but Conlon overdoes it to the point that I almost
gave up. I’m glad I didn’t because, other than the dialogue, his writing is
pretty clean and swift and vivid, and the plot has some clever twists leading
to a smashing climax. I wound up enjoying the story quite a bit.
J. Allan Dunn wrote approximately 160 stories for WILD WEST WEEKLY about a
young Texas Ranger named Bud Jones. This issue’s yarn is called “Buckshot and
Bullets” and finds Bud trying to head off a war between Texas cattlemen and
Mexican sheepherders. I nearly always enjoy Dunn’s work, but a couple of things
about this one bothered me, the most troublesome that he seems to think Houston
is the capital of Texas, not Austin. Also, he has all the Texans referring to
the Mexicans as “Mexies”, a term I don’t think I’ve ever heard. That said, this
is a pretty well-written, exciting tale with some nice action. Bud Jones is a
very likable protagonist, too.
The most prolific series of all in WILD WEST WEEKLY starred Billy West, the
young owner of the Circle J ranch in Montana, and his two friends who work for
him, feisty, redheaded Joe Scott and cantankerous old codger Buck Foster, along
with Sing Lo, the ranch’s Chinese cook. Upwards of 450 novelettes starring this
bunch were published between 1927 and 1941, written by half a dozen different
authors under the house-name Cleve Endicott. I’d read a few of them before and
enjoyed them. The story in this issue, “Gun-Fight Valley”, is by Norman L. Hay,
who probably wrote more Circle J
novelettes than anyone else. Our heroes are in Arizona on a cattle-buying trip
when they get drawn into the mystery of a missing wagon train. What they find
turns out to be somewhat unexpected. This is a nicely plotted yarn with plenty
of excellent action. Billy, Joe, and Buck are standard characters but are
handled well and I enjoy reading about their exploits. I’d love to see some of
this series reprinted someday.
Evidently, “Burro Bait” by Phil Squires is part of a humorous series about a
young man from Missouri called Hinges Hollister who goes west to become a
cowboy. The story is told in the form of letters between Hinges and his mother
and girlfriend back home. The dialect is so thick as to be almost indecipherable,
and the humor falls flat. Not to my taste at all, and I didn’t finish it.
The issue wraps up with “Tommy Rockford Bucks the Nevada Wolves” by one of my
favorite Western writers, Walker A. Tompkins. By WILD WEST WEEKLY standards,
the Tommy Rockford series wasn’t that prolific: approximately 50 stories in a
dozen years, 1931-43. But it’s a good one, and Tommy Rockford is one of my
favorite characters from this pulp known for its series characters. He’s a
young railroad detective, and if they had ever made any Tommy Rockford movies,
Roy Rogers would have been perfect to play him. In this yarn, which takes place
in Arizona and Mexico, despite the title, Tommy takes on an outlaw gang that
has traveled from Nevada to Arizona to visit another gang and see their
hideout. This leads to a stagecoach holdup, an attempted bank robbery, and
Tommy being captured by the outlaws. I found this one to be something of a
disappointment because, despite all those plot elements, it never comes
together as a very compelling story. It’s more a case of just throwing things
in the pot until there are enough pages. Even worse, Tommy does something that’s
so out of character, it just about ruined the story for me, and it wasn’t even
necessary to make the plot work. I think it would have been more effective
handling things a different way. The story is readable enough because Tompkins’
prose is always smooth and just races right along, but this is easily the worst
of the Tommy Rockford series I’ve read so far.
So what you have in this issue is definitely a mixed bag. The cover is excellent,
the Silver Kid and Circle J stories are both very good, the Bud Jones story is
flawed but entertaining, the Tommy Rockford story definitely sub-par, the Ben Conlon story okay but with overdone dialect, and the
Hinges Hollister story not for me at all. I still like WILD WEST WEEKLY, but this
is far from my favorite issue. It does make me want to read more Silver Kid and
Circle J stories, though.