Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fighting Western, October 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my beat-up copy in the scan. You can’t see it, but the upper third or so of the rear cover is gone, having been ripped off in an obviously haphazard manner. But the contents are complete. The cover is by H.W. Scott, I think.

FIGHTING WESTERN was part of the same line as SPICY/SPEED WESTERN, but unlike the Spicies, there weren’t a lot of house-names used in it. The authors tend to use their real names or regular pseudonyms. This issue, in fact, starts out with a novella by a very well-known author (well-known to pulp fans, anyway), E. Hoffmann Price. “Six-Gun Survey” has as its protagonist a young cowboy-turned-surveyor who inadvertently becomes mixed up in an irrigation/land development swindle and tries to set things right, even though it means a lot of bullets coming his way and some bogus criminal charges that land him behind bars. This is an excellent yarn, fast-moving and very well-written, with a likable hero and a good supporting cast (including an Arab camel driver and camel left over from the army’s experiments with them in Arizona). I really enjoyed this one, which isn’t surprising considering how reliable a pulpster Price was.

The next story is a novelette by an author who wrote even more than Price, Victor Rousseau. He was a big name in early science fiction and then later on became a stalwart in the Spicy line, often under his pseudonym Lew Merrill and assorted other names. He’s writing under his own name in “Buffalo Trail”, which finds six mountain men in New Mexico giving up fur trapping to become cowboys. They run into plenty of trouble on a cattle drive to the railhead in Kansas. This is a pretty good story. Rousseau wasn’t as skilled a writer as Price, but he moves things along well and the action is very good. The only problems are that there are so many characters we don’t get to know them very well, and the “yuh mangy polecat” dialogue is really thick. Still, I enjoyed it, as I usually do with Rousseau’s work.

Laurence Donovan is another well-known pulp author. I’ve read quite a bit by him over the years and nearly always enjoyed the stories. His story in this issue, “Brand of a Thief”, is a convoluted tale in which a ranch foreman frames himself for a theft in order to save the girl he works for from the attentions of a lowdown skunk. Only things don’t work out that way at all. This one reads like it could have been intended for RANCH ROMANCES or one of the other Western romance pulps, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s an entertaining, well-written story.

John Jo Carpenter was the regular pseudonym of John Reese, which he used on dozens of stories in various Western pulps during the Forties and Fifties and on at least one Western novel that I know of. His story in this issue, “Gun-Wise and Trail-Shy”, is a hardboiled tale about a young outlaw’s fateful encounter with a slightly older but more experienced owlhoot. Reese was a fine writer, so it’s not surprising that this is a good story.

The issue wraps up with “Beast of Pueblo” by “Paul Hanna”, the only use of a house-name in this issue. I don’t know who wrote it, but it’s a good yarn about a young man who runs a Wells Fargo station. He’s big and brawny, good with his fists and a gun, but a crippling psychological fear keeps him from engaging in violence. It’s a fairly offbeat angle for a Western pulp story, even though we know from the start that before the story is over, our protagonist will have been forced to overcome his fear and burn some powder and throw some punches. That’s exactly what happens, but the author handles it very well and turns in an excellent yarn to end this issue on a high note.

Now, here’s an interesting (I hope) sidelight: this issue was edited by Kenneth Hutchinson and Wilton Matthews, the editors for Trojan Publications who got in trouble with the law for fraud by taking stories from old issues, slapping some phony author’s name on them, or using the name of a real author who had nothing to do with the story, then reprinting them as new and collecting the checks themselves. Which means it’s possible some of the stories in this issue were actually unacknowledged reprints that Hutchinson and Matthews used in their scheme. The Paul Hanna story seems to be the most likely candidate for that. For one thing, the story has an illustration with it that I really feel like I’ve seen somewhere else before. However, all this should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. It’s certainly possible that all the stories in here are on the up-and-up.

What’s important for our purposes as readers is that every story is a good one. If you’d told me that the best Western pulp I’d read recently was an issue of FIGHTING WESTERN, I wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s the case. This is a really good one, and if you have a copy, it’s well worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, June 1946

I feel like I should know who did the cover on this issue of LEADING WESTERN. Somebody here or on Facebook will tell me, and I'll update the post. Meanwhile, there's a strong lineup of Western pulpsters in this one: Philip Ketchum, Laurence Donovan, Giff Cheshire, John Reese (as John Jo Carpenter), and Jhan Robbins, along with house-name Randolph Barr. Looks like a solid issue. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, June 1947

This looks like a Robert Stanley cover to me, although, as always, I could be wrong. But I think I'm correct about there being some very good Western pulp authors inside this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE: D.B. Newton, Philip Ketchum, William R. Cox, John Reese (with two stories, one under his usual John Jo Carpenter pseudonym, one under a name I haven't encountered before, Camford Cheavly), and Robert Turner, along with the lesser known Harold R. Stoakes, Ben T. Young, Jim Chapman, Ray Hayton, and Jimmy Nichols (who was really Jhan Robbins, fairly prolific under both names but little remembered). Like all the Popular Publications Western pulps, 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE was consistently good.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Golden West Romances, February 1950

This Western romance pulp from the Thrilling Group lasted for only six issues in 1949-50, but I think there's a reason it ended when it did. The final issue of GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES came out approximately the same time as the first issue of RANCH ROMANCES after Ned Pines bought the long-running title from Warner Publications. Why publish an imitation of RANCH ROMANCES when you can publish the real thing? So maybe the six issues of this pulp should be considered a dry run of sorts for the Thrilling Group incarnation of RANCH ROMANCES. This particular issue is the third out of six and features a fine cover by Kirk Wilson, who did many great covers for RANCH ROMANCES. The redhead reminds me of Barbara Stanwyck, which is a good thing. Inside are stories by some fine writers including Wayne D. Overholser, Johnston McCulley, Stephen Payne, John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), Roger Dee (best remembered for his science fiction, Harold F. Cruickshank (best remembered for his air war yarns), and Francis H. Ames. With authors like that, I'm sure GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES was a magazine worth reading during its short life.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, October 1950

Robert Gibson Jones is probably best known for his covers on the Ziff-Davis pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, but he did quite a few covers for Z-D's MAMMOTH WESTERN, as well, including this one which I like quite a bit. I'll always be fond of gun-totin' redheads, and this one is in an intriguing situation. "Robert Eggert Lee", author of the lead story "This Grave for Hire" (a nice title) was actually Ziff-Davis stalwart Paul W. Fairman. Also on hand in this issue are John Reese. writing as John Jo Carpenter, John Prescott, and Peter Germano writing as Barry Cord. Those are the Western writers of note in this issue, although there's also a story (and I'm sure a good one) by William P. McGivern, and yarns by the likes of Frances M. Deegan, Karl Kasky, and Larry Becker.   

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, September 1948

One of Popular Publications' flagship Western pulps, along with DIME WESTERN, STAR WESTERN was still going strong in the late Forties, with this issue being a prime example. Behind that dramatic Robert Stanley cover are stories by a really fine group of writers: T.T. Flynn, Tom W. Blackburn, Frank Bonham, Van Cort (Wyatt Blassingame), John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), Kenneth Perkins, and writer/editor Art Lawson with two stories, one under his name and one as by William Fargo.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Spring 1951

I don't know who did the dynamic cover on this issue of FRONTIER STORIES. Possibly Allan Anderson, based on the way the horse looks. The group of authors inside is certainly a good one, though: Gordon D. Shirreffs, William R. Cox, Frank Castle, Bennett Foster, John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), and a couple of lesser-known authors, Gene L. Henderson and Walter Hutchings. The Cox and Foster stories are reprints from the Summer 1943 issue of FRONTIER STORIES. It's good to be starting another year of these posts.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, April 1947

And thus another Old West poker game comes to a violent end. Not only that, but look at the bullet hole in the guy's hat brim. Injury to a Hat Alert! I love this cover, which I'm pretty sure is by Robert Stanley. It's the little details that really make it work, like the two matches tucked in the cowboy's hat band and the royal flush laid out on the table. A lesser artist might not have even thought of those things. 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE always had a good group of authors, and this issue is no exception: Tom W. Blackburn, Joseph Chadwick, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Carl McK. Saunders (Philip Ketchum; "Saunders" is a pseudonym he used mostly for mystery and detective yarns), John Jo Carpenter (John Reese), Rod Patterson, Richard Brister, and Harrison Colt, a name I've always thought must be a pseudonym, but I don't know if it really was. Plus the familiar, instantly recognizable yellow-and-red color scheme. I'm a big fan of 10 STORY WESTERN and this looks like an excellent issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fighting Western, October 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The scan is from my copy. That looks like an H.W. Scott cover to me, but I’m not entirely certain about that.

The featured story is “Six-Gun Survey”, a novella by E. Hoffmann Price. Price was a great pulp author, one who could write in almost every genre and do a good job with all of them. From what I’ve read of his work, Westerns may well have been his weakest area (with the exception of his Simon Boliver Grimes series), but those yarns are still consistently entertaining. “Six-Gun Survey” is well written, as always with Price, and the plot, which involves a land and irrigation swindle as well as camels left over the army’s failed experiment with them in Arizona Territory, is pretty interesting. Even so, this story is a little slow and not top-notch Price. Still worth reading, though.

Victor Rousseau had a long career in the pulps, stretching all the way back to 1907 and lasting until 1948. Like E. Hoffmann Price, he wrote in multiple genres. In the Thirties and Forties, he wrote primarily for Trojan Publishing Corporation, the publisher of the Spicy and Speed magazine lines, turning out scores of detective, adventure, and Western yarns. His story in this issue of FIGHTING WESTERN, “Buffalo Trail”, is a pretty good novelette which finds six mountain men joining a trail drive. The fur trapping days are just about over, and these men have to find something to do with their lives. One is young enough that he’s done some cowboying in the past, and he’s the protagonist of this tale, which has several nice plot twists I didn’t see coming at all. It suffers a little from an over-abundance of what I call “yuh mangy polecat” dialogue, but despite that, I enjoyed it very much.

Laurence Donovan was yet another prolific, versatile pulpster who wrote a lot for Trojan. His story “Brand of a Thief” reads like it could have appeared in RANCH ROMANCES, since there’s a romantic rectangle in this one, as well as $30,000 in missing money from the sale of a herd. Donovan was good with action and there are some nice shoot-outs and fights, along with a satisfying plot twist. I liked this one quite a bit, too.

John Jo Carpenter was really John Reese, who wrote dozens of stories under the Carpenter name for the Western pulps during the Forties and Fifties, before going on to a successful career as an author of Western and mystery novels in both hardback and paperback. He wrote the novel on which the movie CHARLEY VARRICK is based. His story in this issue, “Gun-Wise and Trail-Shy”, uses the standard plot of the young man wrongly condemned for a crime who has to take up the owlhoot trail. But when he encounters another outlaw, things take an unexpected turn. Reese was an excellent writer, and this is another good story.

Paul Hanna was a Trojan Publishing house-name, so there’s really no way of knowing who wrote “Beasts of Pueblo”, the final story in this issue. Which is a shame, because it’s an excellent yarn and my favorite from this issue. The protagonist is a young man who runs a Wells, Fargo express office. He’s plagued by what we’d now think of as a phobia which makes him physically ill when he’s confronted by a situation calling for violence. As you’d expect, he winds up overcoming it (this is a Western pulp, after all), but this story has a lot of emotional depth and is very well-written.

There are only five stories in this issue, which is a pretty low number for a Western pulp, but they’re all substantial tales and they’re all good. I was a little surprised that the E. Hoffmann Price story is actually the weakest in the bunch, since I really like Price’s work, and even at that, it’s still entertaining! This is just a good all-around issue and I enjoyed reading it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, January 1950

The last few years of its existence, STAR WESTERN rather blatantly went after the RANCH ROMANCES readers. Not only do all the covers prominently feature female characters, most of the story titles do, too, such as this issue from January 1950. You've got "The Strip's Too Hot for Blondes!" by Leslie Ernenwein, "Girl Strike in Jubilee" by Joseph Chadwick, "Bride of the Killer Legion" by Talmage Powell, "The Queen, the Wench, and the Devil" by Ray Townsend, "Two Roses for Dead Man's Range" by Dean Owen (Dudley Dean McGaughey), "Girl for a Fighting Man" by Everett M. Webber, and "Brand Her Señorita Killer!" by John Jo Carpenter (John Reese). With those authors, I'll bet most of those stories are pretty good!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, March 1956

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The scan is of my copy, which I try to do when possible.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, "Guns Across the River", was written by Peter Germano under the Jackson Cole house-name. It's a cattleman vs. sheepherders yarn, but Germano puts a lot more plot that that into the story. In fact, there are almost too many characters and too much plot for a novel that runs maybe 40,000 words. Hatfield is sent to Peaceful Valley to stop a bloody range war before it breaks out, but he's barely gotten there when he finds a dead body and then a would-be killer takes a shot at him. There's a weak sheriff, a stubborn deputy, a cattle baron, the cattle baron's two beautiful daughters, a former schoolteacher turned gunslinger, a kidnapped youngster, an old-timer who's supposed to be dead but apparently isn't, a blustering lawyer who seems to have been inspired by W.C. Fields (his name is H. Goldwyn Pepper), and a West Texas winter storm. The action hardly ever slows down for more than a few paragraphs.

Germano was the most hard-boiled and realistic of the Hatfield authors, and he was also capable of the occasional touch of poetry in his work. I was a little worried that he had crammed too much into this story, but he maintained control over the plot and I wound up liking it a great deal. The somewhat bittersweet ending is very effective. Germano rewrote and expanded this into the novel WAR IN PEACEFUL VALLEY, which was published three years later as half of an Ace Double under his usual Barry Cord pseudonym. Texas Ranger Jim Hatfield becomes Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Vickers, but everything else appears to be pretty much the same. I have this book but haven't read it, and I probably won't, now that I've read and enjoyed the original version.

George Roulston is an author I'm not familiar with. He appears to have published only half a dozen stories in the mid-Fifties. But his story in this issue, "Moment of Violence", is a good one. It's about an ex-convict returning to his home town after serving ten years for a stagecoach robbery in which the driver was killed. It was the convict's partner who actually pulled the trigger, but he never revealed who that was (although it's no secret from the reader). The reactions his return provokes lead to more violence. There's enough plot here for a novel, the sort that Gold Medal published during that era, but Roulston does a good job boiling it down to a short story.

H.G. Ashburn is another author unknown to me who published a few stories in the mid-Fifties. "Miguel's Private Miracle" is about scalphunters who show up at a small mission and try to terrorize the priest in revealing the hiding place of a group of Indian women and children. It's more about the nature of religious faith than anything else, making it a little offbeat for a Western pulp, but it's well-written and I enjoyed it.

The parade of unknown-to-me authors continues with Pat Pfeifer, another whose work appears to be confined to a handful of stories in the mid-Fifties. "Time Enough to Die" is about the showdown between a marshal and two brothers who want to either kill him or run him out of town. The marshal's newly hired deputy is a former friend of one of the brothers, so the lawman doesn't know if he's really facing two enemies, or three. Everything plays out like you'd expect it to, but the writing is good enough that it makes for an enjoyable yarn.

Even more obscure is Cameron Roosevelt, who has only two stories listed in the Fictionmags Index, "Showdown at Jericho" in this issue, and a story in an issue of 2-GUN WESTERN a couple of months later. "Showdown at Jericho" is a revenge tale, with the protagonist tracking down the man who stole both his wife and his money. The inevitable gunfight is resolved in a fairly clever manner, but what sets this story apart is its noirish tone and some excellent writing. This one is good enough that it's hard to believe Roosevelt sold only one other story, which makes me wonder if the name is a pseudonym for another, more well-known writer.

Finally we come to an author I've heard of, John Jo Carpenter, who was really John Reese. Reese used the Carpenter pseudonym for scores of stories in various Western pulps during the Forties and Fifties, while writing mystery and slick magazine stories under his real name. Later he wrote hardback and paperback Western novels as John Reese, a couple of which I've read and remember enjoying. His story in this issue, "The Reluctant Hangman", is a real oddity for a Western pulp in that there's no action in it at all. Instead it's a tale of psychological turmoil as a young deputy struggles with having to carry out a murderer's hanging because the sheriff is laid up with a heart attack. It's a gripping, very well-written story and makes me think I need to read more by Reese as John Jo Carpenter.

Eric Allen is another familiar name. He wrote a number of paperback Westerns, including a series set in a town called Whiskey Smith. I've never read any of them, but his novelette that wraps up this issue, "Death on the Chaco", is a good one, if a little by-the-numbers when it comes to the plot. It's a yarn about a young man who comes home to the ranch he just inherited from his murdered uncle, only find himself caught up in a brewing range war with a group of sodbusters. The plot twists in this one are pretty obvious, but Allen writes in a nice, easygoing style and I enjoyed the story.

There are also a few columns and features, but as usual I just skimmed them. My interest is in the fiction, and in that respect, this is an above-average issue. There's not a bad story in the bunch, and three of them—the Hatfield novel and the stories by Cameron Roosevelt and John Reese—are excellent. The quality of TEXAS RANGERS remained high right up until its end a couple of years later, and if you happen to have a copy of this issue on your shelves, it's well worth reading.