I've seen plenty of guys clench a knife between their teeth in movies and on paperback and pulp covers, but a six-gun? That's got to be more uncomfortable. This stalwart, red-shirted hero doesn't look like he's enjoying it that much. This looks like a Norman Saunders cover to me, but it's not listed on his website, so maybe not. But I like it no matter who painted it. WESTERN SHORT STORIES isn't remembered as one of the top Western pulps, but there's certainly plenty of fine writers in this issue: Peter Dawson (Jonathan Glidden), Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), H.A. DeRosso, D.B. Newton, Kenneth Fowler, Rod Patterson, Raymond W. Porter, Norrell Gregory, and Mojave Lloyd. Dawson, Steele, DeRosso, and Newton are enough to make any Western pulp worth reading.
Here's a Sidney Riesenberg cover I like a little more than the one on last Saturday's Western pulp. This issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES lives up to its name. Most of the pages are occupied by Clarence E. Mulford's Hopalong Cassidy novel "Black Buttes". I don't know if it was abridged for this pulp appearance. Even at 98 pages of double-columned small print, it probably was. Backing it up are two stories, one by Raymond W. Porter (who I've heard of but never read, as far as I recall) and James Corson (who I've never heard of).
Not many Western pulps had Halloween covers, at least that I've been able to find, and I think I've used all of them in past years. So this year I'm just going to fall back on an old favorite, Norman Saunders, with this cover for WESTERN SHORT STORIES. "All-Star Stories", it says, and based on the authors inside, that's a pretty solid claim. In this issue, you'll find stories by D.B. Newton, Dean Owen, H.A. DeRosso, Tom W. Blackburn, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), James P. Olsen, Hapsburg Liebe, Ralph Berard (Victor White), James C. Lynch, and Raymond W. Porter. Those are all prolific, well-regarded pulpsters.
This issue of WESTERN TRAILS sports a Norman Saunders cover, and it's great as usual, packed with dynamic action. There are some fine authors inside, too, with J. Edward Leithead leading off with the evocatively titled novella "Haunted by a Pistol Past". As I've mentioned many times before, Leithead is one of my favorite Western pulp authors. Scores of his stories appeared in WESTERN TRAILS and its sister publication WESTERN ACES, as well as in numerous other Western pulps. Also on hand are Wyatt Blassingame writing as Van Cort, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), and Tom J. Hopkins, as well as some lesser-known pulpsters such as Hyatt Manderson and Raymond W. Porter.
I like this cover by E.M. Stevenson. This issue of COWBOY STORIES is one of those rare Western pulps that features an airplane on the cover, and Stevenson's done a good job with it. I'm really intrigued about what's going on here. Inside are stories by J. Allan Dunn (a reprint of a Bud Jones story from an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY that came out a year or so earlier), Forbes Parkhill, Robert Enders Allen (who was really Chandler Whipple), Ray Humphreys, Raymond W. Porter, and some lesser-known authors. Maybe not a top issue, based on that line-up, but I'll bet it was pretty entertaining anyway. And I'd have probably bought it just based on the cover if I had an extra dime in my pocket.