This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know why the front cover is missing that strip at the bottom. That’s the way I got it. Luckily, the loss doesn’t detract too much from the cover by A. Leslie Ross. Not in the top rank of Ross’s work, to my mind, but his covers are always worthwhile. I’ll put a scan of the whole cover from the Fictionmags Index at the end of this post.
This issue opens with a novelette (probably closer to a novella, really) by
Seven Anderton, a distinctly named author who’s mostly forgotten but who
produced consistently good work for the Western and detective pulps. “Cactus
Basin Showdown” features a pair of protagonists who fit the mold of many other
Western pulp yarns: Brick Gordon is a handsome, two-fisted, fast-shooting
cowboy, while his sidekick Galena Jones is a much older and grizzled old
codger. If you’re thinking Buster Crabbe and Al “Fuzzy” St. John, well, so was
I while reading this story. Anderton adds a nice variation to the story, though.
Brick handles most of the action, but Galena is really the thinking half of the
duo as they pitch in to help some homesteaders who are being run out of Cactus
Basin by the local cattle baron/range hog. Yes, it’s a cattleman vs. sodbusters
yarn, a very standard plot, but Anderton makes it fresh with his solid writing
and characterizations. Even the main villain has a little depth to him. I
enjoyed this story quite a bit.
The line at the top of the cover says “15 Action-Packed Stories”, but what it
doesn’t tell you is that six of them are historical articles and features. I
have nothing against such things and when I come across them in pulps, I
usually skim them and read the more interesting ones, but really, I’m there for
the fiction, so I’m not going to delve into the non-fiction. The next actual
story in this issue is “The Haunted Town” by Lon Williams, an entry in his
series of Weird Westerns about Deputy Sheriff Lee Winters. In this one, Winters
encounters a werewolf—or does he? I’ve been aware of this series for years and
always figured it would be right in my wheelhouse, but I’ve read several of
them now, including this one, and for some reason I just don’t really like them
very much. Something about the writing in them doesn’t resonate with me, and I
don’t find Winters to be a very likable protagonist. Maybe I’m wrong about
them. I’d be willing to try a few more before giving up on the series, but at
this point, I’m not optimistic.
I’ve read several stories by Richard Brister and enjoyed them. “The Ioway
Upstart” in this issue is about a tenderfoot from Des Moines who’s stranded in
a rough, lawless mining camp. Either picked on or looked down upon by nearly
everybody in the camp, he comes up with a clever way to win their respect, and
also the heart of the best-looking girl in town. This is an entertaining,
well-written story and makes me think I need to try one of Brister’s novels.
I read another story in the Able Cain series by A.A. Baker not long ago and
enjoyed it, but his entry in this issue, “Able Cain’s Arena”, left me kind of
cold. The title character is a judge in a mining boomtown and comes up with the
idea of building a boxing arena so the miners can settle their disputes without
shooting each other. It’s not a bad idea, but the story never generated much
excitement or interest in me. My fault, maybe. Too soon to pass judgment on
this series, but I’ve definitely had mixed reactions to it so far.
Gene Austin wrote a lot of stories for the Western pulps, but he seems to have
been on autopilot in “Whistling in Boothill”. This story about the clash
between two ranchers has some nice action at the end that almost redeems it,
but the plot is really thin.
“The Hombre That Hell Wouldn’t Have” is a good title. The story is by Humphrey
Jones, who wrote several dozen stories for assorted Western, detective, and
sports pulps. It’s a decent yarn about a prospector who’s robbed and left to
die in the desert. The resolution is pretty far-fetched, but overall, not a bad
story.
Ralph Berard was the pseudonym of the very prolific pulpster Victor H. White. His
story in this issue, “Gold Country Boothill”, is a very suspenseful tale about
a young prospector framed for murder and the trial-by-vigilante that results.
This is well-written, well-plotted, and has a very nice final twist that I didn’t
see coming. I liked this one.
J.J. Mathews was another very prolific pulpster who turned out scores of
Western, detective, and sports stories. His story in this issue is “Devil’s
Homemaker”, which isn’t a very good title for this yarn about a young man’s
quest for vengeance on the man who gunned down his father. But it’s got a
decent plot and some emotional complexity, and the writing has a nice
hardboiled tone to it. This is another good one from a forgotten but reliable
pro.
Rex Whitechurch was a pseudonym that appeared on dozens of Western, detective,
and sports stories, all of them published in various Columbia pulps edited by
Robert Lowndes. Was it a house-name? That’s possible, I suppose, but I honestly
have no idea. The Whitechurch story in this issue, “The Bronc Riders”, is a
modern-day rodeo story and more of a romance than an action story. In fact,
much of it reads more like mainstream fiction than genre Western. And it’s
really, really good, too—until it runs smack into an ending that left me
staring at the page in disbelief. Talk about a story falling apart at the last
minute! This one is promising but very disappointing.
So what we have here is an issue of REAL WESTERN STORIES that’s a very mixed
bag. Several of the stories are very good to excellent, and others I didn’t
like at all. I’m glad I read it and will be on the lookout for more stories by
Seven Anderton and Richard Brister. Heck, I’d even give Rex Whitechurch another
try, and he made me want to throw the pulp across the room! But don’t race to your
shelves to look for this one.