Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1948

It’s been too long since I’ve read an issue of EXCITING WESTERN. This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but it also looks to me like it might be by H.W. Scott. So I’m hesitant to identify it as the work of either artist. I’m hoping some of you may be able to provide a definitive answer. Whoever painted it, it’s a pretty good cover.

I’ve enjoyed W.C. Tuttle’s Tombstone and Speedy series ever since I started reading it. The novella in this issue, “Strangers in El Segundo”, finds our eccentric range detective duo in the cowtown of the title, and once again, they’ve been fired by their exasperated boss at the Cattleman’s Association. That unfortunate circumstance doesn’t last long, however, as it just so happens the owner of the local bank has written to the Association asking for help, and Tombstone and Speedy are rehired. But wouldn’t you know it, the banker is murdered before they can talk to him and find out why he needed a pair of detectives. That sets off an apparently unrelated chain of events including a stagecoach holdup, an explosion, a kidnapping, and more murders. Tuttle was great at packing these yarns with plot despite their relatively short length. Tombstone and Speedy unravel everything and bring the villains to justice, of course, after some excellent action scenes and plenty of amusing dialogue. This is one of the few comedy Western series I like, because it’s not all comedy. The stories always feature action and mystery and colorful characters, and “Strangers in El Segundo” is no exception.

Hal White is a forgotten author these days, although he turned out dozens of stories for the Western, detective, and air war pulps. I’d read one story by him before and didn’t like it, but his novelette in this issue, “Powder on the Pecos” is very good. It starts out with a stagecoach robbery and moves on to be a story about a young rancher being framed as a rustler by the local cattle baron. The plot is very traditional, but White supplies a mildly entertaining plot twist and has a nice touch with the plentiful action scenes. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Johnston McCulley is always a dependable author, of course. This January 1948 issue was on the newsstands during December 1947, so McCulley’s story “Undercover Santa Claus” is very appropriate. It’s a heartwarming tale in which an outlaw risks his life to help out the children of an old friend. Most readers will have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this one, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

I’ve always enjoyed T.W. Ford’s stories (he wrote hundreds of ’em for the Western, sports, and detective pulps), and his novelette in this issue, “Man-Bait for a Gun Trap” is no exception. In this yarn, a former deputy goes undercover to infiltrate an outlaw town and rescue the brother of the girl he loves. This story is almost all hardboiled, well-written action, but Ford also manages to make the characters interesting, especially the protagonist, who gave up packing a badge and has to learn how to handle a gun left-handed since his right arm got shot up and crippled. The boss of the outlaw town, who seems to have been modeled on Lionel Barrymore, is pretty good, too. This is just an excellent story all the way around, and I really enjoyed it.

Chuck Martin’s short story “Tanglefoot” is almost as good. This is the first in a short, three-story series about Jim “Tanglefoot” Bowen, another former deputy who has to learn how to cope with a handicap, in his case a leg that never healed right after bullets broke a couple of bones in it. Bowen has retired from being a lawman and makes his living as a cobbler and range detective, but he also helps out the local sheriff from time to time, a situation complicated by the fact that the sheriff is in love with the same girl as Bowen. The two of them team up to solve a mystery and round up some outlaws, including some of the men responsible for crippling Bowen, and Martin spins the yarn in his usual straightforward, fast-paced prose. He even throws in some frontier forensics! Bowen would have made a great character for novels, and I’m sorry there are only three stories about him. I think I have the other two, so I’m looking forward to reading them.

Tex Mumford was a house-name, so there’s no telling who wrote the short story “Powerful Hombre” in this issue, but it’s another good one. It’s a lighthearted tale but not an outright comedy about a cowboy who’s too big and strong for his own good. He doesn’t know his own strength, as the old saying goes, and that gets into trouble, as when he encounters a bank robber in this yarn. This is a minor story, but it’s well-written, moves right along, and I found reading it to be a pleasant experience.

I don’t know anything about Leo Charles except that he published four stories in the late Forties, three of them in Columbia Western pulps. “Remember the Knife” in this issue is his own credit in a Thrilling Group pulp. It’s the third story in this issue with a protagonist who’s handicapped. I doubt if this was an intentional theme, but who knows. In this case, the fellow has a bad leg because a horse fell on him when, as a young outlaw, he was trying to make a getaway. He’s gone straight, and nobody in the town where he runs a stable knows about his past. He has an adopted son who also has a crippled leg and needs an operation, so he tries to get the money for it by using his uncanny skill with a knife. Unfortunately, some of his old outlaw compadres show up, and so does a U.S. Marshal. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one at first. The writing isn’t as good as in the other stories in this issue. But the author won me over with his characters and the genuine suspense the story generates. This is another good one.

And this is a fine issue of EXCITING WESTERN overall, with a solid Tombstone and Speedy yarn and great yarns from Ford and Martin. I was a little disappointed when I realized this issue didn’t have a Navajo Tom Raine story in it, since I really like that series, too, but I wound up thinking it’s one of the best issues of this pulp that I’ve read. If you have a copy, it’s well worth your reading time.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, September 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently (sort of—more on that below). That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by A. Leslie Ross. I would have known that even if Ross hadn’t been credited on the Table of Contents. That’s a Ross hat! I always like his covers on pulps and paperbacks, and this one is no exception. I think it’s fine.

The lead novella, “Lone-Wolf Foreman”, is bylined Mat Rand, and it really is almost long enough to be considered an actual novel. Mat Rand was a house-name used frequently in Columbia Publications pulps, and the author of this one hasn’t been identified. It has some decent plot elements: a big ranch owned by a beautiful young woman, a villainous foreman who can’t be trusted, a stalwart mining engineer, a fabulously valuable mine that’s actually a swindle (or is it?), and a colorful old codger. Unfortunately, the writing is just terrible. We get page after page of repetitive dialogue that serves no real purpose except to fill up pages, a few clunky action scenes, and narrative that has to be reread to try to figure out what’s going on. I stuck with this one for the first half of the story hoping it would get better, but it never did and I skimmed the rest, reading the last four or five pages to get some sense of closure. But all that got me was one of the limpest, least dramatic endings I’ve ever read. I worry sometimes that I’m too easy on the pulps I read and like them just because they’re old, but then I run across a yarn like this and realize that bad is bad, no matter when it was published, and I can still recognize that. This is maybe the worst Western pulp story I’ve ever read.

“Lone-Wolf Foreman” is long enough that there are only two short stories backing it up, and they had nowhere to go but up. “Satan’s Bullet Trio” by Charles D. Richardson Jr. is about three outlaws who pretend to be lawmen in order to rob a money shipment from a bank. Not surprisingly, the scheme doesn’t work out exactly how they expect it to. This is a pretty well-written story, but a couple of plot twists stretch credibility a little too far.

“Candidate for Boothill” by T.W. Ford wraps up the issue, and it’s by far the best of the three. In this story, an easy-going young cowboy gets on the bad side of an arrogant rancher and winds up being framed for a stagecoach holdup and shooting a marshal. The action takes place in one frantic, breakneck night as the protagonist tries to escape the posse that’s after him and clear his name. Ford was a pretty consistent writer and a good storyteller, and while this yarn is really nothing special, I found it pretty entertaining.

So, is this the worst Western pulp I’ve ever read? Given the length of the Mat Rand story and how bad it is, I’d have to say that’s right. If you happen to have a copy, I’d advise admiring the A. Leslie Ross cover, reading the T.W. Ford story, and then putting it back on the shelf. They can’t all be winners.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crack Detective Stories, March 1944

I'm always a sucker for a good-looking redhead, especially one with a gat like the dame on this issue of CRACK DETECTIVE STORIES. I don't know who did the art. There are some mighty good authors inside this issue, too, including Bruno Fischer (as Russell Gray), T.W. Ford, Robert Turner, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Robert C. Blackmon, Tom Thursday, and Henry Morton. I don't own this issue and haven't read it, but it's probably another example of editor Robert W. Lowndes providing a quality product on a low budget.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Wild West Weekly, January 8, 1938

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.

Review: Killer Tarmac - T.W. Ford (Sky Birds, September 1934)

I read a Western pulp story by T.W. Ford a while back and enjoyed it, as I nearly always do with his Westerns, but being in the mood for something different, I decided to try one of his air war stories. I’d never read anything but Westerns and the occasional detective yarn by Ford.

In “Killer Tarmac”, originally published in the September 1934 issue of SKY BIRDS, stalwart young replacement pilot Art Crain arrives at an aerodrome in France with two things in mind: fighting the Boche, and getting revenge on the two men he blames for the death of his best friend, who was shot down battling the deadly German ace von Kunnel, also known as the Black Tiger. In addition to wanting vengeance on von Kunnel, Art also blames the squadron commander, Major “Bloody” Doll, who accused Art’s friend of cowardice and shamed him into facing von Kunnel alone.

However, once Art finds out more about what happened to his friend, he discovers that not everything is as it seems. While mixing in some top-notch dogfight action, Ford creates some memorable characters who don’t turn out at all like I expected. He does a masterful job of yanking the reader’s sympathies back and forth with each new plot twist. Art Crain is our protagonist, no mistake about that, but as for everyone else in this novella, we’re not sure who to root for, and as Ford leads up to a very suspenseful climax, I had no idea what was going to happen.

“Killer Tarmac” is a fabulous story, just a tad melodramatic and over-the-top now and then but in a good way, and told in terse, hardboiled prose that races along like a Nieuport in the middle of a dogfight. A PDF of it can be downloaded from the Age of Aces website. If you’ve never read an aviation/air war pulp story before, this would be a great place to start.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, October 1944

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by George Rozen, and it accurately illustrates a scene from the lead novella in this issue of EXCITING WESTERN.

That lead novella, “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow”, is by one of my favorite Western authors, W.C. Tuttle. Most of Tuttle’s career was spent writing novels and stories in the several different series he created, but he wrote a fair number of stand-alone yarns, too. This is one of them, and it finds former convict Tex Colton returning to his hometown after spending several years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Everybody believes Tex has returned so he can get the loot he stashed, but he can’t do that since he didn’t pull the robbery in the first place. However, his brother, who has taken over his ranch in the meantime, did. (Not a spoiler—this is revealed very early on.) To add injury to insult, or vice versa, Tex’s brother has also married his old sweetheart.

As usual in a Tuttle story, there are some broadly comic characters and situations to go along with a solid Western mystery and some good action. It’s a winning formula with variations from story to story regarding which element is stressed the most and never fails to entertain me. The balance is very good in this one, with the added bonus of a nice twist in the end that I probably should have seen coming but didn’t. “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow” isn’t the equal of Tuttle’s Hashknife Hartley series, but it’s a solidly enjoyable yarn.

T.W. Ford was a pulp editor as well as an author, and he turned out hundreds of Western, detective, and sports stories for just about every publisher in the business. I’ve found him to be an inconsistent but mostly very good author. His short story in this issue, “Law in His Blood”, about a rancher who’s mistaken for a notorious outlaw, has a pretty predictable main twist to it, but the writing is excellent and Ford sneaks in another twist at the end that’s very effective. I liked this one as well.

Ralph J. Smith’s short story “Gunned From the Grave” is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index. It’s about an old gunsmith’s encounter with the man who killed his son in a shootout. A poignant, reasonably well-written story that is okay but doesn’t leave much of an impression.

The novelette “Boothill Beller Box” is a notable one. It’s part of a long series starring Arizona Ranger “Navajo” Tom Raine, and this story features Raine teaming up with Wayne Morgan, the Masked Rider, and Morgan’s sidekick, the Yaqui Indian Blue Hawk. As far as I know, this is one of only two such crossover stories between Thrilling Group Western characters. Steve Reese from RANGE RIDERS WESTERN appears in an earlier Navajo Raine story, “Rawhide Ranger”, in the April 1944 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The title “Boothill Beller Box” refers to a telephone line being strung from a cowtown to a nearby logging camp. This is a loggers vs. cattlemen story in which Wayne Morgan is framed for murder. Just like in 1960s Marvel Comics, the two heroes meet and fight at first before realizing they’re on the same side, after which they team up to defeat the bad guy. The author of this one packs quite a bit into it and it’s a really good yarn. Unfortunately, a proofreading and/or typesetting error almost ruins the story by completely invalidating the big twist in the plot. I salvaged it by editing it in my head back to what it should have been. The author’s identity is also a mystery, since the Navajo Raine stories were published under the house-name Jackson Cole. I suspect this one may be by Chuck Martin. It reads like his work to me, and he’s known to have written Navajo Raine stories as well as contributing several Masked Rider novels to that pulp under his own name. But that’s just an educated guess on my part and may be totally wrong.

I also suspect that the next story in this issue, “Cheyenne Death Trap”, is by Chuck Martin. It’s part of the long-running series featuring Pony Express Rider Alamo Paige that was published under the house-name Reeve Walker. Paige is a good character, compact in stature as most of the Pony Express Riders were but tough, smart, and handy with a gun. In this yarn, another rider is robbed and murdered, and Paige sets out to track down the killer. In the process, he faces a death trap unlike any I’ve ever encountered in a Western pulp. This is a clever story and also a very good one.

Mel Pitzer published about 50 stories in various Western pulps between the mid-Thirties and the late Forties. His story “Killer on the Range” wraps up this issue. He uses present tense to tell this story, a technique I hardly ever see in a Western pulp and one that I don’t really care for. It works okay in this case, as an old wrangler tells the story about a stallion accused of killing a rancher. What really happened is pretty obvious, but the story reads okay and is entertaining, although still the weakest in the issue.

This is an above average issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN, which was usually pretty good to start with. W.C. Tuttle, T.W. Ford, Navajo Tom Raine, and Alamo Paige are all dependable Western pulp enjoyment. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crack Detective Stories, November 1945

This issue of CRACK DETECTIVE STORIES has a nice cover by Irene Endris, one of several female pulp cover artists I know of. Inside are stories by T.W. Ford (probably best remembered as a Western author although he wrote a little bit of everything in the pulps), Talmage Powell, Emil Petaja (best known as a science fiction author), Rex Whitechurch, Marcus Lyons (who was really James Blish, definitely well-known as a science fiction author), and house-names Cliff Campbell and Grant Lane. As usual with a pulp produced on a very small budget by editor Robert W. Lowndes, this is probably better than it has any right to be. I haven't read it, but if you want to check it out, the whole issue can be found here.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Famous Western, Summer 1944

That's a nice dramatic cover on this issue of FAMOUS WESTERN, although the hand holding the knife looks 'way too large to me. It's almost as big as the other guy's head! There are some good authors inside, including T.W. Ford, Joe Austell Small, Wilbur S. Peacock, and Archie Joscelyn. Also on hand are Lee Floren, Brett Austin (Lee Floren), Lee Thomas (also Lee Floren), Charles S. Richardson, the completely unknown to me James Lebur (he published a dozen stories in various Western pulps, but I don't recall ever coming across his name before), and house-name Cliff Campbell. Hmm, wonder if that could be Lee Floren? I wouldn't rule it out.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western Stories, August 1950

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross. The hat and the face look like Ross’s work to me, but maybe someone who is better than I am at artist identification can pin this down for us.

The lead novella in this issue is “Gun-Hung Range” by W. Edmunds Claussen. In a 12-year career from the mid-Forties to the late Fifties, Claussen produced around 80 stories for the Western pulps. Most of his output appeared in various Columbia Publications pulps, such as this issue of REAL WESTERN STORIES. But he also sold to some of the other publishers and authored half a dozen Western novels for Lion Books, Avon, Pocket Books, and Dodd, Mead, plus several volumes of historical non-fiction. I don’t recall reading anything by him before this novella, which uses the old plot of a villain trying to force out some small ranchers and grab their land because the railroad is coming through. The protagonist is a fairly interesting character, a rancher who is emotionally tortured because he’s married to a saloon floozy with whom he has a son but is actually in love with a beautiful schoolteacher. Unfortunately, the writing isn’t very good, with clunky prose that sometimes doesn’t flow very well and is hard to follow. The big battle at the end isn’t bad but doesn’t fully redeem the story. I have a couple of Claussen’s novels on my shelves, but I’m not going to be in any hurry to read them.

M.G. Baker published a dozen stories in various Columbia Western pulps in the late Forties and early Fifties. I suspect that the name might be a pseudonym or house name, but that’s all it is, a suspicion. Baker’s story in this issue, a novelette called “A Target For His Coffin”, is a first-person yarn, somewhat unusual for the Western pulps, narrated by the sheriff of a mining town who has 24 hours to uncover the identity of a killer and save a young visitor from the east from being lynched. It’s an okay story, a little predictable but reasonably entertaining.

T.W. Ford was a very prolific pulpster, turning out hundreds of Western, sports, and detective tales, as well as being an editor and writing a few novels, sometimes under the pseudonym Weston Clay. He has a novelette called “Boothill Brand” in this issue, and it’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which an outlaw answers a call for help from an old flame and returns to the town where he was betrayed and framed for rustling. Plenty of action, the writing is decent (Ford was never much of a stylist), and I enjoyed this one quite a bit, not surprising since Ford was pretty consistent in his work.

Allan K. Echols is another very prolific Western pulp author/novelist. His story “Renegades Die Twice” is another pretty hardboiled yarn about the meeting between an old outlaw who’s dying and wants to make amends for his crimes and a younger owlhoot who has a clever plan. As usual in this type of story, things don’t work out as either man plans. You can see the twist coming, but it’s still effective and makes this a good story.

C.H. Cogswell authored several dozen stories during the Fifties, all appearing in Columbia Western pulps. His story in this issue, “Just One More Raid!”, is a well-written, poignant tale about an honest rancher and his best friend, an outlaw who wants to go straight and settle down, but before he does, he has to pull one more job . . . You know this story isn’t going to end well, but Cogswell does a good job with it.

Lon Williams is best remembered for his long-running series of supernaturally tinged tales about Deputy Sheriff Lee Winters, but he wrote quite a few stand-alone Western stories, too, including “Poady Hangs a Multitude” in this issue. It’s about a meek little hombre who’s elected sheriff as a joke, but he comes up with a bizarre way to bring law and order to a wide-open mining camp. This one maybe stretches credibility a bit too far. It’s an interesting story but not a particularly good one.

“Gun Mission” by W.F. Day is about a young man who teaches himself to be a fast gun in order to get revenge on a man who humiliated him. But when he returns to his hometown to accomplish this, he finds himself mixed up in something more complicated and has to change his plans. Lots of action in this one, and it’s pretty well-written. Day published only a handful of stories and I don’t know anything about him, but based on this yarn, he was a decent writer.

The issue wraps up with “Boothill Medico” by Brett Austin, a pseudonym for Lee Floren. This is a short-short about a doctor having to operate on a patient he has a grudge against. The writing is decent, but it seemed to lacking a final twist it should have had.

Overall I’d say this is a below-average issue of a Western pulp with a few good stories but nothing outstanding, and some mediocre but not terrible stories. I don’t consider the time spent reading it wasted, but it’s probably the weakest issue of a Robert Lowndes-edited pulp that I’ve read so far, proving that he couldn’t always work miracles on an almost non-existent budget.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, June 1945

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat beat-up copy in the scan, with a rather whimsical cover by the incredibly prolific Sam Cherry.

The lead feature in EXCITING WESTERN for most of its run was the Tombstone and Speedy series by one of my favorite Western authors, W.C. Tuttle. Like Tuttle’s justly more famous Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens, Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith are range detectives working for the Cattleman’s Association. They’re generally thought of as being pretty dumb and usually solve their cases through pure luck, with considerable snappy banter and some slapstick humor along the way. From time to time, though, Tuttle drops hints that the two of them aren’t nearly as dumb as they act. In fact, in this issue’s novelette, “Gunsmoke in Oro Rojo”, they unravel a fairly complicated mystery involving rustled beef and high-graded ore and seem to be fully aware of what they’re doing as they “bumble” their way to a solution and justice for the bad guys. This is a very good entry in a consistently entertaining series.

The Navajo Tom Raine, Arizona Ranger series ran in EXCITING WESTERN for several dozen stories, always by-lined with the house name Jackson Cole except for one story published under the name C. William Harrison, the real name of an author who may well have written some of the other stories, too. But prolific Western pulpster Lee Bond has also been linked to the series. “Indian Killer”, the Navajo Tom Raine story in this issue, reads to me like it might be Bond’s work. Raine, a white man raised by the Navajo after his lawman father was murdered, is sent to quell an uprising by the Papago tribe, which is being blamed for a series of stagecoach and freight wagon holdups. Raine quickly figures out that the Indians are being framed and uncovers the real culprit. The blurb on the first page of the story gives this away, so it’s not much of a spoiler. I think most Western pulp readers would know what was going on anyway. Despite the very predictable plot, Raine is an appealing protagonist and the writing is smooth and fast-paced, leading to a satisfactory conclusion. I’ve never read a Navajo Raine story that was great, but I’ve never read one that failed to entertain me, either.

Writer/editor T.W. Ford was another very prolific pulpster, mostly in the Western and sports pulps. I’ve found his work to be inconsistent but generally pretty good. His novelette “Lead for a Donovan” in this issue is a Romeo and Juliet yarn, with a young couple from two feuding families running off to get married and the lengths to which the patriarchs of those families will go to prevent the wedding. Everything plays out about like you’d expect, but there’s plenty of action along the way and I found this to be a very enjoyable story.

In something of a rarity for a Western pulp, the cover painting from this issue is redone as a black and white interior illustration for the short story “Lynching Lawman” by an author I’m not familiar with, Bud Wilks. He published only eight stories, five in 1945 and three in 1948, all in Thrilling Group Western pulps. I have a hunch that was the author’s real name, but who knows? Might have been a house name. “Lynching Lawman” is a short but effective tale of two lawmen who have a falling out, and then one tries to frame the other for horse stealing and murder. I thought it was pretty good. Another unusual aspect is that the cover and interior illo accurately illustrate a scene from the story, meaning that artist Sam Cherry either read it or (more likely) the editor told him what to paint.

Another long-running series in the pages of EXCITING WESTERN featured the adventures of Alamo Paige, Pony Express rider. These were published under the house name Reeve Walker. Walker A. Tompkins, Charles N. Heckelmann, and Chuck Martin have all been linked to this series, and other authors may have contributed to it as well. I don’t know who wrote “Ten Days to California”, the Alamo Paige story in this issue, but it’s a good one in which Paige pursues a wanted outlaw and killer who tries to escape justice by riding the Pony Express route and stealing fresh mounts at each way station. That’s really all there is to the plot, but the story moves right along and has some nice action scenes.

That wraps it up for the June 1945 issue of this pulp, and it’s a really solid one with the five stories ranging from good to excellent. If you have this issue of EXCITING WESTERN and haven’t read it, I think it’s well worth pulling down from the shelf.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double-Action Western, January 1951

Yet another Old West poker game that ends in powdersmoke and hot lead! This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a pencil-scribbled address, 547 W. Main. Whenever I see something like this, I always wonder: What was located at 547 W. Main? Why did one of this pulp’s previous owners have to grab a pencil and write that address on whatever was handy . . . like the January 1951 issue of DOUBLE-ACTION WESTERN? With that cover date, which was an off-sale date, this issue would have been on the newsstands and magazine racks during December 1950. But that doesn’t mean that’s when the address was written on it. Could have been then, could have been any time since then until the time the copy came into my hands. We’ll never know. But I like to ponder such things anyway.

The lead novel in this issue—and at 60 pages of small, double-columned type, it actually is pretty close to novel length—is “Satan’s Home Spread” by Galen C. Colin. I’ve seen Colin’s name on plenty of Western pulp TOCs, but I don’t recall reading anything by him until now. In this story, our protagonist Brad Towler has escaped from prison in Montana, where he was locked up for a crime he didn’t commit, and headed for Arizona, where he hopes to find the outlaw Sonora Jackson, who framed him and got him sent to prison. No sooner does Brad arrive in the cowtown of Loder than he encounters gambler and gunman Apache Crockett, whose younger brother Tom just happened to be Brad’s cellmate in prison and who was also framed for a crime he didn’t commit by the villainous Sonora Jackson. Crockett convinces Brad to pose as notorious gunman Buck Briggs so he can infiltrate Jackson’s gang, but he neglects to tell Brad that Briggs is wanted for murder, so Brad soon finds himself behind bars again with a lynch mob howling for his blood. Oh, and the rancher Buck Briggs supposedly shot in the back has a beautiful daughter, and Brad falls for her right away even though she hates him because she believes he gunned down her father.

Got all that? If it sounds like there’s enough coincidence and back-story for a Walt Coburn yarn, that’s because there is, and Colin piles it fast and thick. And honestly, before the end of the story he kind of loses control of the plot, so that several twists stretch our suspension of disbelief past the breaking point.

Despite that, “Satan’s Home Spread” is an entertaining tale, no doubt about that. Brad is a good protagonist, the action moves along at a fast pace, and a very appealing little dog figures heavily in the plot, which isn’t something you see a lot of in Western pulps. I own one novel by Galen C. Colin and I’m sure I’ll read it eventually, but probably not right away.

Next up is the short story “Only Dead Men Leave” by an author I’m not familiar with, Floyd C. Day. It’s about a young man blackmailed into joining an outlaw gang to keep his father’s crimes from being exposed. It’s okay but utterly forgettable. Day only published a few stories, but for different publishers so he seems to have been a real guy, not a house-name.

“Test of Guilt” is by T.W. Ford, a very prolific and generally dependable pulpster who wrote scores of Western and sports yarns. It’s a low-key story about a rancher who has to determine whether his ne’er-do-well brother-in-law is really a murderer. It’s a minor story that Ford probably wrote in a couple of hours, but it’s well-written and effective enough to be entertaining.

The issue concludes with the short story “Hell’s Postmaster” by Cliff Campbell, which was a Columbia Publications house name. Whenever I see a house name, I always suspect that the actual author already has a story in the same issue under his own name or another pseudonym, so I immediately thought that T.W. Ford might be the author of this tale about a two-fisted, fast-on-the-draw postmaster, a stolen gold shipment, and a hidden mine. Based on the style, which includes heavy use of what I call “Yuh mangy polecat” dialect, I don’t think it’s Ford’s work after all. So I don’t know who wrote this yarn, but it has enough over-the-top action in it that I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Overall, I wouldn’t call this an outstanding issue, but every story in it is readable, and despite some reservations about the plotting, I’m glad I finally read a story by Galen C. Colin.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Detective Stories, August 1951

Never trust a guy in a gas mask, that's my motto. This blonde certainly shouldn't have. I don't know the artist on this cover, but I like it. Arthur J. Burks is probably the biggest name in this issue, followed by T.W. Ford, Seven Anderton, and Thomas Thursday. Columbia house-name Mat Rand is also on hand, along with a bunch of writers I've never heard of, such as Betty Brooks and D.A. Kyle. I'm not sure if anybody in this issue of FAMOUS DETECTIVE STORIES deserves the FAMOUS label, but that doesn't mean the stories aren't good. (Burks, Ford, and Thursday still have work in print.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Action, January 1947

The cover on this issue of WESTERN ACTION is credited to Robert Stanley. It doesn't look exactly like a typical Stanley cover to me, but maybe I'm just used to his Mike Shayne covers. Archie Joscelyn has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and the lead novella as by Al Cody. Also on hand are T.W. Ford, Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), and Cliff Campbell, the last of those a house-name who could have been any of the other guys in this issue, or even none of them, although that doesn't seem likely. The Columbia pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes were low-budget affairs but often quite good.

As a bonus, here's the cover of the Pocket Books edition of the novel BITTER CREEK, under the Al Cody by-line. There was also a hardback edition published by Dodd, Mead.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, January 21, 1939

This is an excellent gun and knife cover by H.W. Scott, who has become one of my favorite cover artists. He could work in a variety of styles, but his paintings are always distinctive and eye-catching. As always, there are some good authors in this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY: T.W. Ford with a Silver Kid story, Laurence Donovan with a Pete Rice story under the Austin Gridley house-name (I didn't know that Donovan wrote any Pete Rice stories, but I'm not surprised; he wrote a little bit of everything and did it well), Chuck Martin, Anson Hard, and Guy L. Maynard.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, April 1, 1939

The April 1, 1939 issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY sports a very atmospheric, excellent cover by the great H.W. Scott that features a skull. I like this one a lot. There's a fine bunch of writers in this issue, too: T.W. Ford (with a Silver Kid story), J. Allan Dunn (with a Bud Jones story), Walker A. Tompkins (with a Firebrand story), William F. Bragg (with a Smoky Joe story), and Dean Owen (with a non-series story). Now, I'll admit I haven't heard of Firebrand or Smoky Joe, but I'm sure I'd enjoy reading about them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, July 4, 1936

Although it doesn't have a patriotic-themed cover, this is the issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY dated July 4, 1936. Behind that cover by H.W. Scott, which I like quite a bit, are the usual assortment of series characters readers found in this pulp: a Silver Kid story by T.W. Ford, a Johnny Forty-five story by Paul S. Powers writing as Andrew A. Griffin, a Pete Rice story by Ben Conlon writing as Austin Gridley, a Risky McKee story by Norman W. Hay writing as William A. Todd, and (Wait a minute! How'd they get in here?) stand-alone stories by Lee Bond writing as Nelse Anderson and George C. Henderson. A person could get exhausted just trying to keep up with all the series characters in WILD WEST WEEKLY, but the readers seemed to have loved it for a long time. I've enjoyed all the issues I've read.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, November 26, 1938

Waal, this ranny shore has plenty uh problems. Not only is he bein' shot at, he's about to fall off thet durned cliff right behind him, and them buzzards are jist a-circlin', waitin' to feast on his carcass an' peel the meat right off'n his bones!

You think I couldn't have sold to WILD WEST WEEKLY? All week long and twice on Saturday!

But I've wandered off into the weeds here. To get back to business, that cover, which I like a lot, is by the prolific and dependable H.W. Scott. Inside this issue are some prolific and dependable authors, as well: Walker A. Tompkins with an Arizona Thunderbolt story (I'm not familiar with the Arizona Thunderbolt, but what a great name for a Western pulp character), T.W. Ford with a Silver Kid yarn, C. William Harrison (a Devil's Deputy story), Samuel H. Nickels (a Hungry and Rusty story), and non-series stories from Chuck Martin and Dean Owen. No serials! That sounds like a really good issue to me.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, April 1945

Never trust a guy in a powdered wig, that's my motto. I'm not too sure about the guy in the captain's hat, either, and I'm really curious what the heck is going on here. So I guess the cover on this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE did what it was supposed to. I would've had to pick it up off the newsstand rack and take a gander at the contents . . . where I would have found stories by T.W. Ford (best known for his Westerns and sports stories), Joe Archibald (one of his Willie Klump series), long-time pulpster Thomson Burtis, and Thrilling Group house-names J.S. Endicott and Frank Johnson.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 5 Western Novels Magazine, January 1950

See, that's why I don't like to shave. It gives them dern bushwhackers a chance to sneak up on yuh! But I do like this cover painted by Joseph Dreany. 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE was mostly a reprint pulp. All five of the lead novelettes in this issue were publishing originally in THRILLING WESTERN and THRILLING RANCH STORIES during the Thirties. But with a line-up of authors like Ray Nafziger, Lee Bond, T.W. Ford, Larry Harris, and whoever wrote the story as Jackson Cole, I wouldn't mind the reprints. There are also three short stories, evidently new, by Noel Loomis, Dupree Poe, and John C. Ropke.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, May 1933

Well, that's got to be kind of a shock, when you're just riding along and this big ol' bird swoops down and attacks you. I don't really care much for this cover, but it's bizarre and eye-catching, I'll give it that. And as usual with ALL WESTERN, the authors inside are good ones, including Murray Leinster, T.W. Ford, W. Wirt, J.E. Grinstead, Anthony Rud, and William E. Barrett.