Giff Cheshire is a hit-or-miss author for me. Most of what I’ve read by him has been entertaining but a little bit too much on the bland side for my taste. Some of his stories are more hardboiled and are pretty good. His novella that leads off this issue, “Torment Trail”, is very hardboiled and is an excellent yarn. The protagonist, Cleve Gantry (great name for a Western hero) is partners in a hardscrabble ranch with young wastrel Nat Cole (maybe not as good a name, since Nat “King” Cole, one of my father’s favorite singers, was already very popular by the mid-Fifties). Cole pulls a robbery and frames Gantry for it. Gantry breaks out of jail and sets out to track down Cole, partially to clear his name but mostly because he wants to kill the no-good hombre. Gantry’s vengeance quest is complicated, though, by Cole’s beautiful sister and some other hardcases who are after the loot from the robbery. Set mostly in the desert—and Cheshire makes good use of that setting—this is a fast-moving, suspenseful story with some good action scenes, a fine protagonist, and a very gritty tone. I really enjoyed “Torment Trail”, which is easily the best thing I’ve ever read by Cheshire.
D.S. Halacy Jr. wrote several dozen Western and detective stories for the pulps. I’d read one story by him in the past and thought it was okay but nothing more than that. His story in this issue, “The Five Hundred Dollar Shot” is about a down-on-his-luck rancher who is willing to go to any lengths to provide for his family, even if it means going after a wanted outlaw for the reward. This is a pretty bleak story with a mostly unlikable protagonist, but it doesn’t turn out exactly like you might expect and that’s usually a good thing. So it’s nothing special, but it is a readable yarn.
“Bachelor Trouble” is by Lewis Chadwick, who wrote only half a dozen Western stories, all published in 1955 and 1956. An old rancher decides that one of the cowboys who works for him is going to marry his daughter, but the cowboy doesn’t go along with that idea. That’s all there is to the story, but it’s decently written and everything is resolved in a pleasant enough manner.
James Clyde Harper was reasonably prolific, turning out approximately 50 stories in a career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Fifties. But I didn’t care for his story “The Phantom Rifle” in this issue. It’s a mystery in which a group of settlers with a wagon train try to start a town, only to have several of their number murdered by a mysterious rifleman. The writing struck me as clumsy, and the motivation for the plot just wasn’t believable considering the place and time. This one is a clear miss as far as I’m concerned.
W.W. Hartwig published only three stories, all in RANCH ROMANCES. “The Bride’s Father” in this issue is the last of them. It’s a pure romance yarn about a young cowboy courting the daughter of a railroad tycoon. This is a well-written story with good characters, and although I thought the author could have done a little more with it, I liked it quite a bit.
Alice Axtell was the author of about thirty stories, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES in the Forties and Fifties. Her story “Big Man” is about the feud between a big rancher and the owner of a smaller spread. Their clash takes some nasty turns, and there’s more riding on it for the little rancher than just his business. The girl he wants to marry is watching to see how he handles this problem. This is another story that’s pure romance, but it’s well-written and I enjoyed it.
There are also installments of two serials, “Longhorn Stampede” by Philip Ketchum and “The Vengeance Riders” by Jack Barton, who was really Joseph Chadwick. Ketchum and Chadwick were both fine writers and I’m sure these are good stories, but as I’ve mentioned before, I have the novel version of THE VENGEANCE RIDERS and will get around to reading it one of these days, and I may have a copy of LONGHORN STAMPEDE, too. If I don't, there's a good chance I will have in the reasonably near future.
Rounding out the issue are the usual features—Western movie news, pen pals, astrology—and a somewhat Western-themed crossword puzzle completely filled out in pencil by one of the previous owners of this copy. Only a couple of erasures, too, so a pretty good job. Somehow, things like this make me feel a closer kinship to the person who owned this one originally. I can just imagine her—or him, RANCH ROMANCES is bound to have had some male readers, too—sitting at a kitchen table in 1955, working the crossword puzzle after a long day. That could be all wrong, of course, I have no way of knowing, but it’s an image I find appealing.
Overall, this is a fairly solid issue of RANCH ROMANCES. There’s only one outstanding story, but the Cheshire novella is really good and all the other stories except the one I didn’t like are well-written and entertaining, if not particularly memorable. If you have a copy, it’s worth reading. You might even want to do the crossword puzzle if somebody hasn’t beaten you to it.
“The Black Gold Secret” and “The Rimrock Raiders” are both by A. Leslie Scott
writing under the Jackson Cole house-name, so it’s not surprising that they’re
similar. The basic concept—clashes between cattlemen and oil drillers who have
moved into what was previously a ranching area—are the same, and Scott used
that plot foundation in other novels, as well. But the details in “The Black
Gold Secret” are different and it’s an equally entertaining yarn. Early on in
this one, Hatfield extinguishes a burning oil well, something that he also does
in “The Rimrock Raiders”, but does so in a totally different manner—and it
makes for a slam-bang, very exciting scene, too. Scott layers in some geology
and behind-the-scenes stuff about the oil industry and also provides plenty of
shootouts and fistfights along the way. The vivid descriptions that are a Scott
trademark are there but rather limited, as he keeps this one really racing
along. Of course, there’s more going on than is apparent at first, but you know
Hatfield will untangle all the villainy by the end, and it’s a pretty
spectacular climax, too, as the main bad guy meets his end in an unexpected
way. I had a great time reading this novel, and I’m sure I’ll be reading
another by Scott before too much longer.
Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name, so there’s no telling who wrote “Gun
Trail”, a short-short about a Texas Ranger doggedly tracking down a horse thief
and murderer, only to find that things aren’t exactly what he thought they
were. There’s not a lot to this story, but it’s short and punchy and enjoyable.
I started out not liking Joseph Chadwick’s work very much, but he’s won me over
and become one of my favorite Western writers. I think he’s one of the best of
the more hardboiled Western authors who rose to prominence in the postwar
years. His novelette in this issue, “The Blizzard and the Banker”, is
excellent. It’s about a small town in Dakota Territory trying to survive a hard
winter. The local banker is the hero of a Western story, for a nice change, but
there are several other good characters including an outlaw who’s maybe not
quite as bad as his reputation would have you believe, a beautiful female faro
dealer, and assorted villains. Chadwick does a fine job with the interactions
of these characters as well as his depictions of the harsh weather. Just a
really, really good story all the way around.
Allan K. Echols was one of those workmanlike writers who filled up the pages of
Western, detective, and aviation pulps with hundreds of stories during a 30-year
career (mid-Twenties to mid-Fifties; he passed away in 1953 but still had new
stories coming out a couple of years later). He also wrote more than a dozen
Western novels. And yet I’ve never run across anybody who proclaims themselves
a big Allan K. Echols fan. His story in this issue, “Brother’s Keeper”, is an
unacknowledged reprint from the January 1938 issue of ROMANTIC WESTERN. It’s
not romantic at all, though. Instead, it’s about an apparently dull-witted
sheriff who’s trying to figure out which of two rancher brothers is responsible
for the murder of one of their enemies. It’s a well-written, solidly plotted
story, and I enjoyed it, but I doubt that it’ll stick with me. Which probably
helps to explain why Echols is pretty much forgotten even among devoted Western
readers.
There’s also a Doc Swap story by Ben Frank in this issue. I’m sorry, but I didn’t
even try to read it. I used to say that the Swap and Whopper stories by Syl
McDowell in THRILLING WESTERN were my least favorite Western pulp series, but I’ve
surprised myself by kind of warming up to them recently. Not so Doc Swap, which
by this time had taken over from Lee Bond’s Long Sam Littlejohn as the regular
backup series in TEXAS RANGERS. I just don’t find these appealing at all.
However, I’d still say this is a good issue of TEXAS RANGERS. The Hatfield novel
and Joseph Chadwick’s novelette are both excellent, and the stories by Echols
and Parsons are entertaining. If you have a copy, it’s well worth reading, as
far as I’m concerned. And hey, you may actually like Doc Swap, you never know.
The Hatfield novel in this issue, “The Rimrock Raiders”, is by A. Leslie Scott
writing as Jackson Cole. It centers around the conflict between some cattlemen
in West Texas and the oil wildcatters who are moving into the region. One of
those wildcatters strikes a gusher, resulting in an oil boom town and even more
trouble. Naturally, it’s going to take a Texas Ranger to clean things up and
expose the true villain behind all the problems, and of course that Ranger is
Jim Hatfield.
In addition to knowing a lot about mining and railroading, Scott was also
well-versed in geology and the oil business, and that knowledge comes through
in this novel. I’m a long-time fan of oilfield yarns and this is a good one
with a real sense of authenticity. There are two great scenes, one in which
Hatfield comes up with a unique way of dealing with an oil rig that’s on fire,
the other being the literally explosive climax that’s one of the best I’ve read
in the series. Scott was at the top of his game in this one, which he rewrote
and expanded a few years later into the Walt Slade novel GUNSMOKE OVER TEXAS,
published by Pyramid in 1956. I read that version when I was in high school. I
remembered the cover but nothing about the plot, so it didn’t spoil “The
Rimrock Raiders” for me.
This novel, with its oilfield element, also reminds me of a strange discrepancy
in the Hatfield series. Scott’s entries seem to be set around the turn of the 20th
Century, based on historical references, while the Hatfield novels by Tom
Curry, the other main writer on the series for many years, read more like they’re
set about twenty years earlier, around 1880. The novels by Walker A. Tompkins
and Peter Germano are harder to pin down as to time period, but most of them
seem to me to be set in the 1880s or 1890s. I find these continuity glitches, if
you want to call them that, interesting, but they absolutely don’t bother me. I
just enjoy the stories.
Tex Holt was a house-name used by Leslie Scott, Archie Joscelyn, and Claude Rister
on novels. It also shows up on a dozen or so stories in various Thrilling Group
Western pulps. That’s the by-line on “Ghost Riders of Haunted Pass” in this
issue, a lightweight tale about a couple of drifting cowboys named Jim Norton
and “Hungry” Hill who encounter a couple of phantom owlhoots. The banter between
the protagonists reminded me a little of Syl McDowell’s Swap and Whopper
stories, but not as silly and the story’s action doesn’t descend into slapstick
comedy. It’s an okay story, but I have no idea who wrote it.
“Long Sam Crowns a King” is another entry in Lee Bond’s long-running series
about the good-guy outlaw Long Sam Littlejohn. In this one, set in the South Texas
brush country, Long Sam clashes with an old enemy, a former carpetbagger turned
would-be cattle king. There’s some nice action, and for a change, the
characters don’t stand around explaining the plot to each other. Long Sam’s
nemesis, U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, is mentioned but doesn’t make an appearance.
This is a solid story in a formulaic but consistently entertaining series.
“Red Butte Showdown” is by Jim Mayo, who we all know was actually Louis L’Amour.
This story centers around a mysterious stranger who protects a couple of
orphans (one of whom is a beautiful young woman, of course) from a villain who’s
after the mine they’ve inherited. That plot sounds pretty well-worn, and to
tell the truth, most of L’Amour’s plots were pretty standard stuff. But he was
really, really good at them most of the time, and “Red Butte Showdown” is no
exception. Not only that, but he throws in a pretty good plot twist at the end
of this one. I’ve said for a long time that I think L’Amour was a better short
story writer than he was a novelist, and this is a good example. I enjoyed this
story a lot. It’s probably been reprinted in one of the many L’Amour short
story collections, but I don’t know which.
Barry Scobee’s “Good Country for Murder” is a modern-day Western in which a
park ranger in West Texas’s Big Bend encounters a vicious criminal. It’s a
suspenseful, very well-written yarn that I thoroughly enjoyed. As I’ve
mentioned before, Barry Scobee is the only pulp writer I know of who has a
mountain named for him. It’s just outside Fort Davis, Texas, and was named after
Scobee to honor his efforts in preserving the old military fort there. In
addition to writing for the pulps, he was a newspaper reporter and editor in
West Texas and his work really rings true when it’s set in that region. This is
another very good story by him.
And this is a very good issue of TEXAS RANGERS, as well. A top-notch Hatfield novel,
and four out of the five back-up stories are very good to excellent. The one
story that’s weaker than the others is still entertaining. If you’re a fan of
this pulp, have this issue on your shelves, and haven’t read it, I give it a
high recommendation. (If you want to read the rewritten, Walt Slade version of
the novel, GUNSMOKE OVER TEXAS, it’s available as an e-book on Amazon and would
be well worth your time, too.)
It's also an extremely accurate representation of a scene in the short story “Clown
of Doom” by John L. Benton, a Thrilling Group house-name commonly used by
Norman A. Daniels but also by Oscar J. Friend and Donald Bayne Hobart. The narrator/protagonist
is named Ed Rice, which instantly rings some bells and raises some questions.
Was John L. Benton, in this case, actually Emile C. Tepperman, and is “Clown of
Doom” really an entry in Tepperman’s long-running Ed Race series which ran as
back-up stories in THE SPIDER? Maybe an editor at Popular Publications rejected
the story so Tepperman changed one letter in his hero’s name and sent it over
to the Thrilling Group? Ed Race, after all, was a juggler and trickshot artist
who had many adventures set in the carnival world.
Well, I can’t prove it, of course, but my answer to both of the questions I
posed above is “I don’t think so.” For one thing, Ed Rice, in this story, is a
spieler, a ballyhoo guy, not a marksman or juggler. The story is told in slangy,
present-tense, first-person narration that doesn’t sound anything like
Tepperman’s Ed Race stories. And the fact that the scene on the cover exactly
matches the action in the story makes me believe that a lot more likely
scenario is that this yarn was written to match an already existing cover
painting. The author was probably one of the regular contributors to POPULAR
DETECTIVE and the other Thrilling Group detective pulps. Whatever the truth of
this situation is, the story is a pretty good one, a fast-paced yarn about a
murder at a traveling carnival.
Elsewhere, the issue leads off with the novella “Motto For Murder” by Frank
Johnson, also a Thrilling Group house-name used mostly by Norman A. Daniels. My
hunch is that he didn’t write this story, but he might have. Private eye Rufus
Reed and his two partners, his wife Pat and his younger brother Johnny, are
hired to find out who’s been knocking off defendants in high-profile murder trials
right after they’ve been found not guilty. It’s a fairly interesting plot and
there are some excellent action scenes, but the characters are all kind of bland
and I never was as intrigued as I hoped to be. Not a terrible story, but
certainly forgettable.
“Pilot to Murderer” is by Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulpster who went on to a
career as a well-respected paperback novelist in the Fifties and Sixties. It
has a great concept: the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on a top-secret
mission discovers that there’s a murderer among them. It's up to the pilot, who
also narrates the story, to figure out who the killer is. This is a terrific
story that lives up to the idea. I really need to read more by Sheldon.
“Death By Proxy” by M.D. Orr is part of a series featuring British Intelligence
agent Archie McCann, who battles Japanese espionage plots in New Guinea while
pretending to be an anthropologist. This is the first one I’ve read. In this
story, a would-be assassin turns up dead, so Archie has to solve the murder of
a man who tried to kill him. The setting and the concept are great, and Archie
is a likable, interesting protagonist, but the writing never worked up much
urgency or suspense for me. Still, there’s enough to like that I’d be
interested in reading more in the series.
Mel Watt’s novelette “The Chair Is Not Cheated” features as its sleuth an actor
who plays the villainous Dr. Coffin on a radio crime drama. He has to turn
detective in real life when a friend of his is accused in what seems to be an
open-and-shut case of murder. What really happened is pretty predictable, but
the story moves along at a decent pace. Watt could have done more with the
radio background, too. Although it reads like the start of a series, this is
the only “Dr. Coffin” story of which I’m aware.
Joe Archibald wrote a long (approximately 70 stories) series about private
detective Willie Klump, all of which appeared in POPULAR DETECTIVE except the
final two, which were published in THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE and MIKE SHAYNE
MYSTERY MAGAZINE. These are comedy detective yarns, a sub-genre which, like comedy
Westerns, I don’t usually care for. I had never read a Willie Klump story
before, and I’m not a big fan of Archibald’s work in general, so “The Witness
Share” in this issue kind of had two strikes against it to start with. But
there are always exceptions, so I was willing to give it a chance, and I’m glad
I did. Willie is a hapless, wise-cracking narrator who, like W.C. Tuttle’s
Tombstone and Speedy, isn’t as dumb as he seems at first. In fact, he’s fairly
sharp as he solves a case of jewel robbery and murder. I enjoyed this story quite a bit more than I
expected to, and I’d be happy to read more about Willie Klump.
Overall, this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE is a really mixed bag. None of the
stories are terrible and I had no trouble finishing all of them. Only one, “Pilot
to Murderer”, is outstanding, but “Clown of Doom” and “The Witness Share” aren’t
bad. The others all have something going for them, even if they didn’t have me
flipping the digital pages with a great deal of enthusiasm. I don’t mean to
damn with faint praise here. This issue is okay and I’m glad I read it, and I
found enough to like that I might read another issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE in
the reasonably near future. Just not right away.
“Iron Horse Gunsmoke” is the third Masked Rider novel after the series was
taken over by Better Publications and became part of the Thrilling Group, after
the first dozen or so issues were published by Ranger Publications. It’s the
second Masked Rider tale by veteran pulpster Donald Bayne Hobart, who wrote 19
Masked Rider novels, more than any other writer who contributed to the series.
(Walker A. Tompkins was second with 18.) For those of you who don’t recall, the
Masked Rider was more than likely inspired by/an homage to/ripped off from The
Lone Ranger. He’s a good guy outlaw who wears a mask and travels with a
faithful Indian companion as they drift around the West, helping folks in need,
dispensing justice to owlhoot varmints, and generally adventuring. But as it
turns out, the character is a lot more interesting than you might think. Unlike
The Lone Ranger, who only occasionally uses disguises, the Masked Rider spends
a large portion of each novel pretending to be drifting cowboy Wayne Morgan.
The novels make it clear that Morgan is not the character’s true identity; he’s
just as fictional as the Masked Rider himself. Somewhere in the mists of the
past, the Masked Rider and his family ran afoul of injustice, and that’s why he
dons a black cape and mask and sets out to right wrongs. But who he really is
or what his actual background might be, we never find out. His Yaqui friend
Blue Hawk, like Tonto to The Lone Ranger, is no mere sidekick. He’s an equal
partner in the fight against lawlessness and is tough and smart and just as
much of a badass as The Masked Rider. They’re a great team.
It's also a little unusual that the lead novella in this issue, featured on the
cover, is a story by an author who had never appeared in the pulps before. In
fact, “Blood on the Lode” is one of only two stories credited to James D.
Pinkham in the FMI. A novelette by him appeared in MAX BRAND’S WESTERN MAGAZINE
in 1953. I wondered briefly if the name was a pseudonym for a better-known
Western writer, but I decided that probably wasn’t the case. Pinkham’s style is
distinct enough that I don’t recall encountering it under any other name.
And it’s a maddeningly frustrating style, too. The story is one that hasn’t
been done to death in Western pulp fiction and is reasonably accurate
historically, too. In 1853, a pair of California Rangers are sent to a mining
boomtown to clean up the lawlessness there. The heroes, Luke Corbin and the
Alamo Kid, are Texans who rode with the Rangers there while Texas was a republic,
and they’ve followed their old commander, Captain Harry Love, to California. So
far, so good. Corbin and the Kid are fine protagonists. In their new job, they’re
up against a crooked judge and a gambler/saloon owner who’s the mastermind of a
gang of claim jumpers. Or is he? His beautiful, redheaded partner in the saloon
is known as the Flame and has some secrets of her own. This is good stuff, and
it’s done well in stretches with some great action scenes.
But then everything lurches to a halt as Pinkham spends several columns of
dense prose summing up his character’s activities. Corbin wanders around talking
endlessly to various characters, and Pinkham doesn’t even give us interesting
dialogue, just dry recaps of what’s being discussed. Then we’re off again on
another well-done ambush or shootout, but the previous scene has robbed the
story almost completely of any momentum. He keeps up this pattern all the way
through the story.
Despite those flaws, there’s enough to like in “Blood on the Lode” that I wish
Pinkham had written more. He could have been a promising author.
I’ve never cared for Ben Frank’s work, although the readers must have because
his Doc Swap series of humorous stories ran for a long time in TEXAS RANGERS.
His story in this issue of THRILLING WESTERN is a stand-alone, “The Lucky
Horseshoe Case”, in which a couple of cowpokes try to become private detectives.
I told myself to give it a fair chance, but it’s just awful and I only made it through
a couple of pages.
The “Man’s Business” referred to in Gile A. Lutz’s story of the same name is a
gunfight between two ranchers over a waterhole. However, things don’t turn out
as you might expect. This is a pretty minor story, but Lutz was a solid pro and
makes it readable and entertaining.
“There’s Trouble in Hardpan” is the third Swap and Whopper story by Syl
McDowell that I’ve read recently. This is another humorous series that I never
liked, but for some unfathomable reason, I’ve started enjoying them. Tastes
change, I guess. This novelette finds the two drifting protagonists running
across an orchard in the middle of the desert and clashing with a cantankerous
veterinarian. As always, it’s lightweight stuff, but it moves right along and
is mildly amusing.
Steuart Emery wrote a lot of excellent cavalry stories for various Western
pulps, most of them appearing in TEXAS RANGERS. But there’s one in this issue
of THRILLING WESTERN called “Phantom Sabers”, and it’s the usual top-notch job
from Emery. It features a clash between a bookish young lieutenant and an
overbearing captain and winds up with a very clever twist when a patrol is
surrounded and on the verge of being wiped out by Apaches. As far as I know,
Emery never wrote any Western novels, which is a shame.
This issue wraps up with “Chalk Butte Conflict”, a novelette by Ben T. Young in
which a Texas cowboy wins a Wyoming ranch in a poker game. He’s too fiddle-footed
to settle down, so when he arrives in Wyoming, he plans to sell the spread as
quickly as he can and move on. The foreman who works for the local cattle baron
rubs him the wrong way, though, and the cattle baron has a beautiful daughter
(what cattle baron doesn’t?), so our protagonist decides to stick around for a
spell and trouble inevitably erupts. I don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything
else by Young, who wrote around a hundred stories, mostly Westerns, during the
Forties and early Fifties, but this is a very good story, told in an appealing
breezy style, with a likable protagonist and plenty of action. It ends this
issue on a high note.
So this issue of THRILLING WESTERN is a mixed bag with no truly outstanding
stories but a couple of very good ones, several that are entertaining, and only
one clear miss, as far as I’m concerned. It’s about as middle-of-the-road as
you can find for a Western pulp, but I enjoyed reading it.
I don’t know anything about Alexander Wallace except that he produced about
three dozen stories for various pulps, mostly from Fiction House, between 1946
and 1954. His novelette “The White Peril” in this issue has an Indian as its
protagonist, a young Crow chief called Blue Star, who has to battle a white
gunrunner with plans to arm the Sioux, who are bitter enemies to the Crow. I
don’t recall reading anything else by Wallace, but maybe I should because the writing
in this one is very good. The story moves along well and I enjoyed it.
“Water Power” is a more humorous story than the others I’ve read by Ed La
Vanway. It’s about a water witcher using a divining rod to head off a war
between a cattle baron and some sodbusters. It’s pretty lightweight but okay
reading.
Joseph Chadwick has become one of my favorite hardboiled Western authors. His
novelette “Home to Boot Hill” features a first-person narrator, sort of unusual
for Westerns of this era, a former Texas Ranger who fears he’s gone gun-shy. But
he returns home to New Mexico anyway to help his old flame (who is now married)
fight off attempts by the local cattle baron (yeah, another of those pesky
cattle barons) to force her off her ranch. Nice gritty action and an offbeat
protagonist make this one work all the way around. I liked it a lot.
Next up is the novelette “The Saddle Pards at Buzzard Butte”, an entry in a
series I usually skip, Swap and Whopper by Syl MacDowell. These are slapstick
comedy Westerns starring a couple of hapless saddle tramps, Swap Bootle and
Whopper Whaley. (Think sort of Abbott and Costello in the contemporary West,
but not quite.) I decided I was going to read this one and stick with it to the
end, no matter what. And I did. It’s a bizarre concoction featuring a guitar,
road construction, and a baseball game. To my surprise, I actually smiled a
couple of times. MacDowell was a good writer. His more traditional Westerns are usually
pretty entertaining. Although it’s not saying much, this is my favorite Swap
and Whopper story so far. Will that make me go back and dig out all the ones I’ve
skipped in the past? Not likely. But if I come across another one, I’ll at
least give it a try.
C. William Harrison is a consistently good writer, so it’s no surprise that his
short story “Granger—Draw or Die!” is an enjoyable yarn. It’s about a cowboy
who gives up that life to become a farmer and his inevitable clash with the
cattleman who’s his former employer. Well done, with some good characters and
action.
I’m pretty sure I read H. Bedford-Jones’s novelette “Dead Man’s Boots” in the
November 1936 issue of THRILLING WESTERN in which it first appeared. It’s
reprinted in this issue, and since it’s been more than 20 years since I read it
the first time, I tackled it again. It’s a fine story (I’m not sure
Bedford-Jones was capable of writing anything else) about a gun-swift drifter riding
away from trouble in the border country and right into more trouble involving a
double-cross partnership between a crooked saloon owner and a cattle baron.
(Lots of cattle barons in this issue.) While the plot is suitably twisty and
there’s plenty of action, I’ve always felt that while Bedford-Jones’s traditional
Westerns are good, they’re not quite as strong as his historical and straight
adventure yarns. “Dead Man’s Boots” is a prime example of that. There’s nothing
wrong with it except that it reads like the sort of story that dozens of other
Western pulpsters could have written just as well. Maybe that’s holding HB-J to
a higher standard than I should, I don’t know, but that’s the way this story
struck me.
I always enjoy Ray Gaulden’s work, too. His short story in this issue, “Boom
Town Trouble-Shooter” is a mining story involving a boom town (no surprise
there, considering the title) and yet another crooked saloon owner. Gaulden
packs quite a bit of plot and action into a story of less than 10 pages and
does a good job of it.
Ernest Haycox’s short story “Skirmish at Dry Fork” is a reprint from the July
25, 1942 issue of the slick magazine COLLIER’S. But it’s right at home in
THRILLING WESTERN, as well. It’s about a group of cavalry troopers who visit a town
for a celebration on payday and their inevitable clash with a bunch of cowboys
leading to a saloon brawl. Then a young soldier falls for one of the soiled doves
who works in the saloon, leading to more trouble. Since this is an Ernest
Haycox story, you know it’s well-written, and while Haycox’s work sometimes
leaves me a little cold, I really liked this one. Some nice action and very
good characters and a few poignant touches make it work really well.
“Six-Gun Specter” is a short story bylined Johanas L. Bouma, rather than the
more common J.L. Bouma. It’s a tale about a young man with two outlaw brothers
who’s trying to escape his family’s shady past. A stagecoach robbery and a
beautiful young woman prove to be turning points for him. This is a pretty good
story marred by a very rushed ending.
Robert Ferguson is the author of “Medicine”, a short story about an Apache
attack on an isolated ranch in Arizona. Ferguson published only a handful of
stories. This is the only one I’ve read, and I didn’t like it at all. Didn’t
care for the writing, didn’t like the characters, and almost didn’t finish it.
That happens sometimes. Might’ve just been me.
Overall, I’d say this is an above-average issue of THRILLING WESTERN, based on
the good cover by George Rozen, the stories by Ernest Haycox, Joseph Chadwick, and Alexander
Wallace, and the offbeat elements in some of the other stories. And I even kind
of enjoyed the Swap and Whopper yarn! Maybe I will check out some of the others
in the series.