Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1948

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with an exciting and dramatic cover by Sam Cherry, who always delivered the goods. And I’ll have more to say about this cover later.

This issue leads off with another Tombstone and Speedy novelette by W.C. Tuttle, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones”. In this one, our intrepid range detective duo aren’t on the trail of rustlers for a change. As a favor to their boss at the Cattlemen’s Association, they set out to investigate a case of high-grading at a gold mine. But when they arrive on the scene, they find the mine owner and his lawyer both dead. Is it murder? What does it have to do with the kidnapping of an inept young drummer from back east who sells ladies’ ready-to-wear goods? Why’s everybody so interested in a beautiful young woman and her son? Tombstone and Speedy will untangle all those threads, of course, with a lot of banter and gunplay along the way. After being a little disappointed in the last yarn I read in this series, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones” really hits the mark. The dialogue is funny, the action is good, the detective work, mostly by Tombstone, is canny, and the plot hangs together nicely. This is a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy story.

“Catch Rope” is the third and final story in Chuck Martin’s short-lived series about crippled range detective Jim Bowen. It’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which Bowen goes after a gang of rustlers who have kidnapped a rancher. Martin is nearly always worth reading, and this is an enjoyable story. I hoped it would bring some resolution to Jim Bowen’s continuing storyline, but it doesn’t, which is a shame.

Nels Leroy Jorgensen started out as a hardboiled crime and mystery writer in BLACK MASK before concentrating on Westerns later in his career, and I’ve enjoyed a number of his stories in the past. “Bullet Trail to Bexar”, his novelette in this issue, gets off to a promising start. It’s set in Texas in the spring of 1836, during the Texas revolution, and is about a young Texan on a mission to San Antonio. He gets saddled with a beautiful young woman along the way, and she has an agenda of her own. This should be a good story, but it’s riddled with anachronisms and blatant historical errors, as well as continuity glitches such as the young woman’s stepfather suddenly becoming her half-brother for the rest of the story. I wound up abandoning this one halfway through. It just has too many problems for it to be entertaining to me.

“Killer, Here I Come” is by Robert J. Hogan, best-known for the G-8 series, of course, but he wrote quite a few Westerns as well. This is the second story in this issue where the protagonist has a crippled leg. In this case, he’s not a range detective but rather a saddlemaker and veterinarian. He’s a very likable character, and you can’t help but root for him as he has to deal with an old enemy turned bank robber. I didn’t like this one whole-heartedly—there’s some cruelty to animals in it, and I have a hard time with that—but it’s a pretty good story overall.

Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name. The story under that by-line in this issue, “Born to Hang”, is the one illustrated by Cherry’s cover. Actually, I strongly suspect this is another case of a story being written to match an existing cover painting, because the scene lines up perfectly with the story. I also think there’s a very good chance the story was written by editor Charles S. Strong, who was also Western writer Chuck Stanley, author of a regular non-fiction column in EXCITING WESTERN. It’s a good yarn about a drifter framed for murder, and its only real drawback is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it might have been. Still an enjoyable story, though.

Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine has become one of my favorite Western pulp characters. In “Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger!”, he’s sent to find out who’s been attacking and burning out some homesteaders, which leads him to a mystery involving the inheritance of a valuable ranch. It’s a good story, and I’m convinced it’s the work of Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond created the Navajo Tom Raine series and wrote more of the stories than anyone else, although C. William Harrison contributed quite a few, as well. This one ends with a big shootout between Raine and multiple bad guys, one of the trademarks of his stories.

The issue wraps up with “Reba Rides Alone” by D.B. Newton, one of my favorite Western authors. Of course, I can’t see that title without thinking about the country singer, but in this case, Reba is Mike Reba, a veteran outlaw who’s wounded and on the run when he encounters a young man determined to take up the owlhoot trail. This story is kind of predictable, but it’s very well written, and like all of Newton’s work, it’s worth reading.

This is a good issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN with a strong Tombstone and Speedy entry, a solid Navajo Tom Raine story, and the other stories are all okay with the exception of Jorgensen’s. If you have a copy, it’s certainly worth taking down from the shelves. If you don’t, the whole issue is also available on the Internet Archive.

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, January 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know who painted the cover. It’s not a great cover, in my opinion, but it’s not really a bad cover, either. And the map of Texas has El Paso not quite in the right place. They didn’t think they could slip that past a born-bred-and-forever Texan like me, did they? But on to the stories.

Seven Anderton is an unjustly forgotten writer who had a decent career in the Western, detective, and sports pulps from the late Twenties to the late Fifties, producing around a hundred stories during that run, many of them novellas or novelettes. But he never wrote an actual novel as far as I know, which is probably one reason he’s forgotten. His novella “Her Name is Battle” leads off this issue, and the title is literal: the heroine is named Esther Battle. She’s a Western girl born and raised who has been at an Eastern school the past few years, but as the story opens, she’s returning to claim the ranch she’s inherited from her uncle. During the trip, she makes some allies: a giant Swede who wants to become a cowboy, and an actual down-on-his-luck cowboy who winds up being hired as Esther’s foreman. Naturally, there’s an evil banker who wants to take over the ranch, even if it means kidnapping or killing Esther before she arrives.

As far as the set-up goes, there’s nothing in this story we haven’t read many times before, but Anderton populates his yarn with distinctive, well-developed, and even colorful characters. His writing is smooth and funny at times, tough and gritty at others. “Her Name is Battle” is just a well-written, very entertaining story with a few welcome twists. Unfortunately, it kind of limps to an ending that’s not as satisfying as it could have been, which is something I’ve noticed in other stories by Anderton. It’s like he pulls back rather than going for a big finish. However, that didn’t stop me from enjoying this story, and I won’t hesitate to read more by him.

During the Thirties, Cliff Campbell was a personal pseudonym for writer and editor Abner J. Sundell. In the Forties, it became a Columbia Publications house-name used by numerous authors on Western, detective, and sports stories. The actual author of “Killer From Texas”, a novella in this issue by-lined Cliff Campbell, hasn’t been determined as far as I know, but whoever it was did a pretty good job. Drifting cowpoke Homer Kale rides into a Wyoming settlement figuring on having a quiet drink, but before you know it, he’s been accused by a beautiful girl of murdering an old prospector, and he’s locked up in jail before being taken out by a lynch mob. Homer barely escapes that necktie party and goes on the run from the law, knowing that the only way he can save his life is by finding the real killer. It’s a time-worn plot, to be sure, but “Campbell” spins his yarn with skill and enthusiasm, combining some surprisingly lighthearted scenes with a grotesque and suitably evil villain, some other colorful characters, and enough gritty action to keep things interesting. I couldn’t even make a guess who actually wrote this one, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I’d read a couple of stories by W. Edmunds Claussen before and had a mixed reaction to them. One I thought was kind of okay, the other I didn’t like. His novelette in this issue, “Gun-Smuggler Trail”, falls into the kind of okay category. It has a pretty good plot: fiddlefooted adventurer Burt Moffat returns to his family’s ranch in New Mexico to find that his father and his brother (a U.S. marshal) have both been murdered, and outlaws are using the ranch to smuggle guns across the border to Pancho Villa in Mexico. The smuggling gang uses an old ghost town as its headquarters. The story is atmospheric and violent, but Claussen’s convoluted style can be hard to read and follow. So this is sort of a miss, but an interesting one that might have been a really good story in different hands.

“Gunslick Trio From Hell” is by Charles D. Richardson Jr., another author whose work I’ve found to be okay at best. In this story, a reformed outlaw who has become the respected mayor of a frontier settlement has his past crop up to haunt him in the form of three members of his old gang. Things play out about like you’d expect them to, but in rather bland fashion and nobody in the story is really all that likable. And overall, I didn’t like the story much.

Lee Floren’s work is hit-and-miss with me, but mostly I like his stories. “Triggers for a Texan” in this issue is another interesting yarn that’s not particularly well-written, but I liked it considerably better than Claussen’s novelette. It’s about a Texan who has sworn off using a gun because of violence in his past, but when he gets involved in a Wyoming range war, he has to choose whether to pick up a Colt again. We’ve all read this plot many times before, but Floren does a decent job with it, attempting a few stylistic tricks that don’t quite come off but don’t keep it from being an entertaining yarn.

Chuck Martin, who often wrote as Charles M. Martin as well, is another dependably entertaining Western pulpster. His story “Gun or Gallows” in this issue is about a young marshal working for Judge Isaac Parker, the famous Hanging Judge. He has to arrest an old friend of his for murder, but he doesn’t believe the man is guilty, so the two of them set out together to find the real killer. I didn’t like this one as much as the other stories I’ve read by Martin, but it’s not bad. The ending is a considerable stretch, though.

Lon Williams is a pretty well-regarded author because of his series of Weird Western stories about Deputy Sheriff Lee Winters. I’ve read a few of those, though, and I’m not really a fan. His contribution to this issue is a short stand-alone story called “Stolen Waters” about a crooked lawyer and forger getting his comeuppance. It’s a very minor story but reasonably well-written.

Overall, this issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN is probably a below average Western pulp, with the best story being the “Cliff Campbell” house-name yarn, and the Seven Anderton story is good, too. None of the others are terrible, but they’re not very memorable, either. Don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have this issue. If you do read it, go in with low expectations and it’ll probably provide at least some entertainment.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Yarns, March 1943

This is a fairly short-lived Western pulp from Columbia Publications, edited, as usual, by Robert W. Lowndes. I don't own this issue or, for that matter, any issues of WESTERN YARNS. But the cover caught my eye. It's by Sam Cherry and is one of Cherry's earliest Western pulp covers. A pretty good job, too, if you ask me. All the authors inside are well-known Western pulpsters: Ed Earl Repp, Archie Joscelyn, Lee Floren, Chuck Martin, and Ralph Berard. Maybe not the same level as the usual authors in WESTERN STORY or DIME WESTERN, but still some enjoyable yarn-spinners there.

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fighting Western, June 1946

More proof, as if we needed it, of how dangerous it was to go to the barber shop in the Old West. I'm pretty sure this cover is by H.W. Scott, who did most of them for FIGHTING WESTERN during this era. Since this was a Trojan Publishing Corporation pulp, it's not surprising that a couple of the authors were also stalwart contributors to the Spicy/Speed pulps. E. Hoffmann Price is on hand with a Simon Bolivar Grimes story, and Victor Rousseau has two stories, one under his own name and one as by Lew Merrill. Prolific Western pulpster and genuine cowboy Chuck Martin is in these pages, too, and there's a Johnny Hardluck story by Branch Carter, apparently that author's real name. Who's Johnny Hardluck, you ask? I don't know since I've never read any of the stories about him, but Carter wrote nine Johnny Hardluck yarns, all of which appeared in 10 STORY WESTERN except this one, which happens to be the second in the series. I may have some of his 10 STORY WESTERN appearances; I'll have to check and see.

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: Rodeo Romances, October 1948

This cowgirl looks a little clean and unmussed to have just bulldogged that dogie, but hey, artistic license, right? I'm not going to complain about a pretty girl painted by Sam Cherry and a beautiful use of red and yellow on a Western pulp cover. Inside this issue of RODEO ROMANCES are stories by Stephen Payne, Johnston McCulley, Chuck Martin, Clinton Dangerfield, and house-name Jackson Cole. Had I been standing in front of a newsstand in 1948 with an extra dime and nickel in my pocket, I probably wouldn't have bought it (it has romance in the title, so I likely would've thought it was full o' that dang mushy stuff), but I might well have taken a closer look at that cover. And given those authors, I probably would have enjoyed the stories, too, to be honest.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Popular Western, January 1945

That's some mighty nifty gun-handlin' on this issue of POPULAR WESTERN, courtesy of artist Sam Cherry. I don't recall running across another behind-the-back shot on a Western pulp. POPULAR WESTERN ran quite a few series stories, and that's true in this issue. There's a Sheriff Blue Steele story by Syl McDowell writing as Tom Gunn, a Buffalo Billy Bates yarn by house-name Scott Carleton (possibly Chuck Martin, who has a story in this issue under his own name), and a Fiddlin' Danny tale by Ben Frank. I'll confess, I've never heard of Fiddlin' Danny and don't know a thing about him. One of my favorite authors, W.C. Tuttle, contributes a stand-alone story, as do Chuck Martin and house-names Jackson Cole and Tex Holt. There's plenty here to provide some good reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, September 21, 1940

I haven't posted a WILD WEST WEEKLY cover for a while and figured it was time. This painting by Duncan Coburn features an old codger, one of my favorite types of Western supporting character. Inside are some fine authors, including a Tommy Rockford story by Walker A. Tompkins (a series that really needs to be reprinted) and yarns by Chuck Martin, C. William Harrison, and Hapsburg Liebe writing under the house-name Philip F. Deere. The lead novella is by Shoshone Gwinn, actually William R. Gwinn, an author I'm not familiar with. But a while back I read and reviewed an early Gold Medal novel called DEATH LIES DEEP by William Guinn, evidently the only thing he ever wrote. I wonder if that could be the same guy despite the slight difference in spelling in the last name. We'll probably never know, but such speculation interests me. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 5 Western Novels Magazine, April 1952

Well, you know this "friendly" game of cards isn't going to end well. I like this atmospheric cover by Sam Cherry. 5 WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE was primarily a reprint pulp, but this issue features new stories by H.A. DeRosso and Allan K. Echols. The reprints, all novelettes, are by Joseph Chadwick, Chuck Martin, B.M. Bower, Norrell Gregory, and Cliff Walters.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, January 1944

We have a tough-looking hombre, courtesy of Sam Cherry, gracing the cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. The collection of authors inside is pretty good, too: William Heuman, Philip Ketchum, Les Savage Jr., Tom W. Blackburn, Chuck Martin, Rod Patterson, M. Howard Lane, James C. Lynch, James Shaffer, house-names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit, and lesser known authors Frederick Bales and Joe Payne. They always counted the features in FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES, so actually there are only thirteen stories in this one.

Saturday Morning Bonus Pulp: Double Action Western, November 1944

What did I tell you about those Old West barber shops? It just wasn't safe going into those places, as the cover on this issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN proves. This issue has only three stories in it, a novel by Galen C. Colin, an author I've never read, and short stories by Chuck Martin, whose work I've read and enjoyed in the past, and Basil Wells, an author I'd never even heard of. But a quick check of the Fictionmags Index reveals that Wells broke into the pulps in 1940 and as still writing stories for small press magazines as late as the Nineties! There weren't very many pulpsters still active at that point.

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: Thrilling Ranch Stories, Summer 1950

THRILLING RANCH STORIES was the Thrilling Group's second-string Western romance pulp, but you can't really tell that from the covers and authors, which seem to me just as good as those in RANCH ROMANCES. Take the Summer 1950 issue, for example, which sports an excellent Kirk Wilson cover and includes stories by Leslie Scott (as A. Leslie), Johnston McCulley, Chuck Martin, Frank P. Castle, Walt Sheldon, Ben Frank, and Eugene A. Clancy. Those are all solid, prolific Western pulpsters, and one of them (Scott) is a favorite of mine. Sounds like a good issue to me.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1948

Ah, the old "shooting behind your back while your hands are tied and you're burning the ropes on a candle" trick! The bad guys never see that one coming. This is probably a Sam Cherry cover, but that's not confirmed. What I can confirm is that there are some good authors in this issue, leading off with one of W.C. Tuttle's Tombstone and Speedy yarns, which ran for a long time in EXCITING WESTERN, and followed up by stories by D.B. Newton, Chuck Martin, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, Robert J. Hogan, and a Navajo Raine story under the Jackson Cole house-name.

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western, April 1948

This looks like another pretty good Western pulp from bargain basement Columbia Publications, beginning with a nice dynamic cover by, I think, H.W. Scott. But I could be wrong about who the artist was. Inside, the lead novel is by Cliff Campbell, who could have been just about anybody since that's a house-name. Other authors on hand in this issue of REAL WESTERN are Lee Floren, Chuck Martin (twice, once under his own name and once as by Clay Starr), Allan K. Echols, and Harry Van Demark.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, December 27, 1941

You can't really tell this is a Christmas issue by looking at the cover art on this WILD WEST WEEKLY, but it says so right there: "A Thrilling Sonny Tabor Novel of Christmas by Ward M. Stevens". The story is actually called "Six-Gun Santa". Paul S. Powers, who wrote the Sonny Tabor series under the Stevens pseudonym, has a second Christmas story in this issue under his own name, called "Vigilante Christmas". Also on hand are stories by Norman A. Fox (writing as Clint McLeod), William R. Cox, Chuck Martin, Archie Joscelyn (writing as Andrew A. Griffin), R.S. Lerch, and a poem by S. Omar Barker. All that probably would be enough to get me in the Christmas spirit. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, August 12, 1939

I haven't posted a WILD WEST WEEKLY cover in a while. This one by Lawrence Toney uses a limited number of elements to create a very striking image. I like it quite a bit. Inside this issue are a Kid Wolf story by Paul S. Powers (writing as Ward M. Stevens) and two serial installments by Walker A. Tompkins, the first of one under his own name and the final of another under the house-name Philip F. Deere. Throw in stories by J. Allan Dunn and Chuck Martin, and you've got the makings of a pretty good issue.