Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, August 1967

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. I’m pretty sure that the art in the inset is by Robert Stanley. I don’t have any idea who did the rest of the cover. That’s my copy in the scan.

Or is it a pulp? It’s slightly smaller than regular pulp dimensions, and the page edges are trimmed. And it was published long after the pulp era is considered to be over. However, it’s definitely not a digest, and it’s proudly part of an unbroken publication stretching back to 1924 (“43^rd Year of Publication”, it says on the title page), so I’m calling it a pulp.
 
And as I’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, RANCH ROMANCES is the only pulp I remember seeing on the newsstands when I was a kid. Everything else was gone by then. But it’s entirely possible I laid eyes on this very issue on the magazine rack in Stephenville Drugs, where we always stopped on our way through Stephenville, Texas, so I could check out the comic book and paperback spinner racks. But I wouldn’t have even considered buying it because, you know, it had ROMANCES in the title and I was 14 years old. (I bought the first two paperback reprints of THE SPIDER, the ones by R.T.M. Scott that came bound together, at least one Mac hardboiled mystery novel by Thomas B. Dewey, and my first ever copy of PLAYBOY at Stephenville Drugs, along with other things I don’t remember, I’m sure.)

Okay, to get out of the weeds of nostalgia and move on to the August 1967 issue of RANCH ROMANCES . . . this is the first of the later, semi-pulp issues I’ve read. By the time the magazine’s run ended in 1971, it was all-reprint, but there are only a couple of older stories in this issue and the rest are new. It leads off with the short story “Wolf At His Heels” by A.E. Schraff, which is about a young outlaw being pursued by a dogged lawman not out of a sense of justice but on a mission of personal vengeance. It’s a well-written story with a satisfying ending. I’d never heard of A.E. Schraff before, but according to the Fictionmags Index, the A.E. stands for Anne Elaine. She wrote more than a dozen stories for RANCH ROMANCES, ZANE GREY WESTERN MAGAZINE, and FAR WEST during the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, then did a handful of mystery yarns for ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE in the Eighties. That’s all I know about her, but based on this story, she was a pretty good writer.

And sure enough, a little research tells me this from Goodreads: “Anne Elaine Schraff grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She received both her bachelor's and master's degrees from California State University at Northridge and taught high school for ten years.

Anne paid her way through college by writing short stories for magazines. Since college she has written hundreds of stories and over eighty books including historical fiction, biographies, science books, and her favorite, fictional books for young people. She is published as both Anne Schraff and Anne E. Schraff.

Her background, which she describes as "multicultural, lower middle-class neighborhood, including African Americans, Mexican Americans, Arab Americans, and Filipino Americans," is her greatest inspiration when writing.”

Lee Martin has been used as a pseudonym by several different writers, but the Lee Martin who wrote the short story “Live Bait” in this issue was actually Margery Lee Martin, author of several dozen Western and mystery stories in the Sixties. “Live Bait” is sort of the opposite of “Wolf At His Heels” because in this story, a lawman is the target of some outlaw brothers who want to kill him, and they’re willing to use another brother’s widow to trap their quarry. This is another solid yarn with a satisfying, if predictable, ending.

Mona Jennings has only one credit in the Fictionmags Index, her short story “Indian Girl” in this issue. Mostly domestic drama with a little action at the end, this tale is about a young rancher who finds an Indian girl with her leg caught in an animal trap and takes her home to care for her injury. He has a younger brother and sister, all of them made orphans by an Indian attack several years earlier. Emotional turmoil ensues. Another well-written tale, although the ending is a little too unresolved for my taste.

Giff Cheshire was an old pro, of course. His novelette “Dry Summer” in this issue is a reprint from the 2^nd July, 1956 number of RANCH ROMANCES. It’s the story of a young cowboy caught in the middle of a clash between a big rancher and a group of smaller ranchers over water rights. The plot is very traditional, but the story is well-written for the most part. I’ve read enough by Giff Cheshire now to know that I usually find his work a little on the bland side, and that’s true of this yarn.

W.J. Reynolds was another prolific Western pulpster, authoring approximately 120 stories between the mid-Forties and the early Seventies, most of them appearing in various Western pulps, but he also sold Western stories to some of the lower-rung men’s magazines such as ADAM and KNIGHT. I’ve read several stories by him and enjoyed them all. In “Bloody Butte”, his yarn in this issue, an army scout rescues a girl from a gang of marauders and scalphunters, and then they have to escape the gang’s pursuit, eventually forting up at the butte of the title.

In 1967, when this issue reprinted Elmer Kelton’s novella “Die by the Gun” (original appearance in the 2^nd January Number, 1954 issue of RANCH ROMANCES), Kelton was a well-regarded author of traditional Western stories and novels, but he was still several years away from the elevated literary reputation he would begin to enjoy later in his career. One of the lines he often used when speaking to groups was “Louis L’Amour’s heroes are seven feet tall and invincible. Mine are five-foot-seven and nervous.” I don’t know if Dolph Noble, the protagonist of this tale, qualifies as nervous, but he certainly has his share of angst to deal with. He’s the sheriff of a West Texas county and has a wild younger brother who wants to be either a lawman or an owlhoot and isn’t all that particular about which. He’s in love with the wife of an outlaw whose gang has been plaguing the area. The townspeople believe he hasn’t been able to corral the gang because he’s holding back on account of his feelings for the woman. His ambitious but flawed former deputy wants to take his job away in the next election. So Dolph has plenty of trouble on his plate, and Kelton keeps twisting the screws to make it worse for him. Not surprisingly, this is easily the best story in the issue, with solid writing and excellent characterization.

This is the first of the Sixties issues of RANCH ROMANCES that I’ve read, and overall it’s very good. Cheshire’s story is the weakest in the bunch, and it’s not bad, just not as good as the others. I think the tone isn’t as hardboiled as the Fifties issues I’ve read, and the romance elements are played up a little more, but there’s still good action in every story. It came out in the summer between eighth and ninth grade for me. As I mentioned above, I wouldn’t have bought it at the time . . . but if I had, I would have enjoyed it. It’s well worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First February Number, 1952

A really nice cover on this issue of RANCH ROMANCES. I think I want to write a story with that redhead in it! I don't know the artist. There's a signature in the bottom right corner, but I can't make it out. There's a great group of writers inside, too: Wayne D. Overholser, Todhunter (W.T.) Ballard, Giff Cheshire, Elmer Kelton, Tom W. Blackburn, and Arthur Lawson. It would be hard to go wrong with that bunch.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Six-Gun Western Magazine, December 1950

This appears to have been the final issue of SIX-GUN WESTERN MAGAZINE, but it's notable for a couple of other reasons. The cover is by Robert Maguire, who's probably better known for his paperback covers, and it's a late variation on the cowboy/girl/geezer trio that shows up so often on Western pulp covers. The other reason someone might be interested in this issue is that it contains one of Elmer Kelton's early stories, "Bullets From the Past". I haven't read this story and don't know anything about it. I wish somebody would do a complete collection of Kelton's pulp stories, though. I'm sure there are plenty of good yarns of his that have never been reprinted.

Otherwise, this issue appears to have been fairly undistinguished. The most recognizable of the other authors is Lloyd Eric Reeve, who published quite a few stories in a variety of Western pulps from the late Twenties to the early Fifties. There's also a story by Frank E. Smith, who was really Jonathan Craig, best known for his hardboiled crime and police procedural novels published by Gold Medal and others in the Fifties and Sixties. The other authors are either house-names or guys you've never heard of. I do kind of like that cover, though.

Forgotten Books: Christmas at the Ranch - Elmer Kelton

CHRISTMAS AT THE RANCH is a collection of three autobiographical essays by Elmer Kelton that was published in 2003 by McMurry University in Abilene, Texas.  Kelton writes about childhood Christmases spent on the ranch where he grew up and where his father was the foreman, as well as other holiday seasons spent at his grandparents' ranch. The middle section of the book concerns the Christmases of 1944 and 1945, the one just before he shipped out for Germany as a member of the U.S. Army and the one he spent in Austria with the family of the girl he wound up marrying. In the final essay he describes a holiday trip he and Ann took back to Austria in the Eighties. As always with Kelton, the writing is clean and unadorned, without any pretentiousness, with a poignancy and beauty of its own. Those of us lucky enough to have spent time with Elmer can hear his voice in the words. Highly recommended. 

My Favorite Western Authors

A friend of mine with a growing interest in Westerns who hasn't read much in the genre suggested that I do a blog post about my favorite Western authors. After some thought, I decided that I can do that, with one condition: I have to confine it to authors who are no longer with us. I know almost everyone who's currently writing Westerns, and I don't want any of them coming across this post and wondering why I didn't mention them. It's an unavoidable fact: some writers I love as people but don't care for their books. Others I love their books but don't . . . well, never mind. I'm going to confine the list to ten, with the usual warning that if you ask me again tomorrow, the selections might change. I'm also going to keep it to authors whose work is at least somewhat readily available. I love Harry Olmsted's stories, for example, but none of them have been reprinted and you'd have to buy the original pulps to read them. Some are acquired tastes, too, real love 'em or hate 'em authors, so consider that fair warning.

Enough qualifying. On to the list, which is in alphabetical order.

Walt Coburn – Maybe the most inconsistent Western author ever, capable of sheer, breathtaking excellence as well as utter mediocrity composed in a drunken haze. But Coburn at the top of his game captured the authenticity of the Old West probably better than any other author I've ever read. He also came up with some of the most complicated plots filled with raw emotional angst that you'll ever find in the genre.

H.A. DeRosso – The darkest of all the Western noir authors, the Jim Thompson of the Western. He wrote only a handful of novels, but they're all good. Several of them have been reprinted in the past fifteen years.

T.T. Flynn – Flynn's plots are pretty traditional, but he writes so well it doesn't matter. Also, his novels are often more emotionally complex than they appear at first.

Ben Haas – Writing as John Benteen, Richard Meade, Thorne Douglas, and Ben Elliott, Haas was the best action writer of the Twentieth Century other than Robert E. Howard. I've written plenty on this blog about him. Pick up anything he wrote. I guarantee you're in for a good time.

Elmer Kelton – The man picked by a poll of the Western Writers of America as the best Western author of all time. I have a hard time singling out one author as the best of anything, but Kelton was very, very good for a long time. Nobody was ever better at writing about the contemporary West. And he was one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, too.

Lewis B. Patten – Patten's work is similar to DeRosso's, but his novels usually have happy endings that keep them from being quite as bleak. His books became more inconsistent as his career went along, so you're usually better off looking for novels from the Fifties and Sixties, although he was still capable of good work during the Seventies. If you run across a book you don't like, give him another chance.

Leslie Scott – Scott is one of those acquired tastes. He wrote many of the Jim Hatfield novels in the pulp TEXAS RANGERS under the house-name Jackson Cole. You'll be more likely to find some of his long series of paperback novels about Texas Ranger Walt Slade, published under the name Bradford Scott. His plots are repetitious, his prose is really purple at times (especially when he's describing landscapes), but he wrote great, over-the-top action scenes. His stand-alones, often based on historical incidents, are also good. But if you try one of his books and don't like it, there's not much point in trying another, except for the fact that his earlier books generally have better plots.

Gordon D. Shireffs – Almost the equal of Flynn, Haas, and Short when it comes to hardboiled action Westerns, and his depictions of the American Southwest are maybe the best of them all. He was also an excellent plotter.

Luke Short (Frederick D. Glidden) – Not quite noir, but his Westerns are definitely on the hardboiled side and often have some sort of mystery angle. He could write great action scenes as well. His books from the Forties and Fifties are the best as far as I'm concerned, although all his work is worth reading.

W.C. Tuttle – Really the only humorous Western writer I like, and that's probably because the comedy (which borders on slapstick at times) is balanced by plenty of action and complex mystery plots. Tuttle is best known for his stories and novels featuring range detectives Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens, but he also wrote a long series of novellas in the pulp EXCITING WESTERN about a similar pair known as Tombstone and Speedy. He's also famous for a series about a W.C. Fields-like vaudeville performer who winds up the sheriff of an Arizona town. His stand-alones are good, too.

I would have included Robert E. Howard if he had lived to write more Westerns, as according to his letters he planned to do. He actually invented the Western noir in stories such as "The Vultures of Whapeton", "Wild Water", and "Vulture's Sanctuary". If you haven't picked up the collection of his traditional Westerns from the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, I give it a high recommendation. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I wrote the outline for that collection.)

So there are ten Western writers and a sort-of bonus eleventh one you'd be well-advised to seek out if you're looking to broaden your Western reading horizons. You probably won't like all of them, but I think the chances are good you'll discover some new favorite authors among them. If any of you want to throw in recommendations for other authors, feel free to do so in the comments. If there are enough, I'll do a follow-up post based on them.

(The links below are just examples of some of the books by these authors. Many more are available on Amazon and other on-line booksellers and in used bookstores.)

Elmer Kelton, R.I.P.

I'm sure many of you have already heard about this, but we've lost a legend today. Elmer Kelton crossed the divide this morning. He wasn't just a fine writer, he was also one of the most genuinely decent men I've ever met. I interviewed him in front of a packed house at the Bouchercon in Austin several years ago, and his easygoing grace and charm made it a fine experience for me as well as for everyone in the audience. We also visited at every WWA convention I attended and I saw him numerous times at the annual TCU Press group book signing in Fort Worth. He got his start writing fiction by selling stories to the pulp RANCH ROMANCES, and we had several conversations about the pulps and what a fan of them he was as a kid, citing WILD WEST WEEKLY as his favorite. He'd been in bad health recently, but the last I'd heard, he had improved some, so while this doesn't come as a shock, it's certainly a surprise.

Nearly twenty years ago, I attended the WWA convention in San Angelo, Elmer's hometown. Someone at that convention, in talking about Elmer said, "He's the genuine article." I can't say it any better than that.

Sandhills Boy - Elmer Kelton

I warn you, I’m going to digress a little here. Elmer Kelton was my father’s favorite author, although I’d like to think that my dad thought my books were pretty good, too. But Elmer’s work really struck a chord with him. They were roughly the same age, both came from a rural Texas background and had cowboyed some as kids, both were in the army and stationed in Austria right after World War II, and as it turned out, they had some mutual acquaintances. So when I took my dad with me to the Western Writers of America convention in Jackson, Wyoming in 1992, he was excited to meet Elmer, who I had known since ’86.

Now, my dad was always supportive – in his way – of my desire to be a writer. Oh, he thought I was crazy, no doubt about that. He didn’t see how anybody from our small town could ever make a living writing books. Writers were all folks who lived somewhere else. But he did everything in his power to see to it that I had the chance to succeed or fail on my own, and nobody can ask for more than that. Even after I broke in and started selling books, my dad didn’t quite grasp what was going on.

But then, at that WWA convention, when he saw Elmer greet me by name and shake my hand, my dad’s attitude changed. By golly, if I was friends with Elmer Kelton, then there had to be something to this writing business after all. He got to talk to Elmer at length, and that was when they discovered they knew some of the same people and had been to many of the same places, in both Austria and West Texas. It was fun watching them talk, because they obviously spoke the same language.

We spent that weekend hanging around not only with Elmer but many other writers, editors, and agents as well, and from that point on, my dad was more interested in the writing business than ever and managed to pick up quite a few of the intricacies of it. We spent hours talking about it, and those were some great times.

Now, back to Elmer Kelton. SANDHILLS BOY is his autobiography, and it’s a fine book, written in his usual straightforward style. He begins by covering several generations of his family that came before him, painting a vivid picture of their interaction with the somewhat harsh West Texas landscape, then launches into a lengthy section about his boyhood on the ranch that his father managed. It’s good stuff, humorous and poignant in turn, and along the way he mentions his mother reading the pulp RANCH ROMANCES, a magazine that would prove to be quite important to him later on.

The second half of SANDHILLS BOY deals primarily with Kelton’s service as a combat infantryman in Germany during World War II, and then his romance with Anni Lipp while he was stationed in Austria during the year following the war. They weren’t able to get married until after Kelton returned to America and was discharged from the army, and then only after another year of dealing with all the bureaucratic red tape involved. The final few chapters center around their lives since then, including Kelton’s duel careers as an agriculture journalist and a novelist.

This is not really a literary autobiography. Kelton mentions making his first sale to RANCH ROMANCES and touches in passing on becoming a novelist. It would have been fine with me if he had gone into more detail about that part of his life – I’m a sucker for the “And then I wrote”-style of autobiography, although I know some people don’t care for it – but hey, it’s Elmer’s book, and Elmer’s life, for that matter, and he can write about what he wants to. Especially when it’s in such eloquent, compelling prose. His unassuming personality really shines through in this book. There’s no sense that he considers himself any more special or important than any of the other cowboys, ranch women, or soldiers he describes. That’s one of the things that makes him the man he is, and one reason this book gets a high recommendation from me.