SIX-GUN WESTERN

SIX-GUN WESTERN

British Edition

Cover art by Joseph Szokoli

This edition doesn’t include any issue numbers or publication dates. It is a partial reprint of the American Six-Gun Western published April 1950 so I assume it came out not too long after as that was usually the case with British editions of American pulps. It also seems this was the only British edition of Six-Gun Western.

The American edition had 130 pages; the British was trimmed to 100. Two stories were cut to make this possible, these being Ray Gaulden’s Once a Badge Toter and the Six-Gun Smith comic strip The Gambling Lady by Berthold Tiedemann. 

This pulp differs to many that I have seen in that it features two or three drawings illustrating something that happens during each story and all the artists are named. What is a little annoying is that these illustrations often come a couple of pages before the events take place in the story so they act as spoilers. Some of the stories continue page to page and then you have to turn further into the magazine to find the last couple of pages, something I’m not a fan of. One story has its final paragraphs printed on the page before the tale begins. I just don’t understand why some of the adverts couldn’t have been moved around so the stories could be printed unbroken. 

This issue opens with Cow-Country Mail Call which is made up of a few letters from readers and comments by Dobie Dallas. 

Next, we have the novelette Short-Cut to Hell by E. Hoffmann Price with illustrations by William Meilink. This story was originally published in the January 1939 edition of Thrilling Adventures and was the first of four tales Price wrote featuring the character, Saul Epstein. This story was also the reason I picked out this pulp to read as way back in 2011 I read and thoroughly enjoyed the anthology Nomad’s Trail by Price which contained a number of tales featuring one of Price’s other pulp heroes, Simon Bolivar Grimes who was a series character in Spicy Western Stories.

Epstein is a secondary character in Short-Cut to Hell, who pops up a little to conveniently for me to help the main lead, Pete Barlow, take on a man who is trying to muscle in on his girl whilst they all travel in a wagon train. Epstein joins them mid-journey pushing his hand-cart from which he seems to sell everything you could possibly want. There’s also another young woman who shows an interest in Barlow and he doesn’t seem able to resist her advances. That’s not the only problem Barlow will have to deal with as there is a gang waiting to attack the wagons. 

Short-Cut to Hell was an ok read and contained a fair bit of action but overall was nowhere near as entertaining as the Simon Bolivar Grimes tales I’d previously read. Epstein was a fun character though, so I can see why Price would write other tales about him.    

The comic strip Tethered to Murder, featuring series character K-Bar-Kate by R. Hayden was next. This was competently drawn but the story wasn’t gripping in any way and was filled with too many nick-of-time moments for me.

The Grey Wolf by Charls Getts, with illustrations by Kingsland Ward, was much more to my taste. A mysterious stranger wearing the emblem of a wolf comes to the aid of an old settler and his pretty daughter whilst tracking down an old enemy. I guess it’ll come as no surprise that the person threatening the settlers is the man the stranger is hunting. The tale plays out pretty much as expected except for the ending and I was left wanting to read more by Getts.

Gunsmoke Tally by Frank Morris came next. H. W. Kiemle provided the illustrations. Hank Green was holed up in a cabin while his enemies scoured the countryside for him. When there came a knock at the door and a girl tumbled in, he was sure that it was just a ruse to get him where their guns could cut him down. The entire tale takes place in the dark cabin and is a very tense story that is filled with mistrust. Is the girl really who she says she is? Green doesn’t think so. Can she persuade him otherwise? Green starts to believe her but is soon full of suspicion again as his enemies fight their way into the cabin. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye-out for more stories by Morris as I really enjoyed this one.

Golden Girl by Ralph Sedgwick Douglas - a house pseudonym shared by a number of authors but I haven’t been able to discover who wrote this story. Illustrations are by Max Plaisted. The title is the name of the hero’s horse and the story tells the tale of Tuck Creighton’s return to his home spread after a year away. It seems his father is still sore at him though and there are a lot of very puzzling things happening on the be-devilled range. The author came up with some memorable characters for this tale, Whistling Willie, a youngster who can make the sounds of any bird, and a man called The Weeper who oozes evil and works for Tuck’s father. Of course, there is also a pretty girl involved. The author keeps you guessing at just what is going on and springs a couple of surprises during this well told tale, although there is a bit of an unbelievable event that helps Tuck free himself when captured and tied up. How everything was resolved was a little too perfect and involved a just-in-time intervention that for me was a bit of a let-down. I still liked this story quite a lot and would read more by this author if I ever discover who it is. 

The final story is Transformation in Skeleton Flats by John White and this was illustrated by Al Savitt. Jeff Markle was the young offspring of a no-good, shiftless family, and treated with pretty low regard around Skeleton Flats. But it is sure surprisin’ what a shave, a haircut, a bushwhacking and a girl can do to affect the life of an unkempt range rannihan! Jeff puts the blame on himself when Julia Latham’s brother is shot by a gunman trying to kill Jeff as he believes this will help him get close to Julia and win her affections. A mis-guided plan if there ever was one. White tells his story well, even if it is unbelievable making this the weakest tale in this issue of Six-Gun Western. 

Overall, this was a readable pulp that introduced me to a couple more authors I’d like to read more of. 

FIGHT FOR THE VALLEY

 

FIGHT FOR THE VALLEY
By Lee Leighton
Panther Books, January 1962
Originally published by Ballantine Books, 1960

Five long years of waiting…nursing and nourishing his hatred…learning how to slap leather fast enough…growing from a frightened young boy to a fast and fighting man…waiting, always waiting for the final day of reckoning – until, with savage suddenness – it came!

The above blurb makes this sound like it’s going to be a tough, dark, brutal read to me. Boy, was I wrong. The book is beautifully written and I soon found myself caught up in the storyline. I wanted to know what would happen, so had to keep turning the pages. But, where was the action? 

The book is split into three parts; The Boy, The Youth, and The Man. The story follows Tommy Gordon as he grows from a naïve youngster struggling to understand adults and his feelings towards two young women. He lives on a ranch but is not wanted by the owner, Mike Dugan, although the rest of the family accept him with open arms. Witnessing a horrific beating, Gordon leaves. He drifts from place to place. Grows into a capable young man. Gordon is then drawn back to the area of the ranch he once called home and it seems inevitable this will lead to a violent confrontation between him and Dugan.

Lee Leighton is a pseudonym used by Wayne D. Overholser, and I think this is the first full-length book I’ve read by him, although I have read a couple of his short stories. Overholser began his career by writing for the western pulps in 1936. 

Here's a quote from Overholser discussing his output in general “I have tried to be accurate in describing my settings and consider character more important than action.” That is exactly what you get in Fight for the Valley. It’s an excellent portrayal of character development, of a growing young man. Although there is very little in the way of gunfights the book does contain a couple of hard-hitting scenes that help shape Gordon and some of the other characters, one of these scenes being quite heart-wrenching and I though Overholser handled this particularly well. It was obvious from the beginning that Gordon and Dugan would face-off and I was glad to find that it didn’t quite play out as I expected and that it provided a satisfactory conclusion to the tale.

I have a couple of other westerns put out under Overholser’s own name and one co-authored with Lewis B. Patten – this latter book written for the children’s market – and a few short stories, so I guess the question is will I be reading any of them anytime soon? The answer has to be nope, not in the foreseeable future as I prefer my westerns to have a lot more action in them. Having said that, if I pick out a pulp or anthology that includes one of his stories I will read it, and I aim intrigued by the book he wrote with Patten to see how their styles mix and how they went about writing a children’s story.

NEW WORK ON A. LESLIE SCOTT

 

NEW WORK ON A. LESLIE SCOTT

by Anders N. Nilsson and James Reasoner

Towards a Bibliography of Alexander Leslie Scott, Focusing on Jim Hatfield, Walt Slade, and the Reprint of Pulp Stories as Books distributed as free PDF for reading online at, or downloading from:

https://archive.org/details/lesliescott_bibliography_nilssonreasoner_2024/mode/1up

Alexander Leslie Scott (1893-1974) was a very productive American western writer best known for his stories about the Texas Ranger known as Jim Hatfield or Walt Slade. The 206 novel-length Jim Hatfield stories were published in the Texas Rangers pulp magazine 1936-1958 under the house name Jackson Cole. 69 of Scott's Walt Slade novellas were published in the Thrilling Western pulp magazine 1940-1951.

Many of the Hatfield stories were reprinted as Popular Library paperbacks, whereas a large number of Walt Slade stories were published as Pyramid paperbacks. Many of Scott's pulp stories were also reprinted as hardcover remakes. Other authors studied here are Tom Curry, Peter Germano, Roe Richmond, Claude Rister, Lin Searles, and the two pseudonyms Buck Billings and Tex Holt.

HIRED GUNS

HIRED GUNS

By Steve Hockensmith

Rough Edges Press, September 2024

When former Army officer Oswin Diehl ventures into Mexico in search of fortune, he encounters more than he bargained for-bandits and chaos. Saved by old comrades Ira Hoop and Apache scout Eskaminzim, Diehl is offered a job that leads him to Arizona Territory and a showdown against a powerful conglomerate harassing local mine owners.

As Diehl and his resilient team face off against the hired goons of Consolidated American Mining Corporation, the stakes rise. With the brutal chairman, Kingsley Le May, and an army of operatives led by an old enemy, former Texas Ranger Thomas Breck, the battle turns into a deadly game of wits and survival.

Amidst the dust and gun smoke, alliances are formed, love is kindled, and a desperate struggle for freedom unfolds. Will Diehl, Hoop, Eskaminzim, and the fiery mine owner Catrin Gruffud overcome their adversaries and prevail in the ultimate showdown? The hired guns are locked, loaded, and ready for justice.

This book features detectives working for the Double-A Western Detective Agency. An organization that fans of Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series will already be acquainted. This series isn’t about the Amlingmeyer brothers though, but it does star a couple of operatives that have ridden alongside Big Red and Old Red. 

The Holmes on the Range books are told in the first person, Hired Guns is written in the third. This allows Hockensmith to regularly switch between various characters, often leaving them in cliff-hanger situations. Like the other books, this one contains a fair amount of humorous banter and scenes. The main difference is that this book has a lot more violent action as Diehl, Hoop, Eskaminzim and Romo find themselves faced with an enemy that has a small army to help him get what he wants.

Steve Hockensmith paces the story superbly, building to a terrific final showdown. Characterization is excellent and descriptions paint vivid pictures in the mind. The author also pays homage to scenes from a well-known spaghetti western or two. The story also contains some neat twists and turns and a touch of mystery. 

If you like traditional westerns that are packed with tough, brutal action, mixed with elements of humour and have plots that will keep you guessing until the end, then look no further than Hired Guns. Me? I’m really looking forward to the follow-up story, No Hallowed Ground, which I believe is due out this October. 

Oh yeah, who can forget Prince Pudding Paws?

American readers can get a copy here

British readers can get a copy here 

THROUGH WESTERN STORMS

THROUGH WESTERN STORMS

Edited by Richard Prosch

Independently published, August 2024

Crashing thunder! Pelting sand! The whirl of confusion and the winds of madness.

Join 13 unsurpassed storytellers to journey through Western storms with tales of perseverance, grit, and courage as vast as the 19th-century American landscape.

This is an excellent collection of well-written short stories that either feature characters battling against the elements or emotions. You’ll find tales that are heart-breaking, those that find humour in desperate situations, and everything in between. There are stories that feature real people such as Nannita Daisey and Oscar Wilde. There’s one that is about a strange long-necked creature. Others tell tales about soldiers, mechanics, and detectives. Most are about ordinary people struggling through life. 

One of the things that I enjoy about anthologies is discovering new authors and nearly all of these writers are new to me. I’ve only read stories by three of them before. Of course, it’s all subjective to the reader when it comes to picking out favourites, which authors you want to read more of, or singling out stories you aren’t so keen on.

If you pushed me to pick out my favourites, I’d name in the order they appear in the collection, A Death on the Concho, Valiant-For-Truth, White City, and Noah’s Lament as being my top choices. I will quickly add that the others are very good too.

If you want to introduce yourself to the work of some current authors, perhaps discovering some new favourites in the process, then I’d suggest you grab a copy of Through Western Storms as soon as you can. 

Contents

Another Man’s Sea by Vonn McKee

The Lost Diary of Nannita Daisey by Nancy McCabe

Hurricane at Hogg’s Holler by Scott McCrea

Go On by Jim Jones

Windmiller by Jackson Lowry

A Death on the Concho by Jane Little Botkin

A Cowtown Wind by Natalie Cline Bright & Denise F. McAllister

Valiant-For-Truth by Elisabeth Grace Foley

A Newspaper Comes to Cripple Creek by Big Jim Williams

A Death in the Family by W. Michael Farmer

White City by John D. Nesbitt

Noah’s Lament by Preston Lewis

American readers can get a copy here
British readers can get a copy here

LAWDOG

 

LAWDOG
The Life and Times of Hayden Tilden
By J. Lee Butts
Berkley, November 2001

“That morning a kid reporter from the local newspaper made his way up the stairs to meet me on the retirement home’s porch. He wanted my life story, secrets and all, and he wasn’t fixing on settling for anything less. After some thought, I asked myself: What can it hurt? All them killers are long gone by now. Ain’t no point in keeping it to myself anymore…”

In the Old West, where a man could be shot for just about anything and the law was that there was no law, Saginaw Bob Magruder hit bottom in the depths of depravity. Known everywhere as the most ruthless of all wanted criminals, Saginaw Bob could kill a child without thinking twice.

U.S. Marshal Hayden Tilden was still a growing boy when Magruder curved the path of Tilden’s life – and butchered his entire family. Left to fend for himself, young Hayden vowed to exact vengeance on Magruder, if it took his whole lifetime. So began his personal crusade – and the beginning of an extraordinary career. Hailed as the most fearless lawdog of the Old West, at times Tilden blurred the line between U.S. marshal and hired assassin. And in doing so, he etched a name for himself on the pages of American history by saving the West, time and again, from its fiercest enemy – itself.

Let’s start off by saying this is a great book. You don’t have to get very far into it to understand why it became the first of a series. Whether it was originally intended to be book one in a series about Hayden Tilden or a standalone, I have no idea. Part of me wonders if it was written as a standalone as it covers so many years.

J. Lee Butts has written a tough, and at time brutal, western. One that easily held my attention throughout. Tilden is a great character, as are many of the other people who appear in this story, be they other lawmen, outlaws, a reporter, or an old-timer that Tilden is friends with in the retirement home. There are also a handful of real people who Tilden meets, one of whom he works for. 

Butts also includes some wry observations, and moments of humour, mostly during the scenes set in the retirement home when Tilden reflects on old age and life as a retiree. 

The book is written in the first person, told through Hayden Tilden. The idea of having a reporter wanting to do a story about the life of an old-timer isn’t new, but it came over as fresh and was certainly very engaging. In fact, I started to look forward to the next part of Tilden’s conversations with the reporter as much as I did the many scenes of violent action. 

Covering such a large portion of Tilden’s life means the story is told as a series of incidents as the lawdog and his fellow marshals trackdown various outlaws. There’s even time for Tilden to fall in love. It is also interesting to see how Tilden develops from a young man into a tough lawman and learns how to use guns so efficiently. And, even though the book, at times, feels like a series of vignettes, everything is linked by the outlaw Magruder who always seems one step ahead of Tilden.

Why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this book, as it and the rest of the series have sat on my shelves since they were published, I have no idea. I’m certainly glad I decided at last to pick it up and give it a read. I’m now looking forward to reading the second book, Hell in the Nations, very soon.

American readers can get a copy here
British readers can get a copy here

TEXAS RANGERS - October 1956

TEXAS RANGERS
British Edition, Vol. X1, No. 12
Atlas Publishing, October 1956

This issue of the British Edition of Texas Rangers takes all its stories from the American issue published in March 1956. The British Edition only contains four stories, compared to eight in the original American publication. The same cover art by Sam Cherry was used on both editions but the border and lettering were changed somewhat. I’ve posted the American cover at the end of this review so you can compare it for yourselves.

The Jim Hatfield tale Guns Across the River by Jackson Cole is the opening novella. Jackson Cole is a pseudonym used by a number of authors. This time around it’s Peter B. Germano writing behind the penname. I believe he wrote 16 Jim Hatfield adventures out of the 205 or so Hatfield stories that appeared in the pulps.

Hatfield, known as The Lone Wolf, was caught square in the crossfire when the ghost of a dead man and the invasion of sheep brought war to Peaceful Valley. Germano includes quite a large cast of characters in his twisting plot that makes you wonder how he can possibly tie up all the story threads in such a short tale. This is something I’ve often marvelled at when reading other books by Germano under his pseudonym of Barry Cord, yet he always succeeds, and this novella is no different. There’s also some female interest for Hatfield but we know the Ranger is never going to settle down, don’t we? Guns Across the River is packed with action and told in a hard-boiled style and proved to be a very entertaining read and is right up there with the very best Hatfield stories I’ve ever read. 

Germano re-wrote Guns Across the River as War in Peaceful Valley which came out as one half of an Ace Double in 1959 as by Barry Cord. Jim Hatfield became Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Vickers. 

The first short story is Moment of Violence by George Roulston. This tells of Matt Strombo’s return from prison after being sentenced for stagecoach robbery and killing the driver. As the tale unfolds, we discover it wasn’t Matt who pulled the trigger but his partner in the hold-up. Of course, Matt’s return to Dandy Crossing arouses many emotions in the townsfolk and more violence ensues. I enjoyed this tale a lot and found it to be a great introduction to this author. I have one of Roulston’s other stories, Court Day, in another issue of Texas Rangers that I hope to read very soon.

Next up is Miguel’s Private Miracle by H.G. Ashburn. An Indian boy had thoroughly believed in the white man’s God till the scalp-hunters came… This short story has a strong religious theme that I found a bit overpowering. It is very well-written though, but it does contain something that I found hard to believe. Different, but not really to my taste. 

The third and final short story is The Reluctant Hangman by John Jo Carpenter, which is a pseudonym use by John Reese. With the sheriff ill it’s up to his deputy, Hiram Cutler, to perform a hanging. This is something Cutler has little stomach for and so he struggles psychologically with the task he’s been called to perform. This proved to be a gripping tale with a well-thought-out ending that I devoured eagerly. I can’t remember reading anything else by John Reese, and this tale left me wanting to try more of his work as soon as I can. 

Overall, I’d not hesitate in recommending this issue of Texas Rangers, if you can find it, as it contains some very strong storytelling indeed.