Why read a second-tier title like Western Trails? Most of my western reading in the pulps has been from Street & Smith’s Western Story. I’ve also sampled Doubleday’s West, Popular Publications’ Dime Western, Star Western and a few issues of Clayton’s Cowboy Stories and Ace-High. Flirted with a few Ranch Romances.
But the western was one of the genres with the highest number of titles, well over a hundred of them. There must be more to them than what I’ve read, so in a moment of madness, I decided I’d try to review some of them.
This time I read two issues of Western Trails, a title that Harold Hersey started and A. A. Wyn’s Ace Publications took over. 1928 saw the first issue of Western Trails, April 1949 the last; a very respectable two decade run of 174 issues. It would have been even more, except that in 1938, Western Trails and its stablemate, Western Aces (107 issues), started appearing on alternate months, which lasted till they both stopped in 1949.
The early issues of Western Trails are scarce, and eagerly sought after by completist collectors. I only knew one reader who collected Western Trails because he liked the stories in it. Let’s see if we can find out what he saw in it.
First up is the May 1938 issue of Western Trails, the last issue before it went to bi-monthly publication. Edited by A. A. Wyn, the contents of the magazine are:
10 · Pistol Patrol on the Panhandle · Andor de Soos · na
35 · Coyote Laughter · Claude Rister · ss
45 · Owl-Hooter’s Gun Code · Dean Owen · ss
54 · Long-Rope Harvest · Jack Drummond · nv
72 · Hogtied Justice · Wilfred McCormick · ss
80 · Stampede · Powder River Bill · lc
83 · The Lobo Locksmith · Frank Carl Young · ss
87 · Hangtree Haunted · James R. Webb · ss; illustrated by Tom Roots
96 · Powdersmoke Payroll · Charles W. Tyler · ss
Two longer length stories and six shorts. No serials, which seems to have been the magazine’s policy for a long time. A mixed bunch of known and unknown names for me; I’d previously read one story by Dean Owen, seen Charles W. Tyler and Claude Rister’s names on a few issues. No top names in this one, which seems right considering they were only paying one to two cents a word at the time.
A nice cover by Rafael DeSoto, and one that isn’t related to any story inside as far as I know.
The first story, Andor de Soos’ Pistol Patrol on the Panhandle, starts with a flash of lightning. Bulwer-Lytton could have sued. Then comes a gun-fight and our reluctant hero gets involved. Standard western plot, lots of action. Average.
Claude Rister’s Coyote Laughter is the standard nester vs. rancher scenario but with a couple of intelligent twists. The nester manages to almost drive off the rancher instead of the other way round, and the means he uses are non-violent. It’s a battle of wits between the two till the end, when gunplay resolves the situation in more than one way. Above average, worth reading.
Owl-Hooter’s Gun Code by Dean Owen is a standard plot with a hero with lead feet and a badman with a heart of gold. Average.
Long-Rope Harvest is unusual. The hero has to take care of a rancher’s boy to fulfil a promise he made on the rancher’s deathbed. The kid is a ne’er-do-well who’s gambling away his inheritance and hates his caretaker. It ends with a hanging, which is the scene pictured in the heading. Above average. Jack Drummond, the author, wrote a few stories for the pulps and published one novel, The Flight Instructor Murders, under the pseudonym of George Redder. Depressed with life, he tried to rob a bank and died in a shootout with the police.
Hog-Tied Justice is a standard western plot with an interesting twist; our hero the sheriff is knocked out, hog-tied and the only gun within reach has no trigger (The owner removed it after he shot a friend by accident). The badman is out to kill him, only he wants his victim awake so he can gloat…
Powder Bill’s Stampede is a pen-pals column with editorial comment. What’s interesting is the average age of the correspondents, in their teens and twenties. Looks like the readership was young adults and youths.
The Lobo Locksmith by Frank Carl Young is a western that could have been written by Walter Gibson. A man wearing handcuffs walks into an outlaw’s hideout, asks for a bucket of water to free himself and gets out of the handcuffs. The outlaw wants to learn the trick…You know where its going, but it’s still enjoyable.
James R. Webb’s Hangtree Haunted is bad. Standard plot and cardboard characters.
Powdersmoke Payroll by prolific pulpster Charles W. Tyler is better. A little bit more character building than usual, with a good-looking but no-good younger brother who drifts back home where his reliable, steady and dull elder sibling has become sheriff. The younger brother is dazzled by his brother’s fiancé and tries to attract her, seemingly succeeding.
The sheriff wants to keep his brother out of trouble, but the brother spends most of his time gambling with the local riffraff. Bad company leads to bad choices, and the younger brother finds himself in a gang that shoots it out with the sheriff and carries him away as a hostage. The issue I read had the last page torn, and with that missing piece, the ending remains ambiguous. I liked it better than a definite ending.
A mixed bag, then, in this issue. Two average stories, one bad, and five slightly above average because of the unusual twists on the standard western scenario. I’d definitely pick up this and other thirties issues if the price were right, which is to say in the low double digits.
But you don’t have to. This issue was scanned and is now available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/western-trails-v-29-n-02-1938-05
Read it if you dare.
The Jack Drummond who was killed in a bank robbery is not the pulp writer. He would have had to have been writing when he was ten years old. He was 55 when he was killed in 1978.