'Johnny Paseo made no noble move to meet the man with fists.'

Sometimes one good idea can turn an ordinary pulp plot into a good story. Thomas Thompson had such a good idea in "A Good Range to Die For!" (Big-Book Western Magazine, June 1947). The idea was that his hero, the drifter Johnny Paseo, doesn't really know how to fight without guns. That means there'd be no blarney in this novelette about fist-fighting being a noble or uniquely honorable or culturally distinctive mode of combat. In fact, it's the villain, or actually the subordinate villain, who has a natural mastery of unarmed combat. For Thompson, at least in this story, that helps mark Smiley Rowe as a sadist; he enjoys hurting people with his hands. For Johnny Paseo, fighting is a more practical business.

Experience had taught Johnny Paseo that when he had the upper hand he should keep it. He had never been a man to fight with fists, anyway. If a man was his friend there would never be need of fists. If a man was his enemy it would take more than fists to settle the score.

Johnny's pragmatism helps him resist Smiley's taunting temptation to fight like men in their first encounter. Later, when Johnny doesn't have a gun or the upper hand, Smiley beats the stuffing out of him. They're enemies because Johnny has befriended Old Gramp Britton and his granddaughter Mary Lou, among the last small landholders holding out against Smiley's master, Cleg Partridge. Luke Britton, Gramp's son and Mary Lou's dad, had been sheriff in these parts, but had fallen off a cliff to his death, leaving the field wide open for Partridge and Rowe and leaving Mary Lou hostile to the idea of gunplay. Gramp believes that his son had been pushed, and probably beaten first, and while taking a beating from Smiley Johnny Paseo deduces that the big man must have been the one to kill the sheriff.

The story heads inevitably into Ranch Romances territory as Johnny and Mary Lou fall for each other, handicapped by Johnny's rep as a gunman, but before this Thompson has already established his credentials as a superior pulp writer. He'd broken into pulp briefly in 1936 in Popular Publications' own western romance title, but only started publishing in earnest during World War II. After the war he really poured it on. "A Good Range" is one of three stories he published in Popular western titles in June 1947 and 27 he published in the year as a whole. If "Good Range" is representative of the year's output, Thompson was maintaining a high level of quality; he has a better grip on character and his style is simply better than anyone else in this issue. It reads more like a genuinely original work of imagination than a recital of formulae. The ending is predictably happy: Johnny forces Smiley into a fast-draw gunfight and wins, while Mary Lou overcomes her revulsion towards guns to save Johnny's life by blasting another of his enemies "She had done that for him, done it with a gun," he exults, "She was a girl for a fighting man!" But there's really no good reason for this story to end any differently, and Thompson writes well enough that you can indulge him and his happy ending.

'I'm a stray stallion in another's stud pasture.'

Were pulp readers more likely to be rejected suitors? Did pulp fiction cater to their fantasies of revenge on romantic rivals? Stories like Ed Earl Repp's "The Law Stops at Cactus City!" (Big-Book Western Magazine, June 1947) make me wonder. Repp started out as a science fiction specialist in the late 1920s, but by World War II he was writing westerns almost exclusively. "Cactus City" was one of only five stories he published in 1947; three of them were for Big-Book, one of Popular Publications' many western monthlies. The setup is simple: some time ago, Johnny Neill had been prematurely accused of murder -- the man he shot recovered -- and was run out of Cactus City. He returns bitterly after four years to entertain an offer from gambler Oliver Garand to help him take over the town. Garand wants Neill to kill the new sheriff, Vern Tyson, who's ordered him to shut down his crooked layouts and stop rolling drunks. The gambler assumes that Neill will be motivated by the fact that Tyson has married Johnny's old girlfriend, Dorothy Miller. Tyson is a model of an unworthy husband and lawman.

Vern Tyson, second-rate lawyer, had always fancied himself another Abe Lincoln, and Johnny had to admit that the man's emulation of the late president was complete, down to trimmed beard and soft, flat button shoes.

Tyson lacks Lincoln's fighting prowess, however. More importantly, he lacks "sand," that intangible quality that allows an outnumbered man to enforce law and impose order through force of personality. He wavers from neglect of crime to excessive enforcement, never knowing when to let things slide, ultimately preferring to depend on overwhelming force. His idea of cleaning up Cactus City involves calling in a detachment of Texas Rangers, not realizing that doing so "would make him the laughing stock of town, a political buffoon destined to failure in anything he later attempted." Recognizing Tyson's inadequacy, Dorothy's father, who had helped run Neill out of town, now urges Johnny to stay on as marshal. He's reluctant at first, but seeing the miserable life Dorothy leads as Mrs. Tyson -- she lives in the jailhouse -- and learning that Garand has designs on her himself, Johnny decides to wear the marshal's star, putting him on a collision course with both Garand and Tyson. Poor Tyson has the deck stacked against him by a higher power; his death is a foregone conclusion, as is Dorothy's reunion with Johnny after the requisite kidnappings and gunplay. Tyson at least dies honorably, albeit foolishly, charging into a fusillade in a brainless attempt to rescue Dorothy from Garand's clutches, while Johnny prevails with stealth and a sure gun hand. Still, he exists only to be dispensed with, and that makes the whole story seem more contrived than normal. It wouldn't bother regular readers, I suppose, if that's what they wanted to see. Did they want to see it that badly? The number of times such a story was told in pulp westerns might answer the question one way or another.