There’s round-up action on the cover of this issue of the long-running pulp (indeed, the last to end publishing as a pulp). I like the image, but I can’t make out the artist’s signature. Ranch Romances is reputed to have fairly hard-boiled stories around this time, and I’ll be interested in seeing whether that is the case when I get to reading this issue in the coming week.

The cover novella, “Vengeance in the Wind,” is by Lloid Jones, who had a number of other western stories published in the late 1940s and early 1950s; the tale has the tag line: “Cattlemen fight for land, and sodbusters for their lives — bud dead men don’t care whether they’re law or outlaw.” The novelette by Austin Corcoran also mentioned on the cover is “Veiled Courage”: “La Señorita Mascara’s dancing feet carried her right out of a framed picture for murder — and into robust cowman arms.” Short stories include “Cached at Chuckawalla,” by Ben T. Young; “The Courting of Molly,” by Philip Ketchum; “The Devil Is a Dude,” by Clark Gray; and “The Palace on Assay Street,” by Agnes Nafziger. There’s also the second part of a four-part serial, Saddlehorn Kingdom, by Elsa Barker. All these authors have quite a few western pulp credits. Rounding out the issue are a few columns, a poem, a crossword puzzle, and a true story (“Cowgirl Saddlemaker,” by S. Omar Barker).