Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953

This January 1953 issue of a western pulp magazine includes two novelettes and nine short stories. "Ride with the Gunsmoke Judas" by Thomas Thompson concerns a man named Gunther, a nester's leader exposed as a traitor by a sodbuster. Bryce Walton's "Draw Fast—or Die!" features Blacky Jethro, whose philosophy is to "shoot first and live longest." Other stories include "The Deadly Second" by Henry Carlton Jones, about a peace-loving sheriff; Richard Ferber's "The Bushwhack Bargain," where Jesse, a hired killer, faces moral conflict over killing Mark Clayburn; and H.A. De Rosso's "Never Sell Your Saddle!" Bennett Foster's "The Medicine Wire" profiles Andy Curtis, a telegrapher and frontier hero. Additional stories cover outlaws, wagon trains, gallows, and a rain-making protagonist named Sad Nose Joe. Regular features include gem-mining lore and western history articles.