FREQUENT visitors to this site know that we’ve been featuring Terry Gilkison’s Famous Sky Fighters feature from the pages of Sky Fighters. Gilkison had a number of these features in various pulp magazines—Clues, Thrilling Adventures, Texas Rangers, Thrilling Mystery, Thrilling Western, and Popular Western. Starting in the February 1936 issue of Lone Eagle, Gilkison started the war-air quiz feature Sky Writers. Each month there would be four questions based on the Aces and events of The Great War. If you’ve been following his Famous Sky Fighters, these questions should be a snap!

Here’s the quiz from the June 1936 issue of Lone Eagle.

If you get stumped or just want to check your answers, click here!

THIS week we have another story by Alfred Hall Stark. Stark wrote a dozen or so stories for the pulps, frequently dealing with aviation, in the late twenties and early thirties before building a reputation for writing well-researched, fact-based articles for The Reader’s Digest, Popular Science, Saturday Evening Post and others.

As we found out in the letter Flying Aces published the month before last week’s story and two months before “Decoys of Doom”, Stark had written and submitted this story to the magazine first. From the July 1929 Flying Aces, it’s Alfred Hall Stark’s “Decoys of Doom.”

Every day the patrol went over the lines, and came back minus one plane and one man. Only the missing flyers could tell how they had mysteriously vanished—and the dead were turning in no reports at H.Q.

• Download “Decoys of Doom” (July 1929, Flying Aces)

THIS week we present a cover by Arnold Lorne Hicks! Hicks worked in the pulps primarily from the late ’20’s to the mid 30’s, producing covers for such magazines as North-West Stories, Navy Stories, Police Stories, Detective Dragnet, Sky Birds, Golden West, Western Trails, Love Adventures, and a couple covers for Flying Aces!

The Back Seat Hero

THE two-seater observer—the man who did more and got less credit than any rating in the air services. He fought and died with the best of them. If his pilot was killed, he stood a good chance of going west without being able to do much about it. In the rear seat he took the bulk of the enemy hatred. He was responsible for protecting his own tail and garnering Important observations at the same time. He took the pictures, dropped the bombs and directed the attack. While it Is not generally known, the observer, no matter what his rank as compared to the pilot, was the actual commander of the ship. And yet he never got any credit. He had to light and fly under the worst conditions, and if the truth were known, observers probably got more enemy planes than did the pilots. He fought in a billowing cockpit with a gun that rattled and strained against the slipstream; and when It was all over, he seldom got credit for the ships he destroyed, and usually had to bask in the reflected glory of the man who wore the double wings.

The Back Seat Hero
Flying Aces, January 1931 by Arnold Lorne Hicks

THIS week we have a story by Alfred Hall Stark. Stark wrote a dozen or so stories for the pulps, frequently dealing with aviation, in the late twenties and early thirties. Stark was a pseudonym for Afred Halle Sinks. Sinks was a native of Ohio, who won his reportorial spurs in New York before heading to Porto Rico to work on the Porto Rico Progress published in San Juan. When sinks returned to the US, he was a staff writer for Popular Science and The Reader’s Digest building a reputation for writing well-researched, fact-based articles for those publications as well as others and newspapers.

Stark wrote “The Hurricane Kid” while still in Porto Rico. It was published in the June 1929 issue of Flying Aces.

Meet Crashing Kid Sperry, the Crack-Up King of the Caribbean, on the payroll as a curiosity. He got sore at the boss, became an air bandit and flew with sensational audacity right into a raging hurricane. Did he come out alright? Read it and see!

• Download “The Hurricane Kid” (June 1929, Flying Aces)

In a brief biographical paragraph from an article in 1963, Alfred Halle Sinks was said to be living in Philadelphia and responsible for the public information program that launched Bucks County’s open space conservation program. By that time he had been editor of the Bucks County Traveler, as well as a staff writer for Popular Science and Reader’s Digest, and had contributed articles to the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Ladies Home Journal, and other leading national magazines.

As a bonus, here’s a letter from Alfred Hall Stark that Flying Aces published in the March issue—the month before the issue this story ran.

Sinks was living in Carversville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania when he passed away October 26th, 1974.

FROM the pages of the November 1934 number of Sky Fighters:

Editor’s Note: We feel that this magazine has been exceedingly fortunate in securing Lt. Edward McCrae to conduct a technical department each month. It is Lt. Mcrae’s idea to tell us the underlying principles and facts concerning expressions and ideas of air-war terminology. Each month he will enlarge upon some particular statement in the stories of this magazine. Lt. MaCrae is qualified for this work, not only because he was a war pilot, but also because he is the editor of this fine magazine.

Personalities of the Planes

by Lt. Edward McCrae (Sky Fighters, November 1934)

NOW if you youngsters will get the gun cotton out of your ears I’ll tell you something that you might not have thought of before. I’m going to tell you why they sometimes call an airplane “she” just like they call a steamship or sailing ship “she.”

It’s because they all have personalities of their own, and because their personalities are so cranky usually that you can’t expect to know what they’re going to do next until you get well-acquainted with them, and by that time you don’t care much what they do. So, having personalities so much like women, we naturally call them “she” and a lot of other names that you cannot write about in a magazine.

So, if you’ll sit up I’ll try to introduce you to a bunch of the ladies and tell you some of the little things about them that you don’t ordinarily hear when they just tell you their names and addresses.

Most of ’Em British

Now most of the ladies we Americans got acquainted with were British, with just a few French gals thrown in to make it exciting.

For instance, the first lady your Uncle Eddie met when he got over in nineteen-fifteen was a gal who had just been built and had officially been named the E.F.B.5.

But that name naturally wouldn’t do for us, so we quickly got to calling her the Vickers Gun Bus, Fig. 1, You see, at this time, the war was just getting under way like it meant real business, and it had become apparent to the big shots that the airplane was going to play an important part in it.

Some Advance!

Before that they had been sending ships up with the pilots armed only with pistols or carbines or brickbats. But that didn’t work so well, so the result was an airplane with a machine-gun attachment. And boy, in those days that was some advance.

But you should have seen that old Gun Bus. Today you’d laugh your head off just looking at it, but we took it pretty seriously. She was the most famous of the early crates.

To look at her you would think the designer got his idea from a flying coffin. The nacelle sat up in front and stuck out forward of the wings. Behind the nacelle or fuselage if you could dignify it by that name—which you couldn’t—was a lot of outrigger gear with a tail stuck on it. It looked kind of like a small windmill stand sticking outward to the rear.

And then the wheels were back to the rear of the center of gravity and they had one of those landing skid arrangements in front of it so you wouldn’t nose over and bash in your face.

The Latest Thing

But boy, in those days here was what we called the latest thing in ladies of the air. The thing had a gun mounted on it, and if you don’t think that was a welcomed innovation you should have been there. The gunner sat out in front in that little cockpit of his with nothing but a lot of ozone under him, and shouted for the Heinies to come up and see me some time. He thought he was sitting on top of the world, which he was, because that gun stuck out so far in front that he had all kinds of angles through which he could aim it.

And the gal was the talk of the town because she was fast—or at least what we thought was fast in those days.

She could hit off at least sixty and seventy miles an hour! And was that getting there?

She Had B.O.

But she fitted in with those present-day soap ads. People whispered behind her back. She had B.O. That was because her 80 h.p. Gnome rotary motor burned castor oil—and no lady motor can burn that stuff and have her friends around without their holding their noses.

Anyway, she was a good old ship until a Miss Sopwith, Fig. 2, came along. That was in nineteen-sixteen, and this new gal was right up to the minute. She was beginning to look like an airplane. And just like the women in those days who tried to see how much wingspread they could carry by making their hats bigger and bigger, this Sopwith went in for wingspread in a big way by taking on an extra wing, becoming a triplane.

We kind of liked the miss because she could get upstairs in a hurry, faster in her time than any other gal on the front. But she was like a lot of the other high flyers and was unreliable in the pinches.

When You Wanted to Dive

There were times when you wanted to dive and dive in a hurry. And in times like this you felt a little worried about the gal because she could go up fast enough but she couldn’t take a dive either fast enough or safe enough to suit your hurry. It was there she showed her weakness.

Once in a while when you wanted to get back to the ground worse than you wanted to do anything else in the world she’d take you down all right—by shedding her wings. That let you down fast enough—but never easy enough. They often had to pick you up with a shovel and broom.

But she was a smart-looking gal, and so the Germans came out with their famous Fokker Triplane, Fig 2. There is plenty of argument as to whether they swiped the Sop design lock, stock and barrel. Most of us believe they did. And there’s plenty of proof. You know, if you steal a lead nickel you’ve got a piece of money that isn’t any good. The Germans’ idea wasn’t any better. They swiped the Sop, and the result was that the Fokker had just the same trouble we did. They built the ships faster, and the result was they lost more wings. There ought to be a moral hidden in that if you can find it.

The Flyers’ Sweetheart

And just about that time was born the sweetheart of all flyers—the Bristol Fighter, Fig 1. Just to prove what a good gal she was it is only necessary to say that she was the only ship that the British held on to long after the war. In fact, she wasn’t declared obsolescent until nineteen-thirty-two. That’s a mighty long life for any type of airplane, what with the steady advance of design.

She was a two-seater that had more uses than the proverbial “gadget.” They were originally intended for reconnaissance-fighters, but it wasn’t long before they used her for almost everything. She toted bombs, did photographic duty, spotted for artillery and even strafed trenches, besides being used for escorts and training. She was one gal you could stunt with and have hopes of setting her down intact when you got through.

Equipped with Stingers

And she was welbequipped with stingers. She had a Vickers gun synchronized through the prop and a Lewis gun on the scarff ring in the rear cockpit. They started her out in nineteen-seventeen with a 200 h.p. Hisso or Sunbeam Arab and got 120 m.p.h. out of her. Then they gave her a 250 Rolls-Royce Falcon and kicked her speed up to 130 m.p.h. She could take it. With that new powerhouse you could boot her up to 15,000 feet in twenty minutes, which was climbing in them days! And she had a slow landing speed of 45 m.p.h.

And she was just a nice size for proper handling, having a 39-foot, span and a 25-foot length, with a height of ten feet and a five-foot-six chord. It’ll be a long time before another ship gets as far ahead of her time as that Bristol baby. I knew her well.

A Great Family

But it seems like we couldn’t stay away from the Sopwith girls. That was a great family. So here before we knew it was another one of the sisters all rigged out and ready to step. She was the Sopwith Pup, Fig. 3. She made her debut in nineteen-fifteen and sixteen. And she was a knockout for beauty. She wore an 80 h.p. LeRhone Rotary in her hair and could get over the country, considering her small power plant.

She could get off the ground in a hurry and put five thousand feet under her in seven minutes. And when she got upstairs she was ready to talk business at the point of a Vickers fitted on the cowling to fire through the prop while she herself danced around at the rate of 99 miles per hour. She carried nearly twenty gallons of gas and five gallons of oil, and could stay in the air long enough for her to do some real damage to the Germans. And she did just that, for there was many ah Ace that piled up his score behind her guns.

Smaller, But—

She was a lot smaller than Miss Bristol, being only 26 feet across the hips. But don’t think she didn’t get there.

And she had a larger sister that you ought to get acquainted with, just to see how different sisters can be. The sister was Sopwith Camel, Fig. 3, and she was just as tricky as Pup was reliable.

Would she burn you up? And I mean that literally. This is the way it would happen. She was a kind of big Pup who was built to be still faster and more maneuverable. In order to do this she had to sacrifice some of Pup’s good qualities, and she was therefore tricky to fly, and dangerous to land. Her engine, a nine-cylinder Gnome-Monosouppe delighted in setting you on fire.

No Carburetor! No Throttle!

This was because that crazy power plant had no carburetor nor any throttle. The only way you could slow her down once she got started was to cut the ignition from certain of her cylinders.

The result was that the gas vapor would go through those cylinders without burning until it got into the exhaust. And right there the sparks from the other cylinders would ignite it. The result was a nice long sheet of flame pouring out of the exhaust into the slipstream. That made it nice and hot for you if it didn’t ignite the whole ship and leave you well-browned on both sides. Yes, sir, the old gal was hot stuff.

But she was a good old work horse when you got to know her and didn’t mind her spitting fire in your face. And she was armed to the teeth. She had two Vickers guns on the cowling and often a Lewis on the top wing just to balance things off.

Could Do Real Damage

She got a lot better when they took that crazy engine out and put a Clerget in. That sped her up to around 140 miles per hour and made her climb a thousand feet a minute. She could stay in the air two and a half hours a trip, and do real damage.

I suppose I ought to mention a lot of the other gals that helped make that war an exciting one, but there were so many that it is only possible to take a hop, skip and jump down the line and say howdy to a representative few of them.

I ought to tell you about still another Sopwith sister, that we called the one-and-one-half strutter. And I ought to tell you about some of the French ships, and a lot of others. But you’ll have to wait breathlessly for that. Just now, I’ve got a date with a modern little miss that could fly right around a lot of those good old babies, and she’s not armed with Vickers guns either.

Be seeing you.

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

The Edmonton Journal regularly set aside the third column on its editorial page for submissions from freelance writers, of which Cruickshank was an occasional contributor over the years. His columns frequently focused on his life growing up as a homesteader with his father and brother who had all immigrated from Scotland in 1905 to Barrhead, Canada along the famed Klondike Trail, just to the northwest of Fort Edmonton.

Here’s one last The Third Column by Cruickshank to end the month and start the new year!

The Third Column

by Harold F. Cruickshank • Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Canada • Thursday, 1 April 1954

Spring Around the Corner

So the great Burns opened his poem. “Up In The Morning Early.” I imagine that Rabbie must have written this poem one wild March, for his next stanza pretty well describes the conditions hereabouts when:

Watching the antics of the sparrows of late I have noticed quite a bit of confusion.

Two weeks ago. when there were marked signs of an early spring, a mated pair of sparrows decided to take up residence in a “bungalow” originally built for the tree swallows. Mrs. Sparrow fussed about, tossing bits of last year’s old nest out the front door, and began building a new one.

Mr Sparrow was very busy putting on quite a show of fidelity. An unattached hen was determined to break up the home, but Mr. Sparrow chased her away repeatedly.

When at last Mrs. Sparrow elected to go into residence, it was amusing to observe that the ol’ boy was much less severe on the intruding “vampire” he. He made some sporadic, token counterattacks, but these he soon gave up. It was very early in the season, and I imagine that he wasn’t too sure of the permanency of his new union with the incumbent Mrs. Sparrow Be that as it may, the “hussy” was permitted to perch quite close to the new home—just in case.

Then, alas, the “cauld” wind came to “drive sairly” down over the sector, and with the sharp drop in temperatures, the sparrow marriage seemed to I dissolve automatically. No doubt the sparrows were the victims of an attack of premature spring fever. They have “flown the coop!”

The sparrows are not the only creatures to have fallen victims to the false spring. Many an overcoat has been tossed into the moth-proof bag, and topcoats substituted. As a result, presumably, many of our fellow citizens are barking and sneezing.

* * *

Down through the ages. March has been one of the most maligned months of the year, and not without some justification.

Perhaps the best that may be said for it is that it is the natal month of some very important persons, and that it is closer to April and May than are Decemoer and January. As well, it is the source of a pretty well frayed cliche: “Spring is just around the corner.”

That is a fact . . . Spring is just around the corner. Don’t ask me what corner, but it is there somewhere. At this season of the year, forgetting the sparrows for the moment, I think back to the arrival of the ducks and geese and other harbingers of spring—the songbirds. There were times, of course, when the sharp-witted geese and ducks miscalculated, or were wholly deceived by the false spring, which had decided to flirt with winter a while longer.

Venturesome ducks and geese frequently poured down on the lakes almost before the Ice was clear. Wherever there were patches of open water, you would find the feathered swimmers, their chorus disturbing the air. Their voice sounds, more than any other factor but the sun, seemed to have more influence on the reawakening of springtime in the wilderness.

* * *

Now and then, alas, they, too, became victims of Nature’s fickleness. When sharp temperatures would tighten up the ice, and fierce blizzards slant down on a formation of huddled ducks or geese, the effect was very depressing on human beings. We felt that Nature had deceived us, cheated us. But as I look back visualizing those periods of uncertainty, I think it was all for the best. When the true spring came with startling suddenness, as surely it will return this year, it was doubly welcome. The better always seems much better after we have tasted and accepted the bitter.

Parting with March and its legerdemain should be an occasion for rejoicing. With the dawning of April we may in earnest begin to apply the age-worn cliche: “Spring is just around the corner!”

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

Cruickshank wrote 35 stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of Dal and Mary Baldwin as they carved out their piece of the Wilderness in Sun Bear Valley, Wyoming and establish a growing community. King, the great stallion Dal had fist glimpsed when he arrived in Sun Bear Valley, has returned and Dal is determined to try and breed one of his mares with the great one, but an unsavory outsider has arrived in the valley to cause trouble and sets his sights on Nan.

From the May 1947 number of Range Riders Western, it’s Harold F. Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folks in “Wild King Savagery!”

Dal Baldwin, first settler in Sun Bear Valley, meets the challenge of a renegade seeking to despoil his homestead!

• Download “Wild King Savagery” (May 1947, Range Riders Western)

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

Cruickshank wrote 35 stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of Dal and Mary Baldwin as they carved out their piece of the Wilderness in Sun Bear Valley, Wyoming and establish a growing community. Doc gets injured as the Sun Bear Valley men work to build a cozy cabin for Phil and school-marm Nan to move into when they finally tie the knot, but Bart Manning, one of the Boxed D wranglers, has eyes for Nan and sets about to cause deadly mischief.

From the March 1947 number of Range Riders Western, it’s Harold F. Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folks in “Frontier Courage!”

Red tongues of fire threaten the security of Dal Baldwin and the settlers of Sun Bear Valley, but they meet the challenge!

• Download “Frontier Courage” (March 1947, Range Riders Western)

Be sure to stop back Monday for one last tale of the Pioneer Folk of Sun Bear Valley!

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

The Edmonton Journal regularly set aside the third column on its editorial page for submissions from freelance writers, of which Cruickshank was an occasional contributor over the years. His columns frequently focused on his life growing up as a homesteader with his father and brother who had all immigrated from Scotland in 1905 to Barrhead, Canada along the famed Klondike Trail, just to the northwest of Fort Edmonton.

It’s Wednesday, so here’s another of Cruickshank’s Third Columns—this time Cruickshank tells of his first Christmas homesteading.

The Third Column

by Harold F. Cruickshank • Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Canada • Tuesday, 23 December 1952

Homestead Christmas

MY FIRST Christmas Day in the bush country was intensely cold. But let me begin with Christmas Eve. I had been at the home of our nearest neighbors for a week, doing chores during the absence of the men of the family in Edmonton. My father had joined the party. In fact it a was our team of horses which made that trip, then a long, cold one over inadequate trails—our team, and the neighbors’ sleigh.

I cut firewood, fed and watered the stock. These duties today might sound light, but then, they involved much effort. I had to cut a fresh hole in heavy creek ice each morning, for water for the stock. When the creek suddenly went dry, we had to melt snow for ail the stock, as the supply in the well was only sufficient for household requirements.

* * *

It was a time of homesickness for me; so far away from home, this first Christmas season in the wilds.

In the crisp, early dusk of Christmas Eve, as the skies were changing from their sharp claret, or plum shades to that steel-grayish purple which in winter precedes the cold, metallic blue of night. I had a scarcely finished my evening chores when I heard the musical jangle of sleigh bells and the screech and grind of sleigh runners.

The folk were indeed on schedule, and how I thrilled to it!

After taking over the team for stabling and care, I joined the happy group in the shack, where many gifts were being passed round.

As a boy of only thirteen, I could have been excused a bit of covetousness as I saw those gifts being handed out, with none for me. At last, though, one of the party, a man I had never previously met, a contractor in town who had just come out to be with his wife and daughter, took from his pocket an old dollar watch and gave it to me.

I was speechless. This was my very first watch and my only present on my first wilderness Christmas away from home. How I treasured that worn old timepiece!

Supper over, we were asked to sing some Christmas songs and hymns, and were invited to join our neighbors for Christmas dinner the following day.

Then came the time to hitch up and move back to our own shack.

Never did I see a more uninviting place—a colder shack! I can still remember the sight of its two small south windows, leering at the bush from either side of the wretched door.

A day or so later, I brought in a huge sack of Christmas mail for all the neighbors. and was severely kicked and cut up by the wild bronc I rode.

Out of the batch of mail there was one piece for me—a large and beautiful Christmas card from my mother overseas.

* * *

I was too busy for a time to pay much attention to this card, as I nursed my leg injury, and life indeed seemed very dreary as winter intensified.

Now and then, though, the sun would burst forth for a moment or so, and here and there on hillsides or in valleys one saw many beautiful Christmas cards—patches of sheer beauty: tinseled clumps of handsome birches, flanked by red willows, and backed by the inevitable and grandiose spruce belts. It was a glittering panorama, whose stage appearance was often all too brief.

Still, I treasured that lone Christmas card. A few years later, when the good news came that my mother and the other members of our large family were coming to join us, I hit upon a plan to use the lovely card as a greeting token. I went into a stand of fine, small, silvery dry spruce and selected four slender sticks for legs for a stand for the card. To the four which I had cut to size, or so I thought, I nailed the end of a dried-apple box, but to this, my first creation, my first attempt at carpentry, wobbled. I began to cut this leg and that until my original stand of about three feet in height, measured only about sixteen inches. I decided to call a halt, placing a chip under the too-short leg.

I cannot recall that my mother even noticed the effort on her arrival, but it was an expression of the Christmas spirit . . . a very sorry job indeed, but well intended.

Today in the clamor and glamor of the Christmas season, I often think that somewhere along the way we have slipped away from this spirit which first motivated the celebration and observance of Christmas.

We must, of course, move on with the times and the trends, but still I feel that it might not hurt us if now and then we could return to the humbleness and humility of such a Christmas as I have illustrated above—in thought, at least—for, after all, the very first Christmas was born in humility and humbleness.

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

Cruickshank wrote 35 stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of Dal and Mary Baldwin as they carved out their piece of the Wilderness in Sun Bear Valley, Wyoming and establish a growing community. Rankin and the Box D crew try to jump the Sun Bear Valley settler’s claim on the neighboring valley by moving their cattle in to graze. The Sun Bear Valley crew try to solve their problem without any violence by bringing their sheep into the valley.

From the January 1947 number of Range Riders Western, it’s Harold F. Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folks in “Stampede Conquest!”

When trouble-makers invade the ranchlands of Sun Bear Valley, Dal Baldwin and his friends are ready for them!

• Download “Stampede Conquest” (January 1947, Range Riders Western)

Be sure to stop back Monday when the Baldwins muster their “Frontier Courage!”

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

Cruickshank wrote 35 stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of Dal and Mary Baldwin as they carved out their piece of the Wilderness in Sun Bear Valley, Wyoming and establish a growing community. The Morrison’s young friend Phil Cody arrives with a view to squatting at the new valley Dal had discovered westward through the pass while Quirt Malotte’s brother arrive with two fellow horse thieving owlhoots to get even with Dal once and for all.

From the November 1946 number of Range Riders Western, it’s Harold F. Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folks in “The Valley Beyond!”

Dal and Mary Baldwin join other settlers in a finish fight against the horse thieves who invade Sun Bear!

• Download “The Valley Beyond” (November 1946, Range Riders Western)

Be sure to stop back Monday when the Baldwins fight back against a “Stampede Conquest!”

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

The Edmonton Journal regularly set aside the third column on its editorial page for submissions from freelance writers, of which Cruickshank was an occasional contributor over the years. His columns frequently focused on his life growing up as a homesteader with his father and brother who had all immigrated from Scotland in 1905 to Barrhead, Canada along the famed Klondike Trail, just to the northwest of Fort Edmonton.

It’s Wednesday, so here’s another of Cruickshank’s Third Columns.

The Third Column

by Harold F. Cruickshank • Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Canada • Monday, 10 March 1952

Yeepek, the Hunter

FROM day to day, in mid-winter, as I watch the capers of the inevitable sparrows—and they are quite amusing, especially when large flocks of chesty waxwings swoop down on their range—I think of another bird—a big bird: “Yeepek, the great American or Bald eagle.

Yeepek, as I knew him in the pioneer days in the wilds, was indeed a king of the skyways—a true monarch of the wilderness.

I have read a great deal about Yeepek and his kind of late. His numbers seem to have dwindled and from most accounts his species have moved on to coastal areas where their diet is chiefly fish.

Copy on the diet of the Bald eagle has been a bit too broadly presented in some of the articles. The impression has been given that everywhere, Yeepek and his kind live chiefly on fish. . . .

* * *

I had much close association with the big eagles in the early part of the century, for they were permanent residents of our frontier district, northwest of Edmonton.

Summer and winter, seldom a day passed that we did not see one or more of the big baldies. Summer and winter, one saw them planing, loafing idly, their white polls flashing in the sunlight against a sharply blue sky main. Then the shrieks, never-to-be-forgotten wild cries, and those sudden, swift plummets earthward.

In the long winters when creeks and lakes were frozen for months on end. I wonder what would have happened to the Bald eagles had their diet consisted of fish. For those long months there were no fish! Nor in springtime, when the suckers and jacks ran the creeks and lakes, did I ever see a Bald eagle fishing.

* * *

An interesting highlight of my association with the baldies occurred in the winter of 1906-07. I helped a professional trapper along his lines. In mid-winter he concentrated on coyotes which he poisoned with strychnine-impregnated bait on the frozen lakes. (The price per pelt then, $2.50.)

Occasionally a settler’s dog picked up a bait, but such occasions were rare. Now and then a fox might carry a bait some distance in its teeth, and drop it. Less crafty, a dog would find it, and—curtains for the dog!

Baits were dropped along a trail across a lake’s neck, or bay. over which trail a freshly-killed rabbit had been drawn. This operation took place in the late afternoon.

The following morning we were out in the dark, and bitterly cold it was, if you can recall that old terror of a winter of 1906-07.

Why all the hurry? YEEPEK!

At the first crack of pale dawn, the big baldies were alert. They would spot a dark object on the lakes—a poisoned coyote, perhaps still warm, and that was it! A swift plummet earthward and the eagles had their targets. Beak and talons gouged out what they could, and Yeepek would go soaring off to enjoy his meal in the sere tamarac cloisters which were his home ground and nesting place.

To give you some idea of the havoc wrought by the big bird kings, my friend and neighbor poisoned in all about one hundred and twenty coyotes during that one winter, but only brought home ninety-two for pelting. Yeepek, his “sisters, and his cousins and his aunts,” had accounted for the rest.

When spring came again we forgot the depredations of the big winged fellows. I recall having seen only one baldie shot. In those days we didn’t shoot at every moving creature, bird or animal. They had their places in the society of the frontier folk.

* * *

Yeepek. as I knew him, lived on rodents—gophers, mice and rabbits, and now and then, when smart enough to outsmart them, a duck, or grouse. More often than not the ducks, prairie chickens, and bush partridge were too clever for him. Never, to my knowledge, and I watched them closely, did the eagles fish.

Yeepek, the great symbol of the United States, was once very plentiful here in our own immediate districts—probably as numerous as on any part of the North American continent . . . a stately, magnificent sky creature who had no peer: a king in his own right—“High aloft, where none else dared follow!”

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

Cruickshank wrote 35 stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of Dal and Mary Baldwin as they carved out their piece of the Wilderness in Sun Bear Valley, Wyoming and establish a growing community. Looking to strengthen his horse breeding stock, Dal goes in search of King, the great wild stallion he had seen when he and Mary had first arrived in the valley, who has been absent from Sun Bear Valley and in the process discovers another valley beyond with close to two hundred and fifty acres of tillable land, and pasture range beyond.

From the August 1946 number of Range Riders Western, it’s Harold F. Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folks in “Wild Hoof Warfare!”

Dal and Mary Baldwin seek strong stock— which leads Dal to strive for the conquest of the great King Stallion!

• Download “Wild Hoof Warfare” (August 1946, Range Riders Western)

Be sure to stop back Friday when the Baldwins explore “The Valley Beyond!”

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

Cruickshank wrote 35 stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of Dal and Mary Baldwin as they carved out their piece of the Wilderness in Sun Bear Valley, Wyoming and establish a growing community. The Sun Bear Valley settlers start to worry about their rights as squatters and plan to get government surveyors in to draw up their claims as a salty outfit of owlhoots lead by a nasty piece of work known as Runkin herding about a hundred head of the mangiest looking cattle heads toward their valley.

From the June 1946 number of Range Riders Western, it’s Harold F. Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folks in “Squatters’ Law!”

Dal Baldwin and the courageous settlers of Sun Bear Valley battle bravely against Runkin’s outlaw band of pillagers!

• Download “Squatters’ Law” (June 1946, Range Riders Western)

Be sure to stop back Monday when the Baldwins find themselves in the midst of “Wild Hoof Warfare!”

WE’RE celebrating the holidays with Harold F. Cruickshank—creator of those great Aces of the Western Front’s Hell Skies—Red Eagle, Sky Wolf, and Sky Devil. But this holiday season it’s going to be a down home Christmas featuring Cruickshank’s Pioneer Folk stories from the pages of Range Riders Western (1945-1952) on Mondays and Fridays; and Cruickshank’s own recollections of homesteading life from The Edmonton Journal’s The Third Column on Wednesdays.

The Edmonton Journal regularly set aside the third column on its editorial page for submissions from freelance writers, of which Cruickshank was an occasional contributor over the years. His columns frequently focused on his life growing up as a homesteader with his father and brother who had all immigrated from Scotland in 1905 to Barrhead, Canada along the famed Klondike Trail, just to the northwest of Fort Edmonton.

It’s Wednesday, so here’s another of Cruickshank’s Third Columns.

The Third Column

by Harold F. Cruickshank • Edmonton Journal, Edmonton, Canada • Tuesday, 28 April 1953

Footprints of the Pathfinders

WHEN early in this century we first set foot on the hinterland sod which was to be our future home, we felt a sharp glow of the warmth which attends justifiable pride in being among the first settlers to enter a new, untamed wilderness.

It was a wild brush-and-timber-studded country, whose first trails we opened up by widening and corduroying the clefts of survey lines. . . . But those clefts, faint slashings through the bush, some of them almost closed by second growth brush, told us the story of the earliest pioneers. They were “the sign” of those unsung heroes of the northwest, the early Dominion Land Surveyors, and their pack animals.

* * *

A highlight of my first glimpse of our wilderness was, however, the standing teepee poles along high creek banks—the mark of the first folk to have set foot upon the wild sod. They told of the nomadic Cree Indian trappers who must have thrived in our country which still, in 1906, abounded in every species of wildlife, furred, feathered and antlered.

Along my own traplines—in timber or by the frozen, or bubbling creeks, and adjacent to the lakes—more than once I came across the sign of the Indian trappers, mouldering old deadfall trap-sets.

In the timbered zones one saw the scar of tree blazes which no doubt, years before, had marked the “trail” in to the carcass of a slain moose. At first, those axe signs startled one, for the forest belts seemed truly virgin and covered with leaf-mould and pine-needle carpets no feet had trod before.

First, then, were the Indian hunters and trappers, and then came those doughty men whom I have dubbed the “unsung heroes of our northwest—the Dominion Land Surveyors.

* * *

I should like to pay tribute to those pioneer surveyors. We followed their surveyed line slashings often, and they meant much to us settlers in orienting ourselves, making it possible for us to establish our boundaries, and to start building the first dim trails.

It must have been a rugged life they led, through swamp and bushland, with many a treacherous creek and river to ford, or lake to circumnavigate, harassed the while by hordes of every known species of pestiferous insect.

On one occasion, while moose hunting, I and my companions had every good reason to remember the great work of the surveyors.

Many miles from our base camp, we were struck by a blizzard, and, without a compass were, technically, lost. The leader of our party decided to head for home but, in my opinion, was heading in an altogether wrong direction. We discussed the matter at some length; then all at once it dawned on me that we had just come across an old survey-line. We back-tracked to the line and followed it until at last we reached the mound and four square holes dug at a section corner by the survey party of years before.

I asked the leader of our party if he knew the approximate legal description of our base camp area. Fortunately, he did know it. On the inside of a cigarette box I drew a miniature of a township, and from a reading of the iron stake the surveyors had driven into the ground at the base of the section corner mound of clay, I was able to determine our position. Although our leader still had doubts, we set out in exactly the opposite direction to the one he had recommended, and in due time arrived at the little creek, close to our base cabin.

I thanked heaven for those old-time dominion land surveyors who had made our return possible.

* * *

In my opinion, an opinion which, I am sure, is shared by many an old-time settler, the Dominion Land Surveyor, his chainman, and his cooks, well deserve a plaque or monument in their honor and memory. Their doughty, skillful, work, under trying conditions, contributed more than any other factor to progress and development here in Alberta in the past half-century or so.

It is true that some adventuresome settlers were in ahead of the surveyors, settling under “squatter’s rights,” but they were comparatively few in number, so to the surveyors must go the honor and acclaim of having made the first pioneer footprints on the land.