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!”