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Epstein, Saul. Saul Epstein was created by E. Hoffmann Price (Pâwang Ali, Pierre d’Artois, Honest John Carmody, Cliff Cragin, Don Cragston, Glenn Farrell, Simon Bolivar Grimes, Glenn Haley, Ishmeddin, Jim Kane, Matalaa,  Average Parker, Dr. Zeng Tse-lin) and appeared in six stories in a variety of pulps from 1939 to 1980, beginning with “Short Cut to Hell” (Thrilling Adventures, Jan. 1939).

Saul Epstein is a Jewish odd job man in the Old West. He does everything from making coffins to general repair work, and carries with him “tailor’s kit, cobbler’s last and awls and hammer, tin-smith’s furnace and soldering irons.” He has opened his own store, whose sign reads “Epstein Will Fix It.” He is grave and sympathetic, but not overly so, and while Jewish will make bacon for his guests. He is generally wise, has a store of handy aphorisms, and doesn’t believe that mining, among other things, is a proper job: “silly business. The more work you put into one, the less value is left in it. Now, tinkering, patching, it is adding something, not taking something away.”

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