This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. Like all the Western pulps from Popular Publications, NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE consistently delivered good authors and stories, and most of the covers were pretty good, too. I have no idea who painted this one. It’s not one of my favorites, but it’s certainly not bad.
I’m not sure why I haven’t read more by George C. Appell. Every story I’ve read by him was very good. I own several of his novels but haven’t gotten around to any of them. His novelette “Hired Gun!” leads off this issue, and it starts off as a very standard story about a gunfighter, in this case a Texan named Hayes Hockaday, going to work for a corrupt saloon owner/cattle baron but having second thoughts about it when he starts falling for a girl who works in the local mercantile. Appell has a very effective twist up his sleeve in this story, though, and he enlivens the plot with some gritty action scenes and some good descriptive writing. This is a top-notch yarn.
Leonard Huish published only three stories, according to the Fictionmags Index, and I don’t know a thing about him. “The Terror of El Toro Blanco” in this issue is a humorous story about a widow with an axe destroying the various saloons where her late husband quenched his thirst for tequila. El Toro Blanco is one of those saloons, located in a Texas border town. There’s also a bet between a couple of Mexicans with murder as the stakes. My tolerance for comedy Westerns is pretty low, as I’ve said many times, but this one isn’t bad. The author avoids goofy slapstick for the most part and even manages to strike a poignant note or two. This story surprised me by being worth reading.
When you see a story in a Western pulp bylined “Doc Winchester”, your first thought is that the name has to be a pseudonym or house-name. Mine certainly was. But that turns out not to be the case. The author of the novelette “Pit of the Living Dead” in this issue is actually Charles Ward “Doc” Winchester, born in Nebraska in 1888, who appears to have spent most of his life in Wyoming and then died in New Mexico in 1954. Other than that, I don’t know anything about him. Was he actually a doctor, or was that just a name he or someone else hung on him? If anyone knows I’d be happy to learn more. As for the story itself, which is the first one I’ve read by Doc Winchester, it’s about a couple of men doing some scouting, surveying, and mapping for the government who run into an archeologist and his beautiful daughter who claim to have found Cibola, the fabled lost city of gold. It’s an interesting plot, and there’s even a Lost Race to liven things up (I love me some Lost Race yarns), but the whole story is rather muddled and the prose just isn’t very good. I wanted to like this story just because it’s by somebody called Doc Winchester, but unfortunately, I didn’t.
Hascal Giles was a long-time newspaperman in Tennessee who wrote more than 60 stories for various Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties, including several Masked Rider and Range Riders novels. After retiring from newspaper work, he wrote several more novels published as paperback originals in the Nineties. I haven’t read much by him. His story in this issue, “Reunion in Blackjack”, finds two ex-cons, recently released from Yuma Prison, heading back to the town where they have a grudge against the sheriff. They have very different plans on how to proceed once they get there, however. This is a well-written story, and I admire the way Giles tries to give its resolution a fresh angle, but I’m not sure it really works. I really ought to read one or two of his novels, though.
Bruce Cassiday wrote dozens of Western and detective stories for the pulps in the Forties and Fifties, but I know him mainly for the many paperbacks he turned out later in his career. He wrote some of the Nick Carter, Killmaster novels, entries in the Phantom and Flash Gordon paperback series under the name Carson Bingham, and quite a few softcore novels, also under the Bingham name. His novelette in this issue “The Bigger They Are—” is interesting in its approach. For once, the point-of-view character is the bad guy, a cattle baron/town boss who brings in a town-taming lawman to enforce his will, only to have things not go the way he’s expecting. It’s kind of a gamble to tell a Western pulp story like this, but Cassiday makes it work for the most part with interesting characters and top-notch writing. I read some of his Carson Bingham books years ago and enjoyed them. He’s a mostly forgotten writer, but I think his work is worth reading. (Bold Venture Press has reprinted some of his mystery novels, and I really need to read them.)
“Nobody’s Pardner” by Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount) is a reprint of a story published originally as “A Maverick Fights for a Brand” in the July 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. Mount was a top-notch Western author who has become one of my favorites in recent years. This story is about a young tinhorn gambler who has to decide whether he wants to continue his shady ways or reform and make something of himself, even though the process is definitely a reluctant and unpleasant one. While not as good as Mount’s Silver Trent or Five Mavericks stories, this is a fine yarn that I really enjoyed.
This issue wraps up with a novelette, “Last of the Llano Kid!”, from another favorite, C. William Harrison. In this story, a bloody Texas feud reaches out with its violence all the way to Arizona, and as a result, an Arizona lawman trails a killer back to the Lone Star State for a showdown and gets involved with the fugitive’s beautiful sister along the way. This is a very good story marred only by an ending that’s not as dramatic as it could be.
In fact, several stories in this issue featured endings that were a bit of a letdown. I don’t know if this was something the editors at Popular Publications wanted in order to increase the realism of the stories, but if so, I’m not sure it worked. These are Western pulps! I want leather to be slapped and powder to be burned. Despite that, this is a decent issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. Not one to seek out, maybe, but worth reading if you have a copy.
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